I’ve often thought about mixing. I don’t mean a young child mixing, I mean a bilingual adult mixing.
The other day I was reading “Mit zwei Sprachen groß werden” by German author Elke Montanari (a book I recommend as an introduction for anyone newly confronted with the subject), and what she had to say got me thinking:
Die meisten Deutschlehrer finden es [das Mischen von Sprachen] schrecklich. Eltern mögen es nicht. Verwandte reagieren besorgt. Viele meinen, wer mischt, beherrsche keine Sprache richtig. Wer ein Wort entleiht, ist faul oder kennt das richtige Wort nicht. Es gibt nur eine Form, die von allen akzeptiert wird: wenn die Sprache gewchselt wird, um sich an jemanden zu wenden, der nur diese versteht.
Wieder spielt die Umgebung eine große Rolle. In Deutschland begreifen sich die meisten Menschen als einsprachig. Mischungen werden als Fehler angesehen, als Reparatur, weil jemand das “richtige” Wort nicht weiß. In mehrsprachigen Gesellschaften ist das anders.
Most German [first language] teachers find it [mixing of languages] horrible. Parents don’t like it. Relatives react worried. Many people think that those who mix don’t master either language correctly. Those who use a word from another language are lazy or don’t know the right word. There is only one situation that is accepted by all: when you switch to another language to address soomeone who only understands that language.
Again the environment plays an important role. In Germany most people see themselves as monolingual. Mixing is seen as a mistake, as repair because someone doesn’t know the “right” word. This is different in multilingual societies.
(my translation)
This got me thinking because it describes my own private attitude extremely well. I have always aspired to avoid mixing, even with people who share more than one of my languages. The challenge for me was to speak my second and third languages as correctly as possible. The idea was that a monolingual native speaker would not use a word from another language. I saw (and still see) it as “cheating”. For myself, that is.
A few weeks back I met with a friend from Quebec. He is from an anglophone family while his girlfriend is from a francophone family. They are both bilingual and raise their four children bilingual as well. The last time we met we switched back and forth, with me following their lead and replying in the language I’d be addressed in.
This time my monolingual partner was with me, so everyone spoke French. But occasionally my Quebec friends would switch to English for a sentence or two.
When I asked how they did it at home, they said they mixed. Their children went or are going to English primary school, the older ones are in French secondary school. According to their parents (I didn’t hear them talk enough to judge for myself) none of them has a problem with either language, except for the youngest who at six still struggles with some grammar aspects.
Here we are in our monolingual European societies, worrying about “one parent-one language” and avoiding mixing, and in places like Quebec (and many others, but this is the one I’m familiar with), they just live with it.
