On living, and thinking, in two languages at once (essay by Camille Bordas)

[emk]

The original film also features some weirdly disturbing bilingual expressions such as, "Oh come on, c'est ma journée off." I don't know why that makes me twitch quite as much as it does. Something about compound French words ending with English prepositions always feels weird.

European French has "voix off": https://fr.wiktionary.org/wiki/voix_off

twitch twitch

That's horrible.

It's really weird that I have such a strong reaction to some of these constructions. It's as is the part of my brain that handles English grammar and the part that handles French grammar just sort of crash into each other when I hear something like journée off, or French phrasal verbs with English prepositions. I just want to cry NOOOOO! Stop!

Other kinds of code switching don't bother me at all, because they usually occur at "joints" in the sentence where French and English grammar are naturally aligned. Use an English noun in a French sentence? No problem. Say "When I arrive, je vais le faire." Again, no problem. But journée off doesn't feel as through it switches language at the "joints". Instead, it seems to be some kind of unnatural hybrid of the two languages (at least to my ears). I really want to find the linguistic paper about phrasal verbs in Nova Scotian French, because it had even more dramatic examples.

[tastyonions]

"J'ai crossé la street...Tout est là!"

[tarvos]

Thanks for sharing the essay. This was my favorite section, and I'm sure that people who grew up in a multilingual household can relate to it:

My mother and her three brothers, when together, have always spoken a mix of French and Spanish, with an accent that is neither one or the other—because they all, as children, spoke both languages perfectly and with no accent whatsoever, they were able to devise unique intonations for their Franish. Very few things make me more happy than hearing them speak their language. They pick the best version of each word in each language, conjugate old-timey French verbs the Spanish way… after 50-something years of existence, their language is still being invented as they go. It has its own logic that is one of constantly choosing what sounds best, or is the most funny, except it seems entirely effortless. It always flows perfectly. As a child I often wondered what made them decide between French and Spanish for such and such words, and I realize now that it was just another version of the question “What language do you think in?” Now I know they don’t think about it when they elect to say “La copa esta plena” instead of “la coupe est llena,” each one a different combination of French and Spanish. They’re just talking. They’re entertaining each other.

Now that my French is improving I often feel the urge to spout out French phrases in the middle of my English sentences simply because the French way of expressing certain thoughts flows better. I've always found it fascinating when I over heard my neighbors speaking Albanian with random English phrases dropped in the middle-- now I'm starting to see the convenience of it.

This sounds like my brother speaking his mix of Dutch and English. He does the same thing.