Multilingual Psychology

[Hiikaru]

I know one language and I am kind of under the impression that there are several people on this forum that know more than one language, so here I am!

Basically, if you're speaking a language that is not your first language for a long time, do you find yourself defaulting to your mother tongue if you're surprised or stressed or otherwise experiencing high levels of emotion?

I'm not even fluent in anything but English, but if I'm listening to a lot of foreign language stuff (anime or lessons or music or whatever), then I feel awkward going back to something in English and I accidentally pronounce some things oddly. So I guess I've always kind of assumed that that's the case.

But I've been putting my main character in a lot of stressful situations with the other foreign characters and they're speaking English to each other and I'm not sure if most people would do that.

If most people do default to their original language, how annoyed would some potential bilingual audience be if I hand-waved it? "Pfff they're an imaginary immortal race and I say they get absorbed with languages really easily"

I'll probably do it anyway, so I guess what I'm wondering is how much explaining an audience would want or if they would also feel like it's normal.

 

[Music Dragon]

I never actually find myself "defaulting to my mother tongue", but when I get flustered, my vocabulary, grammar and pronunciation begin to suffer.

 

[Butterfree]

Pretty much what Music Dragon said; I mean, I sometimes start to say a word in the language I'm not currently speaking, but that's mostly when I'm speaking fast and thinking in the other language, not when I'm especially stressed or something.

(Though I heard on QI that women are supposed to scream in their mother tongue when giving birth. Haven't tried that myself, so I wouldn't know.)

 

[opaltiger]

English is technically my second language, but I consider myself a native speaker, and I never lapse into Slovenian, so...

 

[Pwnemon]

It's funny, I actually do the exact opposite. I usually speak in Spanish as much as I can, throwing in English words when I haven't learned the Spanish. I usually only do this around friends (especially the one taking French, lol) and my brother. It helps me learn and retain the info. But sometimes if I'm stressed I'll find myself actually doing this around people I'm only mildly familiar with. That combined with my skin tone has led a lot of people to ask if I'm a Mexican. XD.

 

[Sandstone-Shadow]

I never actually find myself "defaulting to my mother tongue", but when I get flustered, my vocabulary, grammar and pronunciation begin to suffer.

I don't know a second language well enough to know what I would resort to, but from a reader's standpoint, I can see this being realistic.

I would probably find it annoying to see a random outburst in another language in an otherwise English book; I probably wouldn't know the language and I'd get caught up trying to figure out how to pronounce it, when I should be caught up in the stressful situation that elicited that outburst.

 

[Hiikaru]

I don't know a second language well enough to know what I would resort to, but from a reader's standpoint, I can see this being realistic.

I would probably find it annoying to see a random outburst in another language in an otherwise English book; I probably wouldn't know the language and I'd get caught up trying to figure out how to pronounce it, when I should be caught up in the stressful situation that elicited that outburst.

I end up glossing over their actual words and just saying something like that it sounds like they're speaking gibberish, but I think that can get just as annoying.

I really like working with made-up languages and probably use them too much in my writing, but now that you mention it I've had that problem with some books and I'll try harder to keep that in mind.

--

Thanks for your input, guys! Hearing about people and their other languages is always interesting.

 

[Shiny Grimer]

This is old but whatever, I thought this was cool.

I've heard of people who had, say, Southern accents, like from Georgia, who hid them because of stereotypes and adopted a "General American" accent. They never lapse back into their original accent... unless they're drunk or really angry. I suppose it would happen whenever you're trying to fake a different accent for a long time. I think it depends on the person.

I've also heard the "Mothers always scream in their native language when giving birth" thing, as well as "People when hit enough always curse in their native language". I know that counting in another language is very difficult compared to counting in the language you learned to count in. I know one German who could read English very well except when she came across numbers like 1876, which she read in her head as German. I do a similar thing in Russian; when I see big numbers (or numbers that have to be declined) I switch to English to keep the flow and then go back to Russian. I've heard that this is one way to weed out a spy; give them math problems and make them read them out loud. :P

English is technically my second language, but I consider myself a native speaker, and I never lapse into Slovenian, so...

Same thing here, except with Spanish. The division between Spanish and English is very clear cut for me.

 

[Music Dragon]

I know one German who could read English very well except when she came across numbers like 1876, which she read in her head as German. I do a similar thing in Russian; when I see big numbers (or numbers that have to be declined) I switch to English to keep the flow and then go back to Russian. I've heard that this is one way to weed out a spy; give them math problems and make them read them out loud. :P

So true. Numbers are the only thing I definitely cannot read in anything but my native language - at least not without noticeable effort.

 

[Teh Ebil Snorlax]

I'm not actually multilingual, so this might not count but if I get flustered while speaking Irish, I often stick in English words but still apply Irish grammar. So I end up with "mo bhicycle" and "Tá mé fucking delighted".

 

[Crazy Linoone]

Linoone can actually be helpful!

I think the whole multilingual thing depends on how familiar the person is with its second language. I've known English for about six years now, and I don't default to my mother language anymore; I've done it quite a few times in the past though.

I know that I've blurted out "wait" or something similar in Mandarin during my first two years of moving to the US when I am getting stressed due to misunderstandings and my inability to convey my thoughts. That was when my English was still kind of shaky, and my Mandarin was better than my English at that point.

But now I'm really familiar with English (I even think in it most of the time), so I don't do that anymore. I'm still pretty fluent in Mandarin, but I don't default to it in stressful situations (a nice English swearword usually does the job).

My two cents.

 

[Griffin]

I actually learned Chinese alongside English, so I can carry out a conversation reasonably well, although sometimes I mix up words when I can't think of the right idiom in a certain language. I wouldn't even know which one was my "mother tongue..."