I think this implies more than just being able to speak to someone in another language, its doing so without effort.
Tipically : you don't feel the need to translate what is said to you to your mother tongue to understand it, you process it right in the language.
I'm effectively bilingual but neither of my parents speak another language. I just learnt English through movies, games etc.
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· 7 years ago
I took a whole college course on Mexican American bilingualism. Turns out there are a bunch of defined rules that govern when code switching (language switching) is and is not allowed.
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· 7 years ago
For example, you've got phrases that have become one big piece; you can't switch in the middle of Guadalupe de la Rosa, even though each word has its own meaning, since the phrase is one big piece of code.
I was once lab partners with a bilingual girl. When she spoke on the phone to her bilingual relatives she might rattle off a conversation in Spanish, then get a a phrase like "graphing calculator" and switch to English, then reach another phrase and pop back over to Spanish. She could just flip flop without missing a beat.
Me and my friends did this in school. There were a lot of international students there, so we'd speak English or German as well as our native Danish. Most of the time we'd speak one or the other, but if we were tired or relaxed, we'd just mix together a bunch of different words from all three and still understand what everyone was saying.
A recent sentence I have made "Was für einen letter muss ich hier seen". I've gotten quite used to switching between Dutch and German and don't really mess that up appart from "das ding da". But that day I somehow had to speak English too and had a night shift the night before and I somehow couldn't communicate in proper German anymore.
Hahahaha "deste" is a mexican colloquialism, it means "this/that thing" but people say it or really fast or just say it the short way. Like "dame el deste, la madre esta para cortar la carne"
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· 7 years ago
Is 'deste' a Mexican thing? Because I've never heard any other Latin American say it...
Another thing is that in the morning or when you're tired it's often more difficult to stay in one language. Also when you're swearing you usually use one no matter with whom you are
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· 6 years ago
Another thing is where you remember the concept of something, but the English and Spanish words for it have both left you.
Tipically : you don't feel the need to translate what is said to you to your mother tongue to understand it, you process it right in the language.