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Spleen wrote:It's very common within bilingual families, code-switching. I have the good fortune to know a Chinese-English bilingual (Joe), a couple Russian-English bilinguals, and a Farsi-English bilingual, and I'm fascinated when I hear them on the phone with their parents. I was hanging out with the one who speaks Farsi the other day and she got a phone call from her mother. She was trying to speak English to her mother so I could follow the conversation, but failed and slipped into Farsi and didn't even realize it until I pointed it out. Talking to her mother, she gave no thought to what language was coming out of her mouth, but talking just to me she had no problem speaking just English.
The example in my textbook last year was pretty good, too: A family of bilinguals was being studied, and the mother was quoted as saying something like "I would never be heard code-switching," and changed languages halfway through the sentence.
Idran1701 wrote:Are you sure about that? I've never heard code-switching used that way, I've always heard it referred to how people use different languages/dialects/levels of formality in different situations. That makes sense too, though.
In linguistics, a register is a subset of a language used for a particular purpose or in a particular social setting. For example, an English speaker may adhere more closely to prescribed grammar, pronounce words ending in -ing with a velar nasal (e.g. "walking", not "walkin'") and refrain from using the word "ain't" when speaking in a formal setting, but the same person could violate all of these prescriptions in an informal setting.
-- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Register_(sociolinguistics)
This is what I'm talking about. If you're bilingual because your parents/grandparents are immigrants, and your family speaks Language X at family gatherings--regardless of the fact they all also understand Language Y--you are also going to speak Language X...or else come off eccentric at best, like a jackass at worse.PriamNevhausten wrote:But I can see register and language being tied together for some circumstances, such as in the case of visiting family with whom you're used to speaking in one certain tongue.
Dialect choice is register shift, isn't it?PriamNevhausten wrote:But this has been observed (frequently, even) with dialects as well, so it's probably a more similar phenomenon to dialectic choice than to register shift.
Oh yeah? Well so's your face!Christian wrote:Then again, det finns ju de som believe that kodbyte är en natural process of kommunikation och happens despite ens tro att man inte does it.
Dialect choice is register shift, isn't it?PriamNevhausten wrote:But this has been observed (frequently, even) with dialects as well, so it's probably a more similar phenomenon to dialectic choice than to register shift.
I think if someone is choosing between which dialect to speak, it may bleed over into register shift. But hell, it's far too complicated a matter for me to know!PriamNevhausten wrote:No, register shift is the difference between "fuck you" in speaking to a friend, and "are you sure that's right?" when talking to one of superior status; dialect choice, at least how I'm using it, is use of different patterns of speech (usually regional in character) with different audiences, as in a southern American dialect, or a midwestern urban dialect, or an Appalachian dialect, et cetera.Dialect choice is register shift, isn't it?PriamNevhausten wrote:But this has been observed (frequently, even) with dialects as well, so it's probably a more similar phenomenon to dialectic choice than to register shift.
YOU HAVE RUINED EVERYTHING. :[PriamNevhausten wrote:My apologies if I'm using the incorrect term and thus messing everything up.
Florida is one of those states!Idran1701 wrote:(While English is the de facto national language, and by and large the only one used for government processes directly, it's never been put into law. They've tried a bunch, but it's never passed. It is the official language of 30 states, though, and Hawaii's the only one to legally have two.)
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