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Comment by matthewaveryusa | Hacker News Reader

Adult bilinguals mix their languages all the time; it’s a sign of language ability

I'm trilangual and that statement is complete BS. I would trade the decent mastery of three languages for complete mastery of one any day of the week. No one cares that I'm fluent in French or Polish expect for when I pronounce French words properly or can order two beers at a bar on a biz trip. People do notice that I tend to reel for pretty basic words in English. I guess it's always a matter of perspective.

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> Adult bilinguals mix their languages all the time; it’s a sign of language ability

I think I'll caveat that with "in the presence of other bilinguals". I am trilingual (formerly bilingual) and I, as well as people I share >1 languages with, freely switch when talking. It's quite liberating since you get access to idioms from multiple languages, and certain phrasings work out better. (There's also a lot more potential for great humor)

None of the adult bilinguals I know accidentally switch in the presence of non-bilinguals, however I have seen bilingual kids a few years younger than me do this (and I suspect I did it too).

In the context of kid mistakes, that quote was rather jarring to me; adult bilinguals do not switch languages the same way kids do; it's a completely different thing.

I used to work with a Thai office manager, who'd speak bilingually on the phone to her parents. I noticed that she'd switch to English when the comment was about something negative. Not necessarily severe, but things like "oh, we have to wait until wednesday?". Maybe she switched to English for 'negative idioms'?

Her Thai sounded light and bubbly, so the effect was magnified. I have no idea if she also said negative things in Thai, but almost all the English speech was in some way negative. She got on well with her parents and was never in a poor mood after speaking with them, so it's unlikely she was wholly negative in both languages. Curious.

Similarly on idioms, many years ago I knew a woman who spent a year of high school in Finland. She said that it was apparently common to use the English phrase for "I love you", because the Finnish phrase was harsh and tended to 'kill the mood' a bit.

Interesting!

For me, French is the language I like to be negative in. It's not a language I'm native-level fluent in, but I'm at the level where I can carry out those mental self-conversations you have with yourself when thinking in French as well.

In french, negating a statement involves two words sandwiched around the verb (usually ne...pas, e.g. "il ne trouve pas"). I think for me this gives the negation a lot more "weight". It's hard to explain (and I'm not even sure if this is the explanation, it's more of a guess). But if I'm thinking a strongly negative statement I'll often think it in French.

There aren't that many things for which this happens for me, most kinda of thoughts get expressed in no particular one of the languages for me. But most strong negatives happen in French (and certain kinds of questions happen in my non-English native language).

I wonder if it's just a coincidence or something special about negative statements going on here.

In French doesn't the negation get partially swallowed sometimes/often, like "il trouve pas" or is that my poor listening?

In spoken French it's definitely on its way out, effectively leaving only "pas" as a single negative particle. It's a good example of what is called the Jespersen's Cycle

0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jespersen%27s_Cycle

Yes, however my French is primarily writing/reading, so I personally never do that.

In fact my pronunciation is horrible and I struggle to understand spoken French (this is improving).

“Swallowed” isn’t the right way to describe it. That implies that in people’s heads they think they’re saying “ne” but they don’t because they’re speaking too fast, or whatever.

In reality, “pas” (without “ne”) is simply the unmarked, natural way of forming negation in spoken French. The extra “ne” is relatively uncommon (except in writing which is a whole different ball game) and normally signifies a slightly higher level of formality.

As an aside, “pas” was originally a noun meaning “step” (and still does have this meaning) – quite an odd etymology for a negative particle!

I should say to take my comments with a grain of salt - that's how I heard her English parts. I really have no idea if there were just as many negative comments in her Thai. Just a bit of curious anecdata, please salt well.

Saying it in a foreign language might be easier for her because she's less emotionally attached to the language:

https://www.theguardian.com/science/blog/2017/mar/27/bad-lan...

https://newrepublic.com/article/118191/people-speaking-forei...

I don't understand this. as long as it's obvious that you're multilingual people don't hold it against you when you make mistakes. on the other hand I have a friend whose bilingual with no accent in English and has trouble some times. people must think there's something wrong with him.

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