☆ENGLISH ONLY☆コミュのCode switching

I train in Ninjutsu, but I also learn European
swordsmanship. A lot of the guys who learn
European swordsmanship are in what you might
describe as the "Pirates / Lord of the Rings"
fan group. That is they're really into pirates
and lord of the rings.
One of the things my friend Melody, who speaks
a little Japanese started saying is
"Aaaarrrrggggh desu" (ninja pirate). Now I
can't stop saying it, it's driving me nuts.
BTW to settle the whole ninja v. pirate thing
once and for all. 1 ninja v. 500 pirates =
a fair fight.

Filipinos do it all the time. :D

Taglish... diba?

Conversations i have had with some of my japanese friends, and even some of my foreign friends who've lived in Japan... One time- we went to a movie, after the movie, i asked my friend what she thought of it... Her answer: It was kind of びみょ。。。(sp?) Other times when either myself or one of my friends was complaining about something... i'd say something along the lines of- it's so, so (me searching for a word) ... 面倒臭い！ Just a couple of examples. There are many times I've had conversations with my friends and it's been a constant of switching between Japanese and English...

My vote goes for "it's annoying"

Language elitists are annoying :P

It's cute when it happens naturally.

It's annoying when it's forced (for the purpose of being funny or cool or showing off).

The kids in my Japanese classes who are into anime and who loudly say "baka" and "kawaii" in half their sentences would fall into the category of "annoying", for example.

There are situations when one finds vocabulary more easily recalled in one language than another and uses due to laziness, temporary amnesia or limited vocabulary, which I think is fair enough. Same for turns of phrase for which a direct equivalent is hard to pin down.

I personally find redundant switching, such at the end of sentences, to be slightly annoying.

My real annoyance is reserved for people who insist on using foreign vocabulary (or in Japanese, katakana aka yokomoji) when there are perfectly valid equivalents in the native vocabulary. It is most annoying when some would-be smartass inserts words in (attempted) "authentic" pronunciation, or, in the written word, written in the english alphabet, even when the same word is already an established part of the katakana vocabulary.

I reserve this contempt for people who should be perfectly capable of expressing themselves without resorting to such techniques out of preference rather than necessity, and not for people who have not mastered one of the languages and need to revert to another language for efficiency's sake.

Anecdotally, I find that people who think they like to express themselves in this way out of preference often have deficiencies in one or both of the languages anyway.

Actually, I'm guilty of this quite a bit. What sort of sealed the deal was living with Japanese who were going to to school in the US (not to mention the many friends i have who fit that description). We knew both languages, more or less, so it just became a natural mode, since some ways of phrasing, or actual words (by connotation) were actually more fitting. "Comfortability" in the context of human relationship and dialog have a lot to do with this. Now of course, some of it is just because of expediency, but that is another matter.

Though i can also be annoyed at the practice, depending on how it is done, I must say: : Frankly, some of you who expressed criticism of the practice either need more imagination regarding possible modes, or are utterly naive when it comes to understanding how language functions (and has functioned, as well as developed!), particularly in inter-linguistic (and thus cultural) interactions.

Possibly the most annoying thing any gaijin can do.
Its just a way of showing those around you that you have knowledge of another language although the people that tend to do it are nearly always lacking a good command of the language in question. Pure showing off. Not that those who do it would admit to that.

Please explain to me why the fuck you want to say somethiing like

"Its hot today ね！”
or
"You're coming to the partyでしょう？！”

Absolutely pathetic. Anybody that does it should be shot.

Seriously.

oh and i think しんのすけ is very right in what he says.
Good stuff mate.

With my friends and I, it isn't about showing off what we know or anything like that. Sometimes it is a gap in knowledge where we insert whatever word we're not sure of in our language into the second language sentence, or just use words from Japanese or English that don't translate so well into the other language. Personal opinion and situation, of course...

I don't think adding "ね" or "でしょう" to a sentence helps people learn Japanese. I do know that everyone has to start somewhere, but I don't think adding ね and でしょう is a good place to start. I would probably suggest whole sentences because the most difficult part of any language is probably vocabulary and grammar. And plus, you can't make mistakes if you stay in your comfort zone and without mistakes..you can't learn very much.

But that's assuming the person is learning Japanese.

Side note..

Does anyone know a good translation for 懐かしい or 微妙 because I've been trying to find one, but it's hard to find one that has the same conversational nuance. At times like that, if the person I'm talking to knows Japanese, I'm inclined to just throw in the Japanese word.

ShadyJo>

I think you are spot on in your comments.

Tacking on meaningless fragments to the end of sentences is a road to nowhere.

Getting over the fear of embarassing oneself is certainly an important point. Easier said than done though....

As far as Japanese is concerned, once one has grasped basic sentence structures (word order) and begins to build out vocabulary, I think attempting to assemble sentences is the right way to go. Particles are perhaps more difficult, and will be more hit and miss to begin with, but I think if one pays careful attention to how they are used by native speakers, one can see patterns emerge.

More generally, I think it is really important to apply oneself to absorbing language, be it listening or reading.

In our mother tongues, we are able to skim read or listen casually and let our brains interpolate the results without much adverse impact. This useful mechanism is I think a hinderance when trying to learn a new language, especially one with a significantly different phonetic or grammatical structure, as the interpolation algorithm used for one language may not be appropriate for another, and we end up making mistakes which betray our first language. (Anecdotally I've found that even after filtering out accents which are also coloured by our native languages, non-phonetic mistakes can often be enough to reveal the speaker or often even a writer's native language or language family).

How do we prevent this shortcut and interpolation algorithm from applying itself in the wrong context? I think an effective method is to make a conscious effort to think in the language you are working with. I personally happen to think that the most robust (though certainly not the quickest) route towards mastering a language is along the path taken by children learning their first language, albeit in an accelerated rate as befits the (hopefully) expanded mental capacity afforded by our mental development. Start with a clean slate, build up vocabulary and grammar in an incremental fashion. Not the most practical method when one needs to function as an adult member of society in a foreign language perhaps, but I think the best route to building a robust language framework. Realistically though, I guess the rigourous method will have to be complemented by a basic set of practical tools to get by in the short term, and therein lies the difficulty of learning a new language after childhood.


Re the side note... 懐かしい(natsukashii) and 微妙(bimyou - especially in the contemporary spoken usage of the word) are indeed two difficult examples.

For natsukashii, I think the most appropriate translation depends on context but in any case will be rather verbose compared to the succinct Japanese. Something about bringing back memories or how it take you back to the past or somesuch is probably as close as you can get as far as a non-specific translation is concerned. I personally would reflect on the root cause of the emotion of natsukashii and attempt to express that.

As for bimyou, that one has me stumped also, this is used so widely that this one depends even more on the context in which it is being uttered I think. The word appears superficially (nominally) ambivalent but the undertone is negative, a case of honne vs tatemae? I can't readily think of a commonly used equivalent, at least in English.

もったいない(mottainai) is probably another example of a subtly nuanced word for which a direct equivalent can be difficult to substitute in certain situations.

二ール、

I was going to mention the same thing. When people pronounce ENGLISH words borrowed from Japanese in an ENGLISH-speaking context (such as "sushi", "kamikaze", "origami", "karaoke", etc.) using "authentic" Japanese pronunciation, but of course don't roll their r's for Spanish words like "burrito", this is undeniably a case of showing off, and perhaps, cultural elitism.

18: しんのすけ

Part of the problem with your example of 懐かしい and 微妙, is that the difficulty of translating those 'terms' is in fact endemic to translation as such. There are an army of words for which one cannot find a direct equivalent, simply because of what language is. A different linguistic context, context of expression, etymology, etc. will bring forth all that cannot be precisely translated.

You are right to say that one should think in the language when trying to learn it, or when using it period. But my general problem with this discussion is that code switching is only being looked at in the context of 'learning the language' (and most of the comments to that point are fair)--but the phenomena itself is much, much wider. In fact, much higher level discussion uses code switching, not for lack of knowing either language, but for exactness. (And my point about something like code switching being part and parcel of how languages have developed, remains). When i criticized the discussion for lack of imagination, or worse, this is what i meant.

19: Brianna

it can be showing off (or a case of cultural elitism, whatever that actually is), but need not be. Once someone knows the proper pronounciation, it is hard to use anything else. Try anglo-izing some japanese words you know, and you'll see the problem. Some of it has to do with the context in which one learned the word.

and the spanish point only goes so far, actually. If someone knows chinese, but not french, and thus say chinese names correctly, but french wrong...what is wrong with that? Also, even your example is off: not all spanish dialects roll the rr--some alight part of it, and some make the sound so harsh 'roll' is a bit of a strech as a descriptor.

To be fair, the friends I mentioned who add ね　or でしょう to the end of their sentences are Japanese natives who are fluent in English. When they first came to America, they said it a lot on accident. They would add よ　or ね just because it seemed natural at the end of a sentence. Its not something they do on purpose. Obviously not everyone has these problems, but it happens. When I am speaking Japanese, English words slip out on accident sometimes, especially swear words, because for me I swear a lot, so it just comes out. Of
course I can control it, but in a casual conversation, it might happen. They try to catch themselves when they are with Americans who don't know Japanese, but around those of us who do know some, they just don't care if ね happens to slip out.

>12

I totally agree with you. In a situation where you have people of different nationalities, who are both fluent or near fluent in both respective languages, code switching makes sense sometimes. There are often subtle nuances in one language that are lost in the other, and sometimes its easier to just use a word or a phrase from language. The other day I tried to find a good translation for the phrase "hit or miss" but I couldn't come up with anything, so I just said "hit or miss." One of my Japanse friends didn't know that phrase, so I guess I missed, lol. The word 懐かしい is another good example. The concept makes perfect sense to a westerner, but its easier to express in Japanese. The closest translation I could think of is "old school," but its a little different, because 懐かしい implies something good or desirable from one's past, something that brings back memories. "Old school" might mean the same thing, but sometimes old school can be used to describe something old and outdated.

>Funky Love Bunny
I don't think code switching is a good way to pick up a language. I think its more for advanced learners or people have fluency. Its not a good place to start, because it becomes kind of a crutch. Its really something you should steer clear of until you feel you are proficient with the language. But I do like it. I don't find it annoying at all.

Seems like some people have never experienced good code switching. Take a look at this animation:
http://www.joeisjapanese.com/joe/

The first part is just funny but not relevant to this discussion. The second part is the hilarious storytelling while code switching. But you probably have to be fluent in both languages to appreciate it fully.