HOW TO: Bilingual Characters

This thread is very helpful!
I’m actually bilingual and it’s so funny to read stories where the character speakers their native language and then goes back to English, like, this:


Never happens… :joy:

But it does happen (sometimes) where I’ll be talking in my other language and it’s like “HOW THE HECK DO YOU SAY ‘THURSDAY’??” But then I’ll remember :sweat_smile:

Welp thanks for reading my unnecessary TedTalk

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You can now!

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lmao yes, most of us even prefer using Manglish instead of proper English :joy:

we (mostly) mix Chinese, (Malaysian) Malay, English in a sentence. :sunglasses:
Sometimes we even mix Hokkien and/or Cantonese with it too :rofl:

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First off, great post and great nickname @bakubro :ok_hand:t2:

First reaction was: so that’s why I can’t function properly, I’m only using half of my brain :grinning:

Secondly, my two cents.

You know when this actually can happen? When you want to make it known that you speak two languages. Kind of as a way to ‘brag’ that you’re bilingual. “Oh silly me, I totally forgot you guys can’t understandand this language!” But again, when you do this kind of ‘slip up’ it’s oftentimes intentional. That is unless you just finished speaking with someone who understands that language and you turn to someone who doesn’t and remain ‘stuck’ there for a split second… still not enough to complete your “Hi, what’s up” out loud.


Amature observations of bilingual x bilingual (same languages) conversation mechanics

My boyfriend is also bilingual and we always switch from one language to another, but what I noticed is that the switch can happen for two different reasons.

  • The most frequent is convenience. It’s when there’s a sentence or a part of a sentence that we’re not able to say in either language, so we switch to the other. It can happen because we’re having a brain fart, we feel like that sentence sounds better in the other language, or because saying it in either language doesn’t have the same meaning.

  • And then there’s meaning. A lot of the time, saying or talking about something in a language wouldn’t sound as heavy in meaning as if it were said in the other language. For example, when we want to say “I love you”, we can say it in both languages but in Italian “ti amo” sounds… deeper? And it does because of the bond we both have with the Italian language (which is our mother tongue).

Fun fact: perhaps this is me personally, but when I swear/express pain in English (which is not my language of birth) it’s usually for stuff that doesn’t bother me that much. But boy when I swear/express pain in Italian even around people who don’t know Italian you know I’m serious. Just me? :sweat_smile:

I’ve also noticed that when we switch to one language to the other we can either keep speaking in the latter one or we can switch back to the language the conversation started with. And I feel like, again, this depends on what we want to say next.

Brain farts aside, would the meaning change and make it sound worse if I were to keep using this language instead of the other?

  • no > keep using the latter language
  • yes > switch back

Different story for thought process. I’m not an expert obviously, so I won’t really talk about it, but I just wanted to point out something that happens to me ALL THE TIME and it’s a pain and please someone tell me I’m not the only one.

One day I merrily open YouTube to watch a video, or I merrily open Google search to read an article. Could be anything that I read/watch. Days or weeks after that experience, I decide that I want to find it again to review it. Perhaps I misunderstood or missed some important point. I can’t remember the title or the author of the thing I consumed, and going through the search history is out of the question because in the meantime I’ve visited countless other websites. So what I do is to relieve the experience in my brain to get some key words to help me in the search. The problem is that the more I think about it the less I’m certain of what language I even watched/read it in. Yes, even if I listened to a voice. My mind automatically translates it from the original language to another, with either language.

So, imagine I watched a video in Italian. Weeks later my brain will replay it, but the voice speaks English.

So frustrating!

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Haha yeah, Ive actually experienced this now that I think about it :joy:

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I might be guilty of doing this myself, but I won’t confirm :joy:

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I might be too :shushing_face:
But I’m not going to confirm

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I find it only hard to “switch back” when I’m speaking to someone in one language and someone calls me in another.

For instance, if I’m having a conversation in Creole (Haitian) and someone who speaks English calls me. I have had a few times where I automatically replied “wi” (it’s pronounced just like the french “oui”) then say “I mean yes”

I was actually talking to someone today about a conversation I was having with a woman in Spanish and while I was telling him the story I meant to say veinticinco (25 in Spanish), but said venn senk (25 in Creole). I quickly fixed my mistake. Now that I think about it, it might have been because I was having a conversation with my sister in Creole not even 10 minutes before that conversation.

(I am not fluent in Spanish and I understand a lot more than what I speak. It’s one of those speak to me in Spanish and I’ll probably reply to you in English, but it will be the correct response, just in the wrong language which doesn’t help if the other person only speaks Spanish)