Code-Switching and mixing languages in regards to Japanese - how common is it? Tell me 'bout your experiences

Japanese
#1

Hey there everyone,

today I would like to hear about your experiences in regard to the s.c. “Code Switching” and Japanese. It basically means to switch and mix languages in the same conversation, topic or even sentence.

This phenomena happens quite a lot to me recently and I think that is interesting to say the least. Today was the first time I noticed it consciously. I then later came to realise I do it in my own native language aswell, using English here and there, sometimes even switching mid-sentece aswell (also depends on the situation and with whom I speak, but thats another story).

Okay, lets talk about the Japanese situation now. For example, today I met with a friend who is a japanese native speaker and about A2-B1 in my native language. During the day, I without thinking about it at all, said things like “Mein お腹 ist いっぱい” (= “My お腹 is いっぱい”) oder “Schon okay, das ist auch 勉強” (=“Its okay, thats 勉強 aswell”). Probably I did it a lot more, but failed to realise. My buddy did it aswell, though. It just kinda flew in the communication.

Sometimes we spoke only japanese for a few minutes, sometimes only german. Switching during the same sentence, the exact phenomena I just described, happened quite a lot aswell, though. How common is this? What are your experiences? Will this decrease once ones own expertise of the language becomes better? Or will it become even more?

The funniest thing what my japanese friend then said today was “銭湯は美味しい”. Took him a few seconds to realise what he just said there. Probably thats the influence of my broken japanese. Actual story here, when I speak this language for like half an hour and then switch, I sometimes fumble in regards to the pronounciation or grammar of my own native language. Meaning, for a sentence or two, I have an accent without noticing. Feels racist, but is not done on intent, just happens, like everything I just described here. How common is this? Any of you have made similar experiences?

Bottom line, learning languages is hard, but at the same time fun and then just from time to time incredibly bizarre. We both had a lot of laughs at least.

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#2

I haven’t experienced this in my native language (English), but I do struggle when trying to speak 2nd or 3rd languages. My second language was Spanish, and after several years, I then totally immersed in French. Especially since they’re so similar, I was mixing them up a lot. Obviously when speaking French since that was newer, but also when I tried to speak Spanish. That eventually sorted itself out, especially when I stopped learning French. Now, the same thing happens with Japanese and Spanish, though to a much lesser extent. It’s mostly the prepositions and other words in between that I don’t really think about when I speak.

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#3

I speak hella Japanglish without even meaning to, it’s really normal.

I live in Japan, but one time when I went home I visited a Chinese restaurant. When my food came I wasn’t really thinking, so I automatically said “arigatou gozaimasu”…

dude.
The poor waiter must have thought i was SO racist.

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#4

Code switching is extremely common and kinda funny IMO. I also live in Japan and spent this last silver weekend in Tokyo, being an obvious foreigner a bunch of people would greet me in English. Where we do the basics in English, but then out of habit I would ask if I could do something in Japanese, where then they realize I can speak, and then it would be a quick forth n back in Japanese and then finally ending in English again.

I also go to a local bar where the owner speaks English but since I live in the rural no one else who visits does. So I find myself switching between English when talking to the owner and having to use Japanese to speak with everyone else. So then sometimes the topic is to advanced for my listening(and they are old and speak with slang) so the owner has to translate to me. So now Im being translated to and then responding in Japanese lmao.

But Ive seen with my Spanish speaking friends too. They will jump around multiple languages all at once.

I did that as well. Visited home after two weeks and the first couple nights before I had adjusted I was just in autopilot.

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#5

Yeah I’d say this kind of jumping between languages is super common in my experience, I live in Japan too and I’m on the JET programme so there are quite a few Japanese people I interact with regularly who are also proficient in English. My conversations with the other English teachers at my school and my Japanese friends usually end up being pretty much 50/50 between English and Japanese and often we will end up swapping randomly in the middle of a sentence.
I think it’s a really fun way of having conversations and I think it’s kind of a natural impulse when you have a conversation between two people who each know the other can speak their language. You’re constantly thinking about what you can say/ what the other person is likely to understand and switching accordingly.
I also get a weird version of this at my school sometimes, I try not to speak Japanese with my students unless they’re completely lost so we will often have conversations where a student says something to me in Japanese, then I respond in English, and we just continue the conversation like that for some reason. It must sound really weird to an outside listener but it feels quite natural in the moment

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#6

This is something really fun I do with my students and which if memory serves right is known as “cross-talk”. Basically if someone can fundamentally understand but cant speak it. I try it to lower that initial barrier of just talking to me. Then slowly encourage the use of English overtime. Its never perfect but in the end, being able to understand is often more important since many just study for HS exams and the speaking aspect is minimal.

But yea, I do think its kinda funny from an outside perspective.

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#7

My partner and I live with his Japanese mother, and our house is filled with Janglish. I try my best to speak all nihongo but when I don’t know a word I just throw in the english, and my mother-in-law mostly understands. I think we understand 85% of what each other says. My mother-in-law and I were looking at JLPT grammer question videos for fun last night and then she switched up on me and was talking in 100% sonkeigo for a little while, telling me we can practice at home, it really gave a shock

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#8

I also sometimes have a Japanese accent for a few words when I switch to English, my partner teases me a lot for it, it’s pretty funny

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#9

My experiences:

  1. Sometimes an English word comes to mind instead of a German one because it best fits the meaning. You can’t translate every word one-to-one. If I didn’t know the English word, I’d naturally have a German word that also fits well. But if there’s an English word that fits the situation even better, then it just so happens that the English word comes to mind immediately instead of a German one.

  2. Since I’ve been studying Japanese more intensively, I sometimes feel the urge to use Japanese vocabulary. Especially “hello” and “excuse me.” Just like that.

  3. I’m learning Japanese and brushing up on my French at the same time. Although I feel like I know more Japanese vocabulary right now than French (when speaking; when reading, it’s the other way around), I’m more familiar with the French language. When I study both languages in a single day, I often find that a French translation immediately comes to mind while I’m learning Japanese. It’s never the other way around. My conclusion: I shouldn’t learn multiple languages in a single day.

  4. I seem to recall that when I was in school, I noticed that siblings who grew up bilingual would mix languages when talking to each other, even though they could clearly distinguish between the two languages and speak both well enough.

I think several factors come into play here: How well do you know a language? Are there words with meanings that don’t exist in the other language? How much input have you had from each language in the last few minutes or hours? And what about the person you’re talking to?
By the way, that also reminds me of the “chameleon effect”.

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#10

German is my second foreign language, but I’ve been living in Germany since 18 years now and speak German at home and at work. In my experience, the better you get at your target language(s), the better your brain gets at separating them from your native language and from each other. The more vocabulary you know, the better you get at finding the “right words”, without needing to switch to your native language or to another language in order to say what you want to say.

Having said that, I think that such unconscious “slips” are normal in casual conversations, when speaking a foreign language with a native speaker, who also speaks your native language. I guess, the brain just gets confused or something, but as long as both conversation partners understand each other, it’s totally fine, right?
I used to have a Russian-speaking colleague and we sometimes spoke a shockingly wild mix of German and Russian with each other, but had zero problems switching to 100% German, when someone who didn’t speak Russian joined the talk.

With Japanese, I’ve noticed another “problem”. It has nothing to do with code-switching, but please hear me out!
As I said, German is my second foreign language and even though I’m a proficient German speaker, German numbers are still giving me a massive headache to this day (even after more than 20 years of learning and speaking the language).
Every time I want to say, e.g. “38”, I have to consciously remind myself that the “8” comes before the “30” xD Achtunddreißig and not dreißigacht.

Now, Japanese numbers (all the way up to 10.000, but that’s a different story) work the same way as in English and in Russian. Easy-peasy.
But! I’ve noticed that I just can’t get it right. It happens to me all the time — just the day before yesterday I said 八十三 instead of 三十八 to my Japanese tutor.
It’s incredibly frustrating and I don’t know how to get rid of it!

I think it’s some brain bug, basically saying: “Ah, you’re speaking a foreign language, don’t forget that numbers work differently here!” And I’m like: “Yeah, got it! … Ehh, wait a second…” But then it’s already too late :rofl:

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#11

Thanks for all those experiences! Nice to know that its incredibly common, I could relate to quite a few messages here. Honestly, I am just gonna say this now, this forum is great. Everyone treats everyone with a lot of respect as far as I saw and it feels like we are all in one boat more or less (unlike on reddit or something…). Thank you, everyone.

Some of you living in Japan made me feel a bit jealous, I can’t help it. Gotta do that again too in the future…

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#12

My sister/BFF and me are both fluent in both Dutch and English and speak a mix of both languages all the time. It just happens without thinking, completely naturally. Sometimes one language lends itself to certain explanations or situations better than the other. It’s actually quite pleasant when both parties in a conversation speak the same two languages, in my experience.

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#13

I also code switch I guess with my Japanese friends, who are quite good at English. One sentence that comes to mind is “I’m so f***g 苦しい right now.” I almost laughed out loud at that one.

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#14

I do this occasionally. There are certain words I don’t remember in English but the Spanish or Japanese word will pop into my head because I’ve seen/ used it recently.

I also have a habit of replying はい instead of Yes when someone shouts my name trying to get my attention :rofl:

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#15

I noticed that in the grocery store, I mumble things like 「高」and 「へ。。。」to myself when someone who was standing next to me looked rather weird at me. Apparently I am also saying thinks like 「うん」and 「そっか。。。」rather uncounciously when talking to friends…they told me about this habit of mine! lol

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#16

I noticed that in the grocery store, I mumble things like 「高」and 「へ。。。」to myself

I can regularly be heard hitting a よいっしょ when I get up from a seat lol

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#17

Also in my last trip home Ive apparently picked up the ever common 「うん」as people speak or ill go 「ええ。。」

I even pick up my smaller bowls when I eat so my grandmother served me a salad and i just picked it up and started munching lmao. Didnt even consider it

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#18

Yeah, starting to do backchanneling in other languages where usually it’s not a thing is so real

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#19

As a kid, I didn’t like speaking much, I would use うん and ううん all of the time, which isn’t very common in France.

Once in middle school, we had latin classes in the morning, and I was tired. I had to wake up very early to get to school and was often the first kid to arrive.
I was listening to the lecture about Lucrèce, but dozed off.
Teacher asked me if i was listening and i forgot to switch back. Answered うん.
Everyone laughed because they thought I was indeed sleeping.
I never felt so embarassed.

Later when I’ve started to learn JP, I felt less like a weirdo learning about うん xd

December, went to Japan.
Came back in January, flight company had issues due to the weather (?) in Amsterdam.
So, I asked several agents, and we did go home by trains.
But one of them, I had been awake for way too long and instead of saying “don’t worry”, I said “あー大丈夫”.

I’m also a frequent member of the “How do you say that in [native language] again ?” club.

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