bilingual family questions part 1

Do you have any examples of miscommunication / communication breakdowns between family / compound members?

There are surprisingly few, though maybe we're used to negotiating understanding. Sometimes a Monkolé speaker will say a word, I'll say I don't understand, and they'll say it again, looking at me as if I'm mad. Eventually they'll explain that it is a French word, just pronounced in a Monkolé way. For example “essence” (petrol) becomes “sãsi”, and a Bic biro is “biki”.

Another thing which is confusing is that in Monkolé if you want to turn an affirmation into a question, instead of raising the intonation at the end as you would in English or French (“He's here?”) you drop it. Which means that, though it now comes more naturally to us, earlier in our language learning we found ourselves confusing people by raising our intonation and making them think we are affirming something when we actually wanted to ask if it were true. (Try asking this kind of question and dropping your voice to see how weird it feels at first!)

When you code-switch (= switch from one language to another), how conscious is it?

Not very conscious, in that I feel I automatically have one language “attached to” each person, so I don't think about it. I suddenly become very conscious of it if I make a mistake and use the wrong language, but that doesn't happen often. I also notice sometimes if I'm addressing several people at once and have to decide which language to use, for example if I'm saying something to the rest of the family. (Usually in that case I would use English, but occasionally French.)

Does confusion between the languages not arise and end up with languages being muddled to a degree?

This morning I was in a three-way conversation with one of my Monkolé colleagues and one of my sons. Each pair in the triangle usually uses a different language. I found myself switching between Monkolé and English depending on who I was speaking to, but then using French when it was for both.

But it never feels like languages are muddled … although perhaps to someone listening in who didn't understand all the languages it might seem that way!

Within our family we do mix languages to some extent, which I would distinguish from “muddling” them, as the latter seems to suggest to me that it is a problem or makes things confusing. There are words we always say in one language or another, but we just slot them in (with their original accent) to whichever language we are speaking. This happens most often with proper nouns, eg. “Did you go to La Franchise ?”, “Tu as fini ton Annual Review?”

Our three small try-linguals: