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A little jealous of Arabic speakers for that, ngl (lemmy.world)
submitted 1 year ago by [M] to c/historymemes@lemmy.world
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[–] 23 points 1 year ago* (1 child)

This is how bilinguals of any languages speak so it's not surprising. I read some study a while ago that said that if you have more than one native language it kind of works in your brain as if you have just one language, but it has all the stuff in it from both languages, which is why it's so easy to switch. I'm sure you know that some things are easier to express nicely in some languages, or don't translate easily, so it's quite useful to do this.

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  • [+] 11 points 1 year ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (2 children)
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  • [–] 7 points 1 year ago* (2 children)

    I think bilingual in the linguistic sense is more if you grow up using both languages a lot in early childhood, and especially if you use both in the home, and not so much about the final fluency. I do this kind of rapid switching between Dutch and English because I grew up speaking Dutch at home in an English speaking country. But I wouldn't say my Dutch is really perfect, I am missing quite a lot of vocabulary after decades in an English country and I don't know a lot of formal/polite speech. But I can easily relate to how they are mixing the languages, it is quite natural. I also find it disorienting to switch to languages I learnt later in life, even one I learnt to a very high level, and I don't often mix at all with that one.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago

    I have this exact situation, but with Russian. Both my parents are Russian, I was born and am living in Germany LOL

    So I kinda see myself as a German Russian (not Russian German mind you :p)

    My parents (mostly my father) did sent me to Russian Saturday school from ages 6 to ~14 (?) after which I had the privilige of a Russian literature tutor together with my sibling for a few years (yes we did cover Pushkin, Pushkin, Pushkin and Pushkin.). Great teacher, I didn't appreciate the opportunity enough back then.

    I feel like I'm lacking quite a bit vocabulary, but think I have the basis that once I do convince my brain that reading Cyrillic is fun, even if it takes me a bit longer, I will be able to slowly work myself up to the classics of like Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy political theory and the whole wealth of Soviet literature...

    It often makes me quite a bit sad to be conscious of how underdeveloped my Russian is :/

    Also school friend of mine grew up trilingually (Russian German mother from Kazakhstan, Canadian father; obviously grew up and lives in Germany) BTW LOL.
    We spoke exactly the same languages (German, Russian ans English) and RLY enjoyed mixing them during our breaks.
    And yes, we did spent a lot of lunch breaks playing Durak XD.

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