It gets worse when you know more than two languages, even moreso when they overlap. I've had numerous times when my brain freezes and goes "Was that the word for it in Italian... or Spanish...? Which one is it?" check "They're the same! FUCK!"
English words are so common in Hindi nowadays that it is a very frequent occurrence....I for the life of me cannot remember what they call a table in Hindi, fuck.
I speak a fair amount of Spanish, enough so that when I hear Espanglish I just take it in stride. Was driving some Indian students around last week and chuckled to myself every time I heard a bit of Hinglish!
I'd never really eaten aubergine, maybe like twice in my life, until I lived in Spain for just 3 months and my housemates would always bring home berenjenas all the time. Even now, I can read the word 'aubergine' on a menu and in my heads little internal voice I hear the word 'berenjena'. It's just makes more sense to me, cos even though it wasn't a very long time that I was there, I probably ate/encountered 5000% more berenjenas/aubergines than I'd ever eaten in my entire life lol
Anyway, that was a super boring little tidbit of my brain,
Most of the native Hindi speakers I knew mostly spoke Hinglish anyway. 😂 My old landlady was from Goa and she'd just switch from Hindi to English mid sentence when talking with other Indians
My best friend would do this when we were in middle school. She would switch to her native language, and I would lose the plot. What's funny is that it would take me a couple of seconds to figure it out. Like what? What are you saying?
It's the worst experience when you're remembering a word in two languages out of three but not in the correct one and the other person doesn't speak the other two languages.
Then you look like an idiot because your brain is conceptualising your thoughts in the wrong bloody language.
It gets worse when you realize that the sentence you wanted to say doesn't really fit in your language. For example, if someone does something for you, you'd say that you appreciate it. In German, that sentence would sound sorta stiff. Happens all the time
Tbf even when speaking in Hindi, most people say table instead of whatever the fuck the word even is in Hindi. I can't even recall because no one uses it.
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u/-P-M-A- Sep 02 '24
This is a classic “sorry my English is bad” post. You are more articulate than most native English speakers.