im going to have a stroke
Instead try… Person A: You know… the thing Person B: The “thing”? Person A: Yeah, the thing with the little-! *mutters under their breath* Como es que se llama esa mierda… THE FISHING ROD
As someone with multiple bilingual friends where English is not the first language, may I present to you a list of actual incidents I have witnessed:
Forgot a word in Spanish, while speaking Spanish to me, but remembered it in English. Became weirdly quiet as they seemed to lose their entire sense of identity.
Used a literal translation of a Russian idiomatic expression while speaking English. He actually does this quite regularly, because he somehow genuinely forgets which idioms belong to which language. It usually takes a minute of everyone staring at him in confused silence before he says “….Ah….. that must be a Russian one then….”
Had to count backwards for something. Could not count backwards in English. Counted backwards in French under her breath until she got to the number she needed, and then translated it into English.
Meant to inform her (French) parents that bread in America is baked with a lot of preservatives. Her brain was still halfway in English Mode so she used the word “préservatifes.” Ended up shocking her parents with the knowledge that apparently, bread in America is full of condoms.
Defined a slang term for me……. with another slang term. In the same language. Which I do not speak.
Was talking to both me and his mother in English when his mother had to revert to Russian to ask him a question about a word. He said “I don’t know” and turned to me and asked “Is there an English equivalent for Нумизматический?” and it took him a solid minute to realize there was no way I would be able to answer that. Meanwhile his mom quietly chuckled behind his back.
Said an expression in English but with Spanish grammar, which turned “How stressful!” into “What stressing!”
Bilingual characters are great but if you’re going to use a linguistic blunder, you have to really understand what they actually blunder over. And it’s usually 10x funnier than “Ooops it’s hard to switch back.”
Some experiences from me as someone who speaks 2 languages and a bit 3rd one.
I keep using same words of things in English even when they have two different words, because in Finnish there’s only one word for it. Example: a heater and battery are both in Finnish patteri, so sometimes I speak about batteries when I mean heaters. On the other hand, in English, you call people casually female and male but you can’t do that in Finnish as those words are reserved for animals only and if used of a person, are extremely sexual in nature and thus offensive (unless it’s a joke or a flirt).
It’s been 30+ years and I still mess up with gender pronouns because Finnish has got only 1 gender pronoun covering all genders. Where gendered language speaking people naturally have different (emotional) connotations to he, she and they, for me they still (emotionally) sound like random words with no connection to any genders or people.
In English you say that a year 1560 happened in the 16th century. In Finnish, a year 1560 happened in the 15th century. Took me long to remember this.
I don’t fucking remember particles a, an and the in right order because those don’t exist in Finnish.
Using their native language’s grammar rules for the foreign language. Lovely example is from a person I follow here, who is native in English and speaks Finnish. In English you say “It rains”. In Finnish you just say “Sataa = Rains”. So, she says in Finnish “Se sataa” (it rains) and her partner laughs “What it? What’s outside raining?”
Using their native language quirks. A Japanese man who is pretty much fluent in Finnish uses Japanese filler word mannerism when speaking in Finnish (as Japanese uses “ano”, “etto” ect. between sentences). However, he uses a filler word which isn’t grammatically wrong but which isn’t normally used as a filler word, and in places where Japanese speaker naturally uses a filler word but not a Finnish speaker.
Forgetting the word you know in all 3 languages.
The worst; the other language not having an equivalent for the word/idiom of the other language, or not even having a word for the whole thing. You just have to pick the least worst option out of all options or find a way to explain what needs to be conveyed with words through some other wording/sentence. Example; Finnish has got 18 words for a English word “grunt”.
My manager (In english): You want a cookie?
Me (In spanish): bueno
He looks at me weirdly bc he thought I was saying he was a good person for giving me a cookie but in reality I was just saying "Okay"
This will haunt me in my dreams for years to come
