(Gift article link, doesn’t require a subscription to view without paywall.)
This article, from a few weeks ago, describes the linguistic phenomenon where a highly bilingual community starts incorporating direct translations of phrases from Spanish, to where those non-standard phrases get adopted by English speakers who don’t even speak Spanish themselves.
I thought it was interesting, because I’ve seen this very same phenomenon play out in Chinese American communities, where certain Chinese idioms or phrases (especially of prepositions) tend to show little remnants in the English translation of that idea.
Have you seen this in your bilingual community? What are your favorite examples?
I find it interesting how much of a difference things like “not going” versus “no” can create just under the surface. Like we can’t really address them in-situ directly, but they do have an impact in many situations.
Just to pick on this example in hyperbolic magnified context, “not going” is like argumentative banter IMO, whereas a simple “no” is concise and respectful.
I grew up in the southeastern USA, where racism and stupidity are common. The tendency is for isolated communities and ostracism. Personally, I try my best to be aware of this so that I can avoid acting this way as much as possible.
Nearly twenty years ago I had a business relationship with a Taiwanese man. We got along fine, we even had a lot of peripheral interests in common, but the subtle cultural differences made him difficult for me to do business with. So much of business and negotiating is about reading people and subtle context. A lot of that gets lost between the language cracks with stuff like “not going” has more contextual impact.
I’ve lived in Southern California for many years now. Here Spanglish is common. Nothing stands out IMO as something worth mentioning. I’m sure there are instances. I just don’t pay much attention to it. I do notice how living in an openly mix culture makes a gigantic difference in how people tend to lean into prejudice. I haven’t been to many other cultural regions, but intuitively, I imagine this is universal; where any regional culture that tends to isolate will also display prejudice amongst the least intelligent members of the group.
I wonder if these compatibility divisions are really something deeper and related to evolutionary forces at play. Like if all complex life displays this same type of social isolationism at various levels that ultimately drives speciation. I don’t mean that in any kind of justification for isolationism or prejudice. It is just an observation of the forces that divide and maintain the division, like a social component in addition to geopolitical factors and time.