Code-switching

[ideealisme.livejournal.com]

Sorry if this is nothing much to do with picowrimobut it is something I've been working with a LOT with my WIP - I'm holed up in an arts centre trying to finish the Eternal Second Draft. Don't know if I'll manage it, but I should hopefully finish before the end of May.

I've recently come across the interesting phenomenon of code-switching, a linguistic phenomenon where the characters converse using more than one language. There is often an unwritten rule in this practice where the duller, more official stuff is discussed in the "official" language e.g. English, while the more personal feelings prompt a switch into some language closer to the heart. I have heard that people do it a lot when they want to make a point to someone else in their "group" who will get the stuff that outsiders won't.



Lucia does it a lot, especially when she meets up with a Jamaican priest and they develop a friendship. (It is not generally known he is Jamaican, he is keeping his background quiet.) When they want to say really personal stuff to each other, they do it in patois, otherwise they converse in English. Father Dominic, the priest, first alerts Lucia to the fact that he is a friendly agent by saying to her:

"You? No sins?" He laughed out loud. "Now girl - Luk pon yuh. Nuh lie to mi."

I nearly fell off my pew.

Henceforth, they regularly switch back and forth, prompting much googling on my behalf trying to figure out how to say various things in their language. (I had made a rule that after leaving Jamaica, Lucia would make my life easy by sticking to the King's English, a rule which she began to break more and more as the narrative progressed.)

Now I'm at a stage where to my surprise, Eva is up to the same thing, this time with the injured POW Badura. But it's a zillion times more complicated, not to mention highly dangerous and dodgy, because not only they are codeswitching (from English to German and back, all the time) they are also at some points talking in code outright. But it's interesting how Eva can feel affronted because poor Badura, out of his head on morphine, could inadvertently address her as Du and then when recovering revert to the politer form. He is trying to show respect, but she wants his trust. So even code switching can't cover those mutual incomprehensions.



I know a lot of people are fan-ficcing fictional worlds, but I'm wondering if code-switching happens there too, between elves and dwarfs and the like? And as for the Man from Uncle crowd, there's rich pickings there, I imagine!

Comments

[ideealisme.livejournal.com]

Yes, it's harder when you don't speak the language or don't have that much command over it. The Lucia and Badura sections have me hitting google with a vengeance for all the phrases I don't know.

That praying in French passage sounds sweet, tho :)