On Being Bilingual

I don't read a lot of books with bilingual characters, but when I do, it seems like they were written by authors who are not bilingual. They randomly say French words instead of English ones or just start speaking in Portuguese for no reason whatsoever. I know there are a lot of people out there who will tell you what it's actually like to be bilingual, but I thought I would add my own thoughts. I've spoken both Spanish and English my whole life, and my mom is a linguist, so I understand a little about how your brain works while speaking in one language or the other. Since I understand a little of how it works, I thought it might be helpful to explain the actual science behind it for anyone who has or wants to have a bilingual character but doesn't feel confident enough - plus a few thoughts on the way my brain works in both languages.

Essentially, your brain is full of concepts. If you see a big round sphere thing, your brain takes that concept and looks in the words you know for the same concept. It finds a sphere thing and says, "Oh, this is the same concept." Then it retrieves the word that is tied to that concept, and you know the round sphere thing you're looking at is a ball. If you see the concept of a cup, your brain finds the concept of a cup and reels in the word associated with it: cup. All this happens in a millisecond.

Now, when you start learning a new language, you aren't tying the word for "cup" to the concept of a cup. You're tying the new word for "cup" to the English word "cup." This is why it takes a little more thought to translate: instead of going from concept to word, your brain is jumping from the concept to the English word to the new word.

The better and better you get at a new language, the closer you get to tying that new word to the original concept, which is the pinnacle of being bilingual. You see a cup and you don't think the English word, you automatically interpret that concept in another language. This is how my brain works, because I am bilingual from the beginning. I never "learned" Spanish in the same way that I never "learned" English. That's called "language acquisition," and it means I just soaked it up along with all the other stuff my baby brain was learning.

Now that you know a little of the basic science of being very bilingual, here are some pointers for writing bilingual characters, from a bilingual person! (Quick disclaimer: my Spanish is usually pretty rusty. I don't speak a lot, I mostly just listen and understand. But I am still pretty fluent, and if I have no choice and a minute to adjust, I can carry a conversation. These things may not look the same for every bilingual person, these are just from my personal experience.)

1. It is, actually, hard to switch back and forth. But this does not mean I just randomly start talking in Spanish! This is what “hard to switch back” looks like (for me at least):

   1. If I am not “listening in Spanish” and you say something to me in Spanish rapidly and when I’m not paying full attention to you, I might just hear gibberish. I can tell the gibberish is Spanish, and if you repeat what you said while I'm paying attention and prepared to hear Spanish words, I can understand what you say perfectly.

   2. It’s not my speech that gets peppered with Spanish or English when I switch to one or the other, it’s my thoughts. Sometimes my thoughts will be laced with Spanish words, phrases, or idioms for hours after I have a Spanish conversation. Not always, but sometimes.

2. Grammar is a fluid concept between languages. Spanish has very different grammar than English does. Sometimes, very randomly and for no reason whatsoever, I will say something like, “I don’t find it,” which is actually Spanish grammar on English words. This has nothing to do with it being “hard to switch back,” it’s just my brain coming up with the wrong set of rules.

3. Most idioms are language-specific, and this is actually a problem. Every once in a while, I will say something and ask, “is that a thing you say in English?” I’m not from anywhere else. English is my first language. But Spanish is so ingrained in me that I sometimes can’t remember if an idiom is English or Spanish. For example, the Spanish equivalent of “it’s raining cats and dogs” directly translates to “it’s raining pitchers-full.” Saying one idiom in the other language wouldn’t make much sense (depending on the idiom).

4. Sometimes, I will not remember a word in one language out of the blue. I will be having an English conversation, not having spoken in Spanish for weeks, and suddenly not be able to come up with the word I want to say in English, only in Spanish. This also has nothing to do with “switching back,” it’s my brain recalling a concept and following to wrong path to the word. I don’t say the word, because I know it’s the wrong language, but it takes me a minute to recall the English one. It's like if you try to say a word but can't come up with it; I can't come up with the English word, but for some reason my brain has the Spanish one up and ready.

5. There are word-concepts that only exist in one language or the other. Spanish, for example, has a word for the very early morning, before dawn. English has no word for this, so I am sometimes bothered by the limitation of not using a perfectly good word I know. On the other hand, Spanish has no word for evening, so anytime a Spanish speaker wants to say “dinner this evening” or something similar, they have to say “dinner this night.” This is just annoying sometimes to multilingual people, and I'll often explain the problem so you understand the word I wish I could use.

6. False cognates get us all. A cognate is a word that is almost the same in one language as it is in another, like "important" and "importante." A false cognate is when a word in one language looks very similar to a word in another language, but they don't mean the same thing at all. The worst example of this is "embarrassed" in English and "embarazada" in Spanish. If I tell someone that I am "embarazada," I am not saying that I am embarrassed. "Embarazada" does not mean embarrassed. It means pregnant. It is mortifying to mix them up. Watch your false cognates, people.

That's all I can think of for big points about being bilingual! If you have a question or want to know more, feel free to use the contact form below to reach out to me, and I'll get back to you ASAP! In the meantime, write on!