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I think a good analogy is imported cheese. It's still Italian cheese even if you grew up with mozzarella as an American and consider pizza an American food. So

I think a good analogy is imported cheese. It's still Italian cheese even if you grew up with mozzarella as an American and consider pizza an American food. So while these words might be completely familiar to an English speaker you are still using a foreign word and are speaking and understand a very tiny bit of a foreign language. I know a tiny bit of German thanks to kindergarten. A word my Austrian friend spoke in a German sentence this morning while speaking with his son. My very tiny set of German vocabulary along with the context made it easy enough to figure out where they are headed today.

asveikau 3y ago
I feel like German shouldn't count. The relatedness of these two languages is such that there are so many cognates and similar grammar, you could probably understand a lot of German sentences just by listening closely and being curious. But kindergarten is imported the whole world over. You can't say you know German based on that. Code-switchers understand the grammar of both languages, not just a few words. I do think the Normans entering England, or Germanic peoples mixing with Celts, or Celts being conquered by Romans for a brief time -- all of that probably produced code switchers in their moment in time, with lasting impact to our vocabular and grammar. But it's not code switching anymore. It's modern English now. Similar things happened in Spain with Celts, Romans, Arabs, Goths, Basques... Not to mention all the regional Romance languages that survive today (Galician, Catalan). They conquered the Americas and got some infusion of that vocabulary too. Castilian borrows vocabulary from all of these. But monolingual Castilian speakers do not "code switch".
- tchaffee 3y ago
  I hear German often enough and understand almost nothing. You also know a little bit of Indian language you yogurt guru. You don't have to be aware you're using words from other languages to be speaking words from other languages. Adiós amigo.

asveikau 3y ago

I feel like German shouldn't count. The relatedness of these two languages is such that there are so many cognates and similar grammar, you could probably understand a lot of German sentences just by listening closely and being curious. But kindergarten is imported the whole world over. You can't say you know German based on that. Code-switchers understand the grammar of both languages, not just a few words. I do think the Normans entering England, or Germanic peoples mixing with Celts, or Celts being conquered by Romans for a brief time -- all of that probably produced code switchers in their moment in time, with lasting impact to our vocabular and grammar. But it's not code switching anymore. It's modern English now. Similar things happened in Spain with Celts, Romans, Arabs, Goths, Basques... Not to mention all the regional Romance languages that survive today (Galician, Catalan). They conquered the Americas and got some infusion of that vocabulary too. Castilian borrows vocabulary from all of these. But monolingual Castilian speakers do not "code switch".

tchaffee 3y ago
I hear German often enough and understand almost nothing. You also know a little bit of Indian language you yogurt guru. You don't have to be aware you're using words from other languages to be speaking words from other languages. Adiós amigo.