i know of some bi/multilingual families in the us who’d talk to each other in their native tongue when they didn’t want the kids to know what they were saying.

i speak my dad’s native spanish as well as dad’s learned portuguese, but i don’t speak the polish or norwegian from the other side of mom’s family. (she’s also latina but doesn’t natively speak spanish)

however, i’m learning the two i don’t know, and practicing polish (the language my mom does know) with her

  • RoquetteQueen@sh.itjust.works
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    14 days ago

    My family is Portuguese and they did the whole “speak Portuguese when we don’t want the kids to know what we’re saying” thing, which didn’t work because kids learn languages really easily. Nobody taught me so I can’t speak it very well but I can translate into English, as long as whoever is speaking has the same accent as my family…

      • orbituary@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        13 days ago

        Apprendi español primero. Depois aprendi português com meu irmão adotivo. Japanese is my worst, English is my best because I use it the most.

  • Björn Tantau@swg-empire.de
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    14 days ago

    Sadly my mother stopped speaking Norwegian with us when we started having friends over. It felt too weird and impolite to her. And with time she stopped entirely. Nowadays I only know a handful of Norwegian words.

  • Darren@sopuli.xyz
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    14 days ago

    I went to a Sikh wedding once, and spent the day hanging about with a bunch of the guests, all of whom were British or Indian. I spent the whole time amazed that they’d seamlessly switch between English and Hindi, apparently without noticing.

    • rico (she/him)@feddit.clOP
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      13 days ago

      code switching is awesome. sometimes i’ll hear bilingual hispanic people being like “oh, by the way, ya has visto squid game (have you seen squid game yet)? it’s so good”

  • Appoxo@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    13 days ago

    In the past I refused to learn it.
    And my parent didnt really have anything bilingual to speak with besides grandparents which werent around 24/7 to speak to and local language was just fine.