Student Blogs/Alex in Spain
Before arriving, I thought that a very small city in a typically conservative, separatist region would only speak its official language, Spanish. Since then, I've quickly learned that I was in fact, very wrong. There is not a defined set of rules for when you should use a language, or even for understanding which languages will be present. Rather, it's a guessing game based on your knowledge of each language, the knowledge of the person with whom you're communicating with, and the context in which you are communicating (time, place, number of speakers, etc).
I've played the guessing game for enough weeks now that I've noticed some patterns in the puzzle:
Do you see why I still don't actually know when to speak what? While these case scenarios are the most common ones, sometimes I order at a cafe in Spanish and they answer me in Spanish. They'll also catch me off guard and speak such clear English that I would have thought they were a native speaker. I've been thinking about why sometimes I get a different response than other times in such situations. I had a discussion with my friend who is doing her exchange in Germany on what might be having an effect on the type of conversations that we have in our everyday lives abroad.
Here are some of our thoughts - we're keen to hear yours too:
Anyone who has lived abroad, or studied another language and traveled to a region in which that language is spoken, will understand me when I say how difficult this guessing game is. Now, as much fun as it is to not know what language to speak between a native English speaker and a native Spanish speaker (both with a reasonable understanding of the other language), let's imagine these other popular case scenarios that I see every day:
Just like before, there's no rules. It's not a math problem with some logical algorithm to make it all make sense. It's still our ever so famous guessing game - with some patterns.
More often than not, we aim to speak the language that most of us have in common. When there's two languages that the group knows, we bounce back and force with both to teach each other new words and give us a chance to practice our second languages. In cases that there is many languages, it all depends on who you are speaking to - a German speaks to a German in German, unless it's something he wants to share with the group and then will choose to speak it in English instead. In a class with multiple languages, we usually sit with our friends who we share a language with, allowing us to chat with them and rely on each other's help to understand the second and third languages in the room.
Rarely is a conversation ever in one language, and to be quite honest, I really like it like that!
Alexandria Hewko is a third-year Bachelor of International Business student who is studying abroad in Spain.