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Forums » RP Discussion » ATTENTION BILINGUALS. I got questions...

Writing related questions, fam. (:

I got Lilith who is Russian. I want to write her as realistically as possible. Have you read any unrealistic portrayals of dialogue with bilingual characters? I want some examples on what to avoid at all costs and what commonly occurs in reality. Personally, I stay far away from the major ones. “Switching” from English to Russian spontaneously in the middle of a sentence and any stereotypical phrases. If I need a dialogue spoken completely in Russian I will use Google Translate. Only for short sentences though because huge paragraphs translate into the realm of what even is this.
Leela

Hi! I speak 3 languages here! But I was raised bilingual. Anyways, you will always be stronger at one language than the other. Even if you speak both of them like perfectly, you will always prefer one over the other. The one you prefer is the one you instantly think in/revert to when possible. I do switch in between sentences, or I will combine words from my second language into English. So many times I will use my second language term over the English term because an English term doesn’t exist/it’s more descriptive/I don’t actually know the English term/my mom used it when I was a kid. You don’t always have to write out their dialogue, you could just say something like “they muttered quietly in German, in deep displeasure.” Frankly, I tend to stick with what language is easier to understand for the person I’m speaking with, even if they speak the same language(s) as me. It’s simply more convenient and most bilinguals do that.

If you have any more questions or whatever, please, ask away!
Rigormortiful Topic Starter

Thank you so much for replying!

Lilith would definitely write in Russian only because she’s always in a hurry and writing in English would take more time. Also, sometimes she struggles with knowing how to read the word in English but doesn’t have a clue on how to pronounce it. So in those cases she will replace the English word with the Russian equivalent. Her Russian as well as her accent is a lot more noticeable when she is tired or drunk as well.

Tell me if any of these are wrong for you. XD
Leela

Since I speak English as my first, when using my second, I will prefer it less when I’m tired/in a rush. It takes me 5 minutes to text in my second language, rather inconvenient if you ask me.
Rigormortiful Topic Starter

Russian was Lilith’s first so I figured that made sense. She started to learn English when she was in her teens and she’s in her thirties now.
Leela

She would be pretty proficient then, so her texting skills would be would be much better than mine in English compared to my own language. She should be able to speak English fluently, but with an accent. The thickness varies based on each person tbh. Some have a thick one, even when they learn early, some, not so much. My dad studied linguistics for years, and he taught me a lot of this stuff. :3
While I am not multilingual myself, it's probably good to be familiar with a language to know how it affects the brain and thinking patterns, because languages totally really do that. How things get phrased, what there are and are not words for, etc, can all affect how the world is perceived. It's not just the culture, it's the very tool you have to organize thoughts.

But different people do still think differently. I think that usually, a person will favor/think in whatever language was their first or they have been most buried in for an extended time. It can get more fluid though, or just plain weirder. For example, I recall asking a teacher who was a native Spanish speaker, but who grew up speaking English from an early age too, which language he thought in - and he told me it depended on circumstances, that at the school he thought in and defaulted to English, but when visiting family who stuck more to Spanish, he would think in and default to Spanish. The strangest was a friend of mine (native Spanish speaker, but self-taught fully fluent English speaker via English TV with Spanish subtitles) who, if I understood correctly, always translates to the other language. In a Spanish situation, he thinks in English and translates into Spanish to speak. In an English situation, he thinks in Spanish and translates into English.
i’m not sure if this is exactly what you’re looking for, but i thought i would weigh in and give my two cents!

i’m not a native english speaker but i started learning it in third grade. most of the media i consume now is in english so if i chat with a friend in english, a lot of the time my thoughts are in english. when i speak to a friend irl my thoughts are in my native language. it’s very common for me to suddenly forget a certain word (in either language) as i’m speaking with somebody, but i’ll know the word in the other language - i really hope that makes sense. either way, it happens that i confuse words; like if i’ve read a news article in english and i’m talking about it in my native language, i’ll either have to translate it as i read aloud or look up certain, very common english words because sometimes a word has multiple meanings (this is also something you could take into account!) and i don’t want to suddenly make up a weird word in my native language. ^^
Technically speaking my native language is Russian, however I grew up in Norway and most of the media I've consumes since I was about 11 has been in English, so ironically it's my third language I'm perhaps most comfortable with. Then I also know some german, from having had it as a subject for four years, but frankly I use it so rarely it hasn't really stuck around very well.

But yeah as has been mentioned, in your mind you kinda hop around from language to language depending on the context you find yourself in. I even remember thinking in broken German when I was learning it and had to use it in conversation, which obviously made my speech flow a lot better than most of my classmates. The moment you start translating your thoughts you will be struggling with catching the nuances of what you mean and sentence structure. Like, some times the words that exist in one language just don't in another, and it's often those typa words that I find myself mixing into other languages the most. Example, I just can't think of a word that's the direct translation of "cozy" in Russian. Like there are a lot of words which are kinda close, but just not quite there, and so I use the norwegian equivalent whenever I speak to my family in Russian. And now that I think of it, this kinda happens in my head too, not just when I speak.

The main things I think reveal me to be a multilingual speaker are however vocabulary and sentence structure/grammar. The latter doesn't happen often, and I just about always tend to catch it and correct myself afterwards, however some times its as if my brain just glitches and I say something in a very "older immigrant" type way, like my mother or father might. I've noticed this happen to a lot of other multilingual people too. They'll speak perfectly fluently 99% of the time, but some times it just happens. As for the vocabulary, I've just noticed my norwegian and russian aren't as rich as people who are fully engrossed in those cultures. I'll know just about all I need to get by day to day and then some, but things like the names of plants, kitchen appliances etc. are often reduced to "that thing" + some adjectives and/or pointing. And things like regional slang are just...an entire beast of their own. Like, I've recently moved to study at an uni about seven hours away from where my family lives and while I'm not the kind that easily picks up on the more subtle linguistic changes (on a conscious level at least), I often notice people using words and slang that I've never heard.

And something I kinda came to think of too is pronunciation. Even if you pronounce a word right phonetically it's really easy to misplace the point of pressure, if that makes any sense. To me it mostly happens with my Russian words, but an example I can think of that's easy to understand is Norwegians got this thing where everyone knows exactly one russian word and it is "Baboshka" (Grandma, don't ask me why). Instead of having a subtle emphasis on the a's however they'll always REALLY put emphasis on the B's and Shk- sound.

Aaaand not sure if my rambling helped, but here were my two cents on the matter.
This is such an interesting thread. I'm not bilingual, but I've heard Spainish spoken around me all my life as I grew up in South Texas, and I notice a lot of Spanish-speaking Texans change languages in the middle of a sentence and it's normal for them. Maybe it depends on what most of the people in the area she's in would be speaking.
I’m multilingual myself, Polish is my mother tongue, then English and then Irish Gaelic, I say it depends on the situation...my father is one of the VERY few who speaks Gaelic in everyday life and my mother speaks the same things I do, but at home we all use polish, but when I’m out in public I definitely use English because as a student in a foreign country that only speaks English mass majority (yes I’m aware there’s 100’s spoken in the US) I should to be able to communicate with the residents here
Sanne Moderator

Quote:
Have you read any unrealistic portrayals of dialogue with bilingual characters? (...) Personally, I stay far away from the major ones. “Switching” from English to Russian spontaneously in the middle of a sentence and any stereotypical phrases.

I'm a native Limburgish/Dutch/German speaker with English being my 4th language, and my roommate is a native English speaker who speaks German and Dutch. It actually does happen a lot that we switch in the middle of a sentence, but that's mostly because we tend to forget a word in the one language that we're trying to speak in but know it in all the others, which is a super common problem in people who speak more than one language. So instead of fumbling around looking for the word, we sub it with one from another language because we're fluent in them all and it helps us communicate better.

When this happens in RP, it can be bothersome because it's often forced and rarely organic. Same with common phrases, Dutch people can have a very specific way of using phrases that don't translate well but we use them organically in conversation because we're communicating and it's relevant and helps get the point across better.

I think the mistakes people make when writing or using a different language in RP is that they force too much of it and revolve too much of a character's identity around their language and nationality. It does matter significantly, but most of my time talking to people isn't spent worrying about language or social barriers related to language. I also don't randomly ramble in any different languages at anyone just because I can. My goal when using language is to communicate my point, not to show off my native language, and if your roleplay reflects that, you're always good to go.
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If I need a dialogue spoken completely in Russian I will use Google Translate. Only for short sentences though because huge paragraphs translate into the realm of what even is this.

This is purely my personal opinion and input, so please don't see this as an official ruling or anything like that. I respect the effort and intentions behind doing this, yet personally it bothers me when people use Google translate to force the language into a roleplay when they're nowhere near fluent in it. The reason is that it doesn't add anything to the RP for anyone involved since you need Google translate for it to have any value, it's 99% likely to be wrong because translate doesn't take grammar and context into consideration, and it can feel really disrespectful even when it's done with the utmost respect.

I see people use a lot of German this way, and it makes me cringe and ruins the roleplay for me if I happen to be involved. I also see people use a different language as page names to make the profile menu look interesting, but half the time the words are incorrect or used wrong and it's just confusing and off-putting. If my character is speaking in a different language and I can't guarantee it's at least close to being faithful to my intentions, I either paraphrase it as 'Character said something in language', or I write out what they're saying in English and mark it up in a way that indicates it's not English (such as full italics, color coded or whatever else works). If my partner doesn't need to know what's being said and the point is for the other character to not understand the language, then there's no reason to add a translation in the first place.

Everyone is of course free to use languages in roleplay as they see fit, and my opinion is just mine, but I think there are lots of ways to incorporate language into roleplays where it is part of the character but it doesn't become about the language/heritage. It doesn't have to include poor translations that don't serve a real purpose. I like to think that most people who like to roleplay are creative and skilled enough to do this, and it makes for more fun roleplays in my personal experiences. :)

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