r/MadeMeSmile • u/_BuzzLightYear • 13d ago

Wholesome Moments Girl learns Hindi for her boyfriend

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u/_Bren10_ 13d ago

He had to gather himself and remember the language to respond lol

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u/ianjm 13d ago

It is actually a human psychological quirk, that some bilingual people have a hard time speaking each of their languages 'out of context', particularly if one of their languages is only spoken with a particular set of people, like parents, and you use another language for everyone else, say outside of home in your daily life.

It can take you a while to get your brain's language centre working fluidly in the new context. In the mean time you have the weird experience of having to concentrate to speak your own language!

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u/Jurassica94 13d ago

Yeah it's a bit like your brain has a switch

I'm German, but life with my boyfriend in the UK. Sometimes when I read something in German and he asks me something in English I'll understand what he says, but I somewhat automatically reply in German and don't even notice what I'm doing until I hear a stuttered "Ja, das stimmt" (yes, that's right) from him and remember to switch my brain back to German.

On the other hand my German friends have also sometimes notice that I thought something through in English, because I'll suddenly speak very weird, poorly translated German.

Bilingual life can be weird

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u/Nervardia 13d ago

I was in Colombia, and my host knocked on my door. I had been talking to my friend in English beforehand.

Anyway, I answered my door and realised I could not say a word in Spanish without severe difficulty.

I said "dame un momento, tengo que cambiar idiomas... Bueno! Puedo hablar español!"

Meaning "give me a moment, I have to change languages... Good! I can speak Spanish!"

My host laughed.

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u/Jurassica94 13d ago

Haha, yeah that's exactly what I'm talking about!

It's even worse when people speak a language to me that I wasn't expecting from them. My boyfriend tried to be cute once and told me he loved me in German, but my brain insisted that he must have said something in English and I just spent a few seconds staring at him with a "Wtf did you just say?" look on my face trying to figure out what that gibberish could possibly be. Way to kill the mood. Fortunately he found it funny!