On language and connection

Whenever I talk to someone who shares more than one language with me, we always default to whichever language feels “stronger” between us.

Over the years, I’ve made several friends in the US who are native Chinese speakers. Even though I grew up speaking Chinese at home, with these friends, I somehow always fall back into speaking English, no matter how many times we say we’re going to practice speaking Chinese.

On the other hand, I’ve met many Chinese natives abroad who want to practice English with me. We’ll start in English, I’ll help translate a few words, and within minutes, we’ve somehow switched to speaking entirely in Mandarin again.

A particularly bizarre variant of this “switching” happens during family dinners. I’ll talk to my brother and my sister-in-law in English. They’ll talk to each other in Chinese and English. And then all three of us switch to Chinese when talking to my parents.

My first instinct as to why this happens is that it’s simply embarrassing to suddenly sound “dumber” in a different language when you started a friendship in your native one. When we use our weaker language, we lose not just vocabulary we’ve spent our whole lives acquiring, but also the natural confidence that comes from expressing ourselves fluidly. We all want to be respected, so we use whichever language we sound the smartest in.

But that only explains half of it. What if you’re the one using your weaker language to accommodate the other person? Maybe in this case, it’s a matter of reducing overall cognitive load. It can be mentally taxing to try understanding what someone is saying when they’re constantly grasping for words. So to make life easier, both people agree to switch to whichever language flows better.

And then there’s the magical in-between state, when both people are fairly fluent in both languages. That’s when code-switching feels effortless, even natural. I saw this a lot in Singapore and Malaysia, when people smoothly transitioned from one language to another mid-sentence without missing a beat. It’s delightful to witness, like watching languages dance. But it only works when you’re at roughly the same level of fluency. Otherwise, gravity often pulls you back towards the stronger language.

In the end, I think most of us just care about understanding each other more than how we get there. Sure, speaking in our native languages can reveal more of who we are, but when the goal is connection, we naturally meet in the middle.

That’s kind of a wholesome thought to end on, so I’ll leave it at that 🙂