Quick language switching: how easy is it?

[viola]

I fill in my danish and swedish with icelandic and my german with danish and swedish. It's a real mess sometimes

[Asterales]

Ohh, this is a fun thread 

Handling just German and English is fine, although I tend to associate writing and reading with English more than with German (thanks be to the internets ).
Adding one other language is okay. Like Japanese. No problem switching back and forth between those intentionally.
But if there is some background noise in yet another language I understand, like Chinese, my brain simply goes *ka-poof!* and I'll either end up jumbling everything together or going completely mute.
On one occasion I did a group project in Japanese with a Taiwanese girl and our Japanese tandem partner helped us out.
The tandem partner has a Canadian boyfriend so our common languages were garbled Japanese and correct English, but she also learned German and Chinese, and would keep throwing those in our respective directions and naturally I had to start answering as well when I understood the Chinese. Then, in some fit of humor our tandem partner decided it would be fun to teach the Taiwanese girl some French...
It lasted for about five minutes and afterwards we had to scrape our brains back together.

It's really difficult to handle that many different languages when they are all spoken by the same people, in the same surroundings, no less.

Something that always happened to me during Japanese oral exams was that I wanted to switch to Spanish (I always found Spanish has a lot of vowels) and to French in Chinese oral exams. French has some really similar sounds like en, un, an and so on.
And of course, as bad as I am in both of those languages, I'm still better in them than in Japanese and Chinese! 

Ohhh. And whenever I swear, I unconsciously switch to English, mainly because there is enough swearing in written form on the internet and in books, but also because I was depressed when I did a two year exchange in GB. So, unfortunately, strong negative emotions have become a major connotation for me. *shrugs* 

[misea]

It's fairly easy for me to switch between Mandarin and English (speaking only) or just go with outright Chinglish, but I've started to slip up occasionally; I'll have a sentence in my head and start babbling to someone and they'll look confused and I'll go "AHA OOPS IT'S ENGLISH TIME". Just a couple weeks ago I went to a pho place with a friend and when the waiter took our order, I was all ready to say "thank you" in English and it came out in Mandarin. I didn't notice what I'd done until the waiter was at the counter.

I've started reviewing my French much more frequently, and it's slowly starting to work its way into my lexicon without me thinking about it. A thing I've noticed is that I can't recall a time that I had thoughts in Mandarin without making a conscious effort despite the fact that I've been speaking it all my life, but I can switch fairly easily between English and French, given that I have the vocabulary for it. Also I can translate spoken Mandarin (at least the bit I know) easily, but with French I translate text much better; spoken French is too fast for me.

I know only a bit of Norwegian and Swedish, but once this summer I got a mix of Swedish and French o__o "HJÄLP MIG QUELQU'UN!!" (Help me someone!) I didn't realize that I'd said a sentence in two languages that weren't English for a couple of seconds. And I completely mix up the bits of Norwegian and Swedish that I know XD

[viola]

The other day I was typing a sentence and ended up with ich drikker inte (german, norweigian, swedish) which is a pretty good representation of how things in my head work. Just whatever language gets there first.

[urbicande]

The other day I was typing a sentence and ended up with ich drikker inte (german, norweigian, swedish) which is a pretty good representation of how things in my head work. Just whatever language gets there first.

Das är drole

[ginger]

I am fluent in English as it is my first language, and I live in America (please don't hold it against me, all you beautiful multilinguals!). Even worse, I live in the American south where speaking other languages is by many people looked down upon, which is pretty unfortunate. But: there are beautiful rays of multilingual sunshine even here, so there is hope for even American Southerners yet!

So French is my second language, and though I'm not yet fluent I'm fairly conversational (working on fluency, and am in my third year of study). I know bits and pieces of spoken Korean, but I don't read it at all. So, whenever I see something written in a language that I don't read/speak, I just think, "Comme je peux comprendre!" ("Like I can understand!") and scoff at myself. I also help at an ESL (English as a second language) class, but unfortunately there are no other French speakers currently in attendance. So, whenever people switch into their native languages and I don't understand, my brain is like, "You'd better speak French now."

Most often my language switching occurs when I am surprised or really confused, and I'll just be like, "QUOI?" and whatever poor English speaker is there at the time will just look at me like, "What is wrong with you and who do you think you are?" Also I feel kind of terrible about accidentally switching with English-only people because usually they just think I'm stuck up or trying to show off (since most Southern Americans don't encounter language switching very often at all).

Anyway, in reading about all of your impressive language escapades, oh you lovely multilingual people, I commend you for being wonderful. America needs to get with the language program. Though, when I go to a big city like New York, it's easy to find Francophones and all other kinds of language speakers, which is fantastic.

[Supreme Potato]

To be honest, in my 10+ years of being bilingual, I don't think I've ever had this problem.

I do switch to English when I'm talking to family and I don't know how to say something in Korean, but that's pretty rare and very intentional, so I don't think it really fits. Writing is almost never a problem.

Mostly I think it's because English/Chinese (the two languages I most commonly write in) are so different that they're difficult to confuse. Maybe when I learn another alphabetic language, I'll have problems writing.

[urbicande]

I am fluent in English as it is my first language, and I live in America (please don't hold it against me, all you beautiful multilinguals!). Even worse, I live in the American south where speaking other languages is by many people looked down upon, which is pretty unfortunate. But: there are beautiful rays of multilingual sunshine even here, so there is hope for even American Southerners yet!

I'm an American as well (and I'm no more than basic conversational in French or German, so I don't know that I count as multilingual).  But you can do it!

Anyway, in reading about all of your impressive language escapades, oh you lovely multilingual people, I commend you for being wonderful. America needs to get with the language program. Though, when I go to a big city like New York, it's easy to find Francophones and all other kinds of language speakers, which is fantastic.

So, speaking as a New Yorker, of whom we have a few, when's your next trip up this way? We could totally do a Minnion Meetup in the Big Apple.

[ginger]

So, speaking as a New Yorker, of whom we have a few, when's your next trip up this way? We could totally do a Minnion Meetup in the Big Apple.

April, but my time will not be my own as I'll be there to perform chorally! :/ But YAY FOR CHORAL MUSIC!

[Synthpopalooza]

I am fluent in English as it is my first language, and I live in America (please don't hold it against me, all you beautiful multilinguals!). Even worse, I live in the American south where speaking other languages is by many people looked down upon, which is pretty unfortunate. But: there are beautiful rays of multilingual sunshine even here, so there is hope for even American Southerners yet!

More of us down here than you think.  I'm from Tennessee ... learned some Spanish when in college, lot a lot of it, but have been refreshing it through Duolingo, and at work, when a customer is having problems talking to me in English, I will often switch to Spanish to take their order!  They really appreciate it too!

I have been learning Swedish too (lots of music friends from there on my Facebook, and I have always loved the language) and a lot of times, the words stick in my head.  Like if I get frustrated and drop something at work, I will come out with "Helvete!" and it gets a few grins from my coworkers.  That word needs no translation.

[Valerre]

(I know this topic is pretty old, but I felt the need to post)

:spain: Generally, my brain only has trouble switching between English and Spanish after heavy "use" of Spanish--such as after a class or conversation with a native speaker. I'm trying to get back into the habit of listening to Spanish podcasts and news channels to feel more confident in my listening and switching.

:vaticancity: This generally isn't a problem because Latin is so rarely spoken that I hardly come across people to converse with using it.

:japan: After watching a lot of anime I'll occasionally have trouble translating my sentences into English. But I think this just has to do with the way conversations flow in Japanese, as well as the notable cultural differences.

Hawaiian: I usually just read Hawaiian even though I know a number of native speakers. I'm hoping to get over my fear of mispronunciation soon so that I can practice conversationally. I know a number of natives that use Hawaiian words in place of English ones in conversation even if they don't consider themselves "fluent."

All in all, I think my brain has trouble switching between languages quickly (but this could just be perceived difficulty). But as I become more proficient in a language, the difficulty level of switching feels slightly lower.
 

[Auxivele]

I am far better at writing in Spanish than speaking it because I need to think too quickly in order to hold a conversation, though with my Spanish teacher this year speaking almost entirely in Spanish, that's helping me get better. Though I can somewhat understand spoken Spanish and can semi-decently write in Spanish, but still am not that great at speaking in Spanish.

When I was trying to teach myself Welsh and German, though, I kept getting confused as to what was for which language, which is why I've since put Welsh on hold. And now that I'm trying to get more serious with both Spanish and German, I've had to put German on hold because I'd start getting confused between the two. Though that might also have been because I was feeling pretty stressed at the beginning of the school year, which has somewhat gone down so I'm starting German again.

It doesn't help that the only person I really have to talk to is my dad (because I am a shy and awkward potato who gets nervous when talking to teachers) and language classes are seen as only a thing you do until you have the minimum requirement in my school. So that's my story.

[Lazy8]

I thought that by simultaneously studying two languages as different and Mandarin and Norwegian, I'd manage not to mix them up. Yet somehow my brain is still managing to come out with sentences like "Jeg er meiguo ren."

[DaemonDan]

It took a long time and a lot of practice with live interpreation between English and Spanish before I reached a point where I felt like I could take either in, process it for meaning without actually thinking about the words and then convey the meaning in the other language without having to actually translate any of the words.

Today, a bit out of practice, I need a second or two to realize what language I'm listening too before my brain makes the switch to listening in the right language.

[Auxivele]

I can switch into Spanish easily, other than the fact that it takes me a bit to remember the actual vocabulary, but whenever I'm trying to use German I inevitably say or think the sentence first in Spanish, or in a weird mangled combination. I'll be trying to figure out what I actually know in German, and will translate something like "I would like to read that book" as "Quiero leer das Buch" because that apparently is the extent of my knowledge in German. Once I actually added Japanese to the mix, and I don't even know Japanese.