bilingual interactions

[Nancy Lutz]

Dear all,
    This is also very common in UN Peacekeeping missions where you have people
working for the UN from all over the world. Even though Peacekeeping missions
have an official language (English or French, depending on the mission) for use
in all official settings, in more informal settings where people were tired, you
would often find multilingual groups, where people had some knowledge of various
languages, but were too tired to actually try to produce appropriate language
replies. In my experience, it was very common in East Timor, for example, to
have a group of people speaking English, French, and Portuguese, with the person
speaking their native language, and others replying in their own native
languages. For most, it was far easier to understand than to try to speak in
that language, especially if you're tired (or drinking :-) ) so this actually
seemed to work out quite well.

best,
Nancy

Quoting Teresa Lane <teresalane at yahoo.com>:

> When I went to Bolivia in December 2010, it was interesting to listen to
> people from my group (A) speak in English to person B, who translated the
> English to Spanish to person C. Person C translated Spanish to Quechua, to
> Person D. Then it went in reverse, Person D spoke Quechua to C; C translated
> Quechua to Spanish for person B; person B translated from Spanish to English
> for us, People A. It was so cool to see this, and is probably quite common in
> Bolivia, but it made me wonder what the longest "chain" of languages might be
> in the world. Does anyone have any idea?
>  
>
> *********
> Teresa Phipps Lane
> P O Box 81638
> Pittsburgh PA 15217
> teresalane at yahoo.com
> http://www.linkedin.com/in/terrylane
>
> --- On Mon, 8/22/11, Gaudio, Rudolf <Rudolf.Gaudio at PURCHASE.EDU> wrote:
>
>
> From: Gaudio, Rudolf <Rudolf.Gaudio at PURCHASE.EDU>
> Subject: bilingual interactions
> To: LINGANTH at LISTSERV.LINGUISTLIST.ORG
> Date: Monday, August 22, 2011, 3:06 PM
>
>
> Dear colleagues:
>
> What do you/we call it when a conversation unfolds in which Speaker A speaks
> to Speaker B in one language (X-ish), and Speaker B responds in another
> (Y-ish)? The assumption is that both speakers have at least some passive
> competence in the other's language.
>
> And do you know of any scholarship on this phenomenon?
>
> Thanks for your help.
>
> -Rudi
>
>
>
>
> Rudolf P. Gaudio
> Associate Professor of Anthropology and Media, Society & the Arts
> Purchase College, State University of New York
> 735 Anderson Hill Rd.
> Purchase, NY 10577
>
> tel. +1 914 251 6619
> fax +1 914 251 6603
> rudolf.gaudio at purchase.edu
>



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