Introduction

When I go home for the occasional weekend getaway from Chapel Hill , the first thing I hear when I enter my house is a loud, “SHREEEEEEEEEENIEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!” I am then instantly tackled to the ground my 21 year old cousin in an insanely tight bear hug. She's the main reason I go home. She's the big sister I never had and my closest friend. When she is in the house talking, everyone in my family can understand her. But it's the way that we understand her that is so interesting.

Krupa has been living with my family since April of 2005. She came to the United States to pursue another degree in accounting at NC State University. Krupa lived in Canada for the first eight years of her life, before moving to India before the start of her third grade year. She grew up speaking English in school and Gujarati at home while in Canada , then moved to a southern region in India and picked up Hindi as well as expanding her Gujarati, while her English hindered in the background. Her use of Gujarati increased when she moved to Gujarat and that is where she has lived since. She is now fluent in the three languages, English, Hindi, and Gujarati.

Now Krupa is one of the most talkative people I know (next to her mother, of course). No matter the situation, she will find a way to make herself part of the conversation. Even when she came to the United States , she still kinds her way into conversation. For her, there has been no language barrier in the past. She knows when to use a single language, and knows when to mix and match words in different languages (a phenomenon known to linguists as code switching).

Now Krupa is a computer science major and a technology lover. She is always on her computer, doing something, whether it is a class assignment or surfing the web. Her favorite activity, however, is something all of us computer lovers can relate to. Having just come from India , all of her friends are still over there. Everyday phone calls tend to get pricy, so Krupa wakes up at 4 am every morning so she cal meet her friends in India online. It's this phemonenon of code switching that she does online that I'm going to take a closer look at (and maybe get some explanation to the logic behind the thoughts of my crazy cousin).

Transcription

Conversation Krupa's Dad: Biji bhadhi universities je che ne? Krupa: Yeah. KD: Eno just keep the option on one side. K: Okay. KD: Ane… ahh to… uttyare je, just concentrate on the NC State nu thare je bijo follow up. K: Okay. Etle aaje raathe, I'll call that Jai Kuthari again, and I'll get a timing when he's free tomorrow, so that way I can go to meet him, because what, what it is Dad is that all the students India thi jai aave che ne, they come and stay on Centennial campus, because that is the only place off campus. Rent is cheaper, aane their college, uhh suu kevai, courses, are all at Centennial campus. Right? But it's about five minutes away from the main campus using the WolfLine. But the rents are so much cheaper than the main campus, so that should be good enough for me.

And you know universities that are elsewhere right ? Yeah. Those universities just keep the option on one side. Okay. And… uhhh… now , just concentrate on the NC State and then follow up on those later . Okay. Tonight , I'll call that Jai Kuthari again, and I'll get a timing when he's free tomorrow, so that way I can go to meet him, because what, what it is Dad is that all the students that come from India, they come and stay on Centennial campus, because that is the only place off campus. Rent is cheaper, and their college, uhh what do you say, courses, are all at Centennial campus. Right? But it's about five minutes away from the main campus using the WolfLine. But the rents are so much cheaper than the main campus, so that should be good enough for me.

Analysis

When Krupa moved to India, she was in the middle of her critical period of language acquisition. She had learned enough English so that she would not forget it, yet she was still young enough to gain fluency in another language. Her sister, on the other hand, was around 12 years old when they moved, and she never picked up the fluency of Gujarati and Hindi like Krupa did. Her English accent lingered around, and when she speaks, she still has to think before she speaks even though she spent the same amount of time in India as Krupa. So Krupa was at the prime age to pick up another language and not forget the other one and still stay fluent.

When talking with her father on the phone, Krupa switched languages mainly when talking about something that is common in everyday life in India. The topic of that conversation was living off campus, a topic that is not too common in India. However when she was talking about kids who come from India to study (“India thi jai aave che ne”), she would switch over to Gujarati. Unconsciously, the topics that were something that are familiar to her in America would be spoken about in English and the unfamiliar ones would be talked about in Gujarati.

The same goes for her online conversation with he parents. When they were talking about saying hi to me (“shobhna_amin: SAY HI TO SHREENA”), the words would be typed in English. However when they were making fun of one another and telling jokes, those would be told in Gujarati. In an issue of Speaking Out, which is a journal made up of online thoughts; one author says that, “Some people whose first language is English decide how they are going to speak by the context within which they are speaking.” When Krupa talks to her dad about jokes, most of the time they are jokes in Gujarati and make no sense in English, thus her use of Gujarati. However when she is talking about her studies and events and people in the States, she switches over to English. She unconsciously takes the context of the situation and her mind tells which language is best to speak in.

This shows that there is the existence of mentalese. Steven Pinker says that “sometimes it is not easy to find any words that properly covey a thought.” This shows that when Krupa faces that problem, she automatically switches to another language where show knows the word she chooses will be properly conveyed. Let's look at Krupa's conversation online with one of her friends from India.

Richard Skiba makes the point that, “switching commonly occurs when an individual wishes to express solidarity with a particular social group.” So Krupa seems to do just this when she is talking to her friend Bhumli. Now in normal situations, friends usually don't call their good friends names along the lines of “idiot” or “crazy girl.” When it came to translating that, I had a hard time coming up for the words without making it sound insulting. But in Gujarati, it is one of those semantic drift types of situations. The words mean one thing literally, but over time it has changed with the social construct of society.

Also, the conversation with Bhumli brings out a point that Pinker makes. He says that “one thing that surprise[s] everyone [is] what ordinary conversation looks like when it is written down verbatim. Conversation out of context is virtually opaque.” Now looking at the conversation with Bhumli, it may seem completely opaque to the outside listener who doesn't know my cousin. But if you get to know her, the conversation is normal for her. However when it was written down in the form of an Instant Message, it made it completely impossible to understand. Even I had a hard time understanding what was going on. It just goes further to prove Pinker's point. Krupa and Bhumli knew what they were talking about because their conversation was between the two of them. But either than the two of them, the conversation is close to impossible to follow.

Krupa's code switching is also a bit different. Where a listener who doesn't know Gujarati may thing she is inserting random Gujarati words into her sentences, she is more using the English words that are borrowed and used in normal context in Gujarati. For example, in Japanese, the words “ice cream” have been borrowed and the frozen dessert in Japan in known as “aaisu kuriimu.” This is the same concept when Krupa talks. When talking about her big exam (“me: i can't talk too long, kaale school maa exam che moti”), she uses the words of “school” and “exam” in her sentence. Though they may seem to have been switched, those words are just words that have been adapted to the language and are now part of normal vocabulary.

Even though there is some code switching going on in her language, Krupa seems to unconsciously use the tool in her head to suite the situation that she is in. When talking about things that are different, she uses words that she knows describe her concepts the best. Her code switching also is simply the use of borrowed words from English that have made their way into the vocabulary of other languages.

So in conclusion, we can see where the logic of Krupa's random online typing comes from. She's just like any of us bilingual, code switching, people of the world.

Sources:

Pinker, Steven. The Language Instinct: How the Mind Creates Language . New York : HarperCollins Publishers Inc., 1994.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code-switching

http://www.usingenglish.com/weblog/archives/000157.html

http://iteslj.org/Articles/Skiba-CodeSwitching.html

http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/india/maps.htm

About the Author

Kids are always asked what they want to be when they grow up. And if I were like most kids, answering would have sounded like something along the lines of, “The best dancer in world!” or whatever I had chosen as my future profession for the day. Instead, my answer was more along the lines of, “Sav thi saari naach nari in le monde!” then I'd run off and continue to prance around the house. Being born into an Indian family and growing up in Montreal, Canada was the reason for my crazy answer. I grew up with two Indian languages being constantly spoken in the house as well as the occasional English. And being surrounded by French speaking people as well as going to a French school since preschool added the French into my language bank. I spent most of my life in Canada, then moved to a small town right outside of Raleigh and have been there ever since.

After so much French and having the same things taught to me repeatedly over and over after moving here, I switched my foreign language study to Japanese, and to this day am still working on mastering the language. Soccer has been my favorite sport since I could walk and I love to run around the field chasing a piece of leather shaped into a sphere colored black and white. Dancing is also the other passion in my life and I have been trained in various Indian classical styles, as well in Tap, Jazz, Pointe, Hip-Hop and Modern.

I've been lucky to have been born into a strange family who loves to live all over the world (sounds weird, I know. But they really live everywhere!). I've traveled to India, Singapore, various parts of Europe, the UAE, and so many other places I've lost track. Every place has let me a) experience and hear so many fun languages and b) hear the strange accents of every one of my family members, not only in English, but also in Gujarati or Hindi (the two Indian languages I grew up with).

Technology is my best friend, even though it likes to get mad at me quite often. I love any of type of electronic and I can spend hours in places like Best Buy just starting at the cool stuff. Call me crazy, but it's just too much fun!

I promise I'm almost done. =) Just to sum up, I just want to learn anything I can about language and how it works. I've grown up with so many and it just fascinates me to no end.

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