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Let’s talk languages

I speak Franglais?

I like it that I grew up in a multi-lingual environment, and that I have opportunity to live abroad and experience new languages in the process. At present, I use either English or French in my daily conversations and they are slowly mergin to take life on its own. Slightly alarmingly for me is to find a plateau in my grasp of French and at the same time a regression in my use of English…

Lately, I find myself saying things like “his father” and “her mother” despite referring to the parents of a same friend (who is not both male and female at the same time, I assure you), asking a colleague if she has “taken her tickets” for a conference trip, and I “make (someone) a present” even if it’s store-bought and directly gift-wrapped (lovingly chosen, of course).

In another word, I’m beginning to literally translate from French to English (“son père”, “sa mère”, “prendre les billets”, “faire un cadeau”), and therefore committing the very same errors that I used to correct my Francophone friends from making! I know this is not strictly Franglais in the traditional sense – I don’t often speak in either one language then pepper it with words from the other – but what else would you call it? Confused foreign-speaker?

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