The answer to how we move from one language to another

Here a server lives in Vigo and, throughout the day, frequently switches from Spanish to Galician. Jumping from one language to another happens naturally, spontaneously, depending on who you are talking to, where you are, or even what you are doing. The same thing happens to many people around me who have grown up listening to both languages ​​or, in other parts of Spain, to people who have learned Catalan, Basque, Valencian, Aranese, Bable from the cradle… even dialects with much smaller communities of speakers, such as the gallery.

That ability to jump from one language to another is something we take for granted, but it remains a fascinating phenomenon for linguists. Now a group of researchers wants to understand it better focusing the focus on two very specific areas of the peninsula quite far from each other: Galicia and Gibraltar.

The key: multilingualism. The dictionary of the Royal Spanish Academy (RAE) defines the “multilingualism” as the “coexistence of several languages ​​in a country or territory”. It is a known phenomenon and to which we are more than accustomed in Spain, where although Spanish is the official language throughout the State and there are a handful of co-official languages ​​in certain regions, a rich melting pot of speeches, dialects and slang coexist. Now… Do we really understand how multilingualism develops? Why do we jump from one language to another?

Majority, but unknown. The previous one is an interesting question because in the world there are millions and millions of people who switch daily from one language to another with complete naturalness: they do it depending on where they are, who their interlocutor is, if they are working or having drinks with their friends… It even happens within the same family. Curiously, despite the fact that it is such a widespread phenomenon, there are those who believe that we still have a long way to go to understand it.

“Multilingualism is a majority reality in the world, but we still know little about how it works in diverse and changing communities,” they explain those responsible for ‘BabelBrain. The Babel Brain: Mapping Multilingual Ecologies’, a project led by an expert from the University of Santiago de Compostela (USC) who has set out to understand it better.

And how do they want to do it? Studying what happens in two multilingual communities on the peninsula separated by more than seven hundred kilometers: Galicia and Gibraltar. The objective, they comment from the USC, is to compare both territories to “analyze how people build their social relationships between several languages” and “understand what this multilingual experience reveals about adaptation mechanisms and the human capacity for language.”

In Galicia, Galician and Spanish mainly coexist, although it is also possible to hear other languages ​​that have arrived through the flow of migrants. In Gibraltar the languages ​​in contact are English and Spanish, which has in turn led to “own linguistic practices”, such as the plaina similar combination to spanglish although specific to that region. His use of Spanish is very marked by Andalusian usage and also incorporates words of other languages.

Why Gibraltar and Galicia? If the idea is to study multilingualism in Spain, why not go to other regions with more speaking communities or where more languages ​​coexist? From BabelBrain they explain it clearly: Galicia and Gibraltar may be separated by seven hundred kilometers, but they share a series of characteristics that are especially interesting.

“Both communities share the characteristic that one of the languages ​​is in decline (Galician in Galicia and Spanish in Gibraltar),” remember the groupwhich also specifies that the two regions need to be more analyzed.

Two years ago the Galician Institute of Statistics (IGE) published a report which pointed out that residents who exclusively use Spanish already surpassed those who always express themselves in Galician. The first group represents 30%. The second, 24%. In Gibraltar there are also experts who recognize your “concern” due to the “level of deterioration” that Spanish is suffering there.

One goal, two phases. To achieve its objective, the study will be divided into two phases. In the first, which was already underway in June in both Galicia and Gibraltar, researchers will collect samples of spontaneous conversations and work with questionnaires. “The objective is to document the real uses of languages ​​in everyday life,” clarifies the USC before specifying that linguists want to take care of rural areas that are usually left out of studies.

The second phase will consist of “experimental studies” more focused on understanding how we process languages ​​and how linguistic experience, contexts or patterns of use influence them. With this objective, techniques of pupillometry and conceal tracking that help understand how speakers process information when reading, listening, or interpreting.

At stake is a key task: better understanding our adaptation mechanisms, especially when it comes to language use.

Images | Wikipedia and Michal Mrozek (Unsplash)

In Xataka | In 1971, an aquarium in the United States took in an orphaned seal. Five years later he started doing something: speaking in English