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28

Nov

Bilingual: Life & Reality

Hay un libro excelente escrito por François Grosjean, un profesor franco-británico, que se llama Bilingual Life and Reality. Lo que más me gusta del libro es que habla de cosas that I can completely relate to as a bilingual. The other books I’ve read on this topic have been either too academic or full of studies and scientific shit I don’t understand (or care to understand, anyway) or too fluffy - with tips how to raise bilingual children that don’t really apply to my situation.

One of my favorite parts was his whole explanation of code-switching. While I’ve changed my views on what this is and on the definition of Spanglish, for example, it wasn’t until I read the chapter on this topic that I finally realized that it’s actually very difficult to code-switch. And, while sometimes I do it out of pure laziness because I simply don’t want to put my mind to work, most times I do it because it’s simply who I am, how I was raised and how I grew up between two languages.