Code-switching
I can tell how long students have been in this country more by how they talk to one another than by how they talk to me. Those who have been in the States for less than a year find a fellow expatriot and they stick together like glue. The girls especially, linking arms in the schoolyard and travelling together with the tight, coordinated movements of dolphins. Boys cluster in linguistically homogenous groups.
After a year or two, they start to branch out. Armenian and Mexican boys will sometimes overcome ethnocentric animosities to discover a mutual love of soccer or basketball. Thai girls become friends with Filipinas, and giggle together during class over pictures of androgynous boys on CD covers. By this time, I usually have to wield the seating chart in a punitive manner, causing much hate and discontent.
But most interesting are the conversations I overhear between students, usually Latino, who have been in the States for four years or more. They code-switch. Their conversations move naturally from English to Spanish and back. Sometimes the topic dictates the language; what happened during lunchtime’s soccer game is discussed in Spanish. But then, when complaining about all the homework in Science, it’s in English.
Often they will converse quickly in English till they need a word that they don’t know, and will switch to Spanish to confer briefly about the word they need. The word is usually supplied in Spanish, used, and then the conversation continues in Spanish for a while before switching back to English when a new topic is discussed.
Listening to the talk is fun. Intercepting the notes they pass is not as much fun. The code switching is still there, but I find myself sighing often. “Sweetie, there’s a t in bitch. And you spelled my name wrong”.
