#did you know they identified a new dialect of english thats essentially english with a spanish grammar structure?

[nerdneeniya]

Hope you dont mind my adding. Another fun bilingual thing that I don't see is english-ifying a non english word or vice versa to make a word that is neither english or from the other language. I'm not sure if it's the same for spanglish, but for runglish (russian english) we do this thing with the word "use" where we'll be speaking a sentence in full russian and then throw in this made up word that's essentially making the word "use" russian. It sounds like "use-ala", "use-ayet", "use-ayish", or "use-ayoo", depending on the verb tense. So for example: я не знаю как "use-ayet" это (ya ne znayu kak use-ayet ehto -- I don't know how to use this). There's technically a word for "use" but I legit don't know what it is cuz growing up it's always been this made up word. Sometimes even when speaking a full English sentence this made up word will get thrown in too.

Also the way your bilingual character speaks will be heavily dictated by whether they were raised speaking both languages, or if English is their second language, and also the age at which they learned English. If it's a dual learned language, more often than not (but not always) sentences will use a combination of the two languages like OP showed above. If it's a second language and they learned young itll be pretty similar, but I've noticed there's a lot more grammar mismatch if it's a second language (i.e. saying English sentences with the other language's grammar structure). (Be careful though if you write a character that speaks like this, cuz that could come off as a little racist.)

You know what’s cringe?

People who don’t know what bilingual people speak like. Cuz like I speak English and Spanish and you know “Spanglish” is super fun. (I mostly see this in fanfics).

But I never go: Yeah and I was at la playa, you know— sorry I speak Spanish and I mix up words! Silly silly me, no se hablar English!

It’s more like: Y estaba en la playa when my mom called me and she was yelling at me and I didn’t even know what I did! I was like ‘Mami, Que hice? Why are you yelling!?’ (More or less something I told my friend a couple of weeks ago)

Then theres the whole “character forgets a word because they’re thinking in Spanish!”

“No, no, the flecha! You know, the thingy that lights up! Like— ugh, what’s it called? Its like— its a flecha! I can’t think of the English word!” (Arrow, its a light up arrow)

Its so awkward to read those.

Idk but being bilingual isn’t just adding a random non-English word into a an English sentence.

Or like having characters just go: “you’re my hermano/hermana, man!”

Or (the very cringe) “come on foo!” // “ese!” // “vato!” // or literally any other word associated with cholos or Chicano gangs.

Like pet names I get. I understand those. I used to call my ex “mi amor” “corazón de melon” “Bebe” “lindó” “guapo” and nothing else in Spanish. Those are understandable cuz those are pet names.

Make Spanglish sound real! (hmu if you want someone to look over your Spanish, specifically)