The things I learned while code-switching in Berlin
A modern-day Tower of Babel (with a happier ending) helped me rediscover the beauty of multilingualism.
By Noel Duarte
I speak Spanish fluently because I grew up in Mexico, and my family is Mexican by heritage. But I took German for the first time in high school. The rest happened in small increments.
I was able to make some strong connections with people living in Germany because they came to our high school for a two-week exchange program. I wasn’t able to travel to Germany then myself, but I kept in touch with the two or three people who came to our school.
My freshman year at UC Berkeley, I decided to take German and eventually make it my minor. Then it became my second major, along with Biology & Genetics.
We were trying to communicate across language barriers, across cultural barriers, and across age differences.
In 2014, I went abroad to Berlin. I spent the first couple of months traveling through the country so that I could hear different dialects of German. I was able to stay with one of the friends I’d made in high school. I also got the opportunity to take courses entirely in German with students at a university there.
After I came back, I decided that in order to continue using the language, I had to make a real investment in the language and the culture. And unless I kept close contact with native speakers or the culture itself, I knew the language was something I could expend very quickly after devoting the last six years of my life to it. So I decided that I would go back to Germany every summer after that. And I did.
The summer of 2015, I went back to Berlin with my friends Tegan (who speaks some Spanish) and Sean (who only speaks English). We met up with my German friend Alena, who brought her friend Jasmin. Jasmin didn’t speak much English.
There were eight of us in a room, and everyone spoke different languages.
Once we met up, everyone opened up their dating apps and started trying to meet up with different people. Tegan matched with someone from southern Germany, Sean found someone who was visiting from Peru, and I matched with a guy named Iban from France.
I went on a date with Iban and we liked each other enough that I decided to invite him out with my friends, but first we went back to our Airbnb. We were all there: Iban and me, Tegan and her date, Sean and his date, and Alena and Jasmin.
I’m sure this happens to Europeans all the time, but there were eight of us in a room, and everyone spoke different languages. Some people spoke only English. Some people spoke Spanish and German fluently, but no other languages. So we were trying to communicate across language barriers, across cultural barriers, and across age differences (Sean was 10 or 11 years older than Jasmin).
To me, the interesting part was that we bonded over the similarities between our languages, despite the fact that there were such large differences in our cultures and where we were in life.
Up until that night, I had worked so hard to flip back and forth between different languages. I was used to growing up in a Mexican household, having to translate for my parents and having to quickly think about how to say something in English at the grocery store.
The most exciting part of it was that we were able to switch between languages so seamlessly. That was, to me, a very novel experience.
But that night was different. I didn’t run into that equation, that moment of having to stop and think about switching languages. And we were discussing things I wasn’t always comfortable with in every language — we were just letting the conversation carry. I’d be talking to someone in Spanish or English, and then someone would interject and ask me a question in German, and I would respond in German.
That was super exciting, mostly because I found myself doing it so easily. I was nervous that I wouldn’t be able to communicate things in German properly because my mind was functioning in English primarily, but I was sort of jumping around between all three languages. The most exciting part of it was that we were able to switch between languages so seamlessly. That was, to me, a very novel experience.
As someone who grew up in a country where a lot of people don’t speak multiple languages, it was interesting and exciting to be in a room where different languages were being spoken. It actually made the linguistic journey that I’d made seem more useful. And it made me remember that the U.S. is such a small part of the world and that, yes, English is sort of the de facto language of the world, but that it’s not, by any means, the only language. In order to really form connections with different countries and cultures, speaking the language is the most important thing.
In a modern world, in a more globalized world, where connections to other countries are instantaneous, you need to have the ability to speak other languages. It makes it so much easier to connect with people around the world, to form incredible friendships and relationships you wouldn’t form otherwise.
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