Why Native Speakers Switch To English

Sheridan Saint-Michel
Invisible Idiot
Published in
5 min readOct 13, 2019

I went into a local taqueria this week to get breakfast tacos. I greeted the person at the order counter in Spanish, asked a couple of questions about the menu in Spanish, and used my Spanish name to order. I enjoyed hearing the Spanish conversation around me while I waited. Then the woman at the pickup called out “Santiago,” and I walked over to get my food. She looked at me and said,

“Blah blah blah blah blah?”

This isn’t what she actually said, of course, but it might as well have been. “Mande?” I asked. Since I live in Texas, I use this Mexican slang word, which is more polite than just saying “what?”, frequently.

“¿Quieres una bolsa?”

I had no problem understanding that, and I shook my head and picked up my food. As I was walking out, my brain took this new puzzle piece and replayed the earlier conversation. Her first question had been, “Do you want a bag?” Those sounds I had been unable to decipher had been my native language. This made me laugh at myself a little but didn’t really surprise me. It isn’t the first time it’s happened to me, and I’ve seen it happen many times to others.

Context Switching Is Hard

Context switching takes energy, and the human brain tries to conserve as much energy as possible. Your brain loves to turn on autopilot, which uses much less energy. You get in the car and then realize you’re at work without remembering the commute. Autopilot also kicks in when speaking. You come home from a party where you spent half the evening talking to a fascinating person you met and realize you can’t remember what you talked about. Your brain was on autopilot.

One of the frequent frustrations I see among language learners is, native speakers of their target language all speak to them in English. Sometimes there is nothing you can do. My wife has a friend who is a native Spanish speaker who always speaks to me in English, even when I talk to him in Spanish. He knows English is my native language, and there is nothing I can do to get him to switch from English. Thankfully, he is the exception. For most people, being aware of context switching is the key to getting them to speak their own language.

Ignore Their Stereotypes

People speak to me in English all the time, even when I’m in a context where most people around me are speaking another language. They look at me, see a white guy, and their brain immediately switches to English. If you don’t look like the stereotypical speaker of your target language, you might also have to force people to context switch at the beginning of the conversation. That’s okay.

The reason for this context switch is their stereotype, not anything you’ve done, so just ignore this. Start the conversation in your target language like it’s the most natural choice. Be patient and give them a moment to figure out what context you’re in.

My wife is Chinese, and I try to use my Chinese when we go to a Chinese restaurant. When I was first starting with Chinese, I would say something, and then the waiter would look at her, and she would repeat what I had just said. I would ask her to help me pronounce it better, but she would assure me the way I said it was fine. Finally, one day, I received confirmation of this. We went through the routine where I spoke, and my wife had to repeat what I had said. The waiter laughed and said, “I just didn’t expect you to speak Chinese!”

Once You Are In The Right Context Stay There!

Now that you’ve managed to get everyone in the right context, the tough part begins. This is where you find out how well you speak the language. You need to stay in the context of your target language. This is also an excellent time to take notes for your personal study because you will discover gaps in your knowledge quickly. This is the Idiot part of being an Invisible Idiot. You know what you want to say, but you realize you don’t know how to say it.

What is critical now is not forcing another context switch. I know one of the first things you learned was asking, “How do you say?” in your target language. Don’t do it here. This isn’t language class. Your goal is to avoid context switching. If you say, “中文怎么说shoelaces?” you’ve forced them to think about English, even if you’ve technically asked them a question in Chinese.

Don’t be afraid to use the words you know, and sound like an idiot, as long as you get the message across and don’t make them change context. I told someone once in conversation that their “shoes were open” because I couldn’t remember how to say shoelaces. Their shoes got tied, and we both got a chuckle out of it. If I had asked them how to say shoelaces, we would have missed out on the laugh and ended up back in English. In my experience, native speakers don’t mind if you sound like an idiot as long are you are trying to communicate.

So think about that context switch as an ejector seat. If you use it, you will probably be ejected right back into English, and rightly so. You’ve shown them it takes a lot of extra energy to speak with you in their language. Learn to use comparisons to get to the word you want. One time, I couldn’t remember the word for sand so, I pointed at it and said, “No es polvo, es?” The person I was speaking with happily replied, “Oh, es arena.” and we kept talking in Spanish.

Be Patient With Others And Especially With Yourself

There will be times when you accidentally hit that ejection seat and end up back in English. That’s okay. There will be many, many times, when you manage to stay in your target language and feel like an idiot. It’s SO EASY to say what you are trying to say in English. Well, that’s why I started Invisible Idiot. I wanted to share in all of those times when we feel invisible, or we feel like idiots. So know that you aren’t alone and remember it’s a normal part of language learning. The more you can use what you know, even though you sound like an idiot, the more your language skills will improve. So get out there and get into the right language context.

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Sheridan Saint-Michel
Invisible Idiot

Writer of Fantasy and Science Fiction with a bit of what I hope is humor interjected on occasion.