We've often touched on the idea that one's native language influences one's thinking. I wonder whether a strongly multilingual person might not think in more than one language simultaneously. I've heard people switching fluidly from words in one language to words in another, but have not observed sentence structure switching WRT gender or tense. Does such switching ever take place? I'm not strongly multilingual, so have no way to know. A quick web search only revealed one abstract, and not a complete article. http://www.eric.ed.gov/ERICWeb..._0=no&accno=EJ841064

There are quite a lot of books available on code switching. They all seem rather expensive though.

They all seem rather expensive though.

Which is why colleges and universities have libraries. The state-funded variety of which are open to citizens of those same states.

Since it's all a bit nebulous to me, is my question about code switching or about parallel processing? I think it's the latter. I suppose a brain scan might reveal some answers. How do I find out?

quote:

Originally posted by zmježd:

Which is why colleges and universities have libraries. The state-funded variety of which are open to citizens of those same states.

I'm not sure if it's universal but over here college and university libraries are usually only open to students and staff of the institution, and general libraries wouldn't routinely carry such specialised books, though they could obtain them for you.

quote:

Since it's all a bit nebulous to me, is my question about code switching or about parallel processing?

While I am not an expert by any means, I'd think it would be code switching. I remember my daughter living with a family in France, specifically to study French. Though she was only 12 or 13 at the time, and she was only there 2 weeks, she was dreaming in French.