Questions to Ask a Bilingual Person

The questions

Open any question to see why it works.

1. 1

   Which languages do you speak, and which came first?

   Bilingual covers people raised in two languages from birth and people who became fluent as adults, and those are different lives. Establishing the order early saves you from assuming which one is their real language.

2. 2

   How did the second one arrive: at home, at school, or through a move?

   The route decides most of what follows. A language learned at home is usually spoken but not written, a language learned at school is often the reverse, and a language learned after a move carries the memory of that move with it.

3. 3

   Which language do you count in?

   Arithmetic tends to stay locked to whichever language it was learned in, even in people who otherwise switch without noticing. Ask them to count backwards from twenty and watch which one they reach for. Most people have never thought about it until asked.

4. 4

   What do you dream in?

   The answer often depends on who is in the dream rather than on which language they use more. Ask whether it changed after a move or after a death in the family, because that is usually when people notice the shift.

5. 5

   Is there a word in one language you wish existed in the other?

   Nearly everyone bilingual has an answer ready. You get a concept rather than vocabulary, and the words people choose are usually about a feeling or a family role that their other language handles clumsily.

6. 6

   Do you ever mix them mid-sentence, and who are you allowed to do that with?

   Mixing is governed by audience, not by ability. The list of people they can mix with is effectively a list of the people they feel at home around, which is a more interesting answer than the linguistics.

7. 7

   Which language do you use with your parents, and which with your siblings?

   The split is very common: one language upward to parents, another sideways to siblings. Ask when that switch happened, because it usually maps to the first year of school and to the moment the household language stopped being the default.

8. 8

   Do you read and write both, or mostly speak one?

   Literacy often lags well behind speech in a home language, and many people carry quiet embarrassment about it. Ask gently and without surprise, because a raised eyebrow here ends the honest part of the conversation.

9. 9

   What is hardest to translate for someone: a joke, a song, or a family story?

   This gets past word level differences into what a language assumes its listeners already know. Jokes usually lose the least; family stories lose the most, because they depend on tone and on people the listener has never met.

10. 10

    When you are angry or hurt, which one comes out?

    Emotion tends to pull people back to the language they were first comforted or scolded in, even when they use another all day. Swearing frequently stays in one language for life, and people often laugh when they notice which.

11. 11

    Do you feel like a slightly different person in each language?

    Most people say yes: blunter in one, more polite in another, funnier in the one that has better slang. The useful follow-up is which version their current friends have met, and whether that bothers them.

12. 12

    What do people get wrong when they find out you speak both?

    You will usually hear about being treated as a free interpreter, being asked to say something on command, or having a whole region's culture assigned to them because of one language. It is also a polite way of finding out what not to do next.

13. 13

    What was it like being the translator for your family?

    Children of immigrants often did adult work early: doctor's appointments, landlord calls, bank forms, school letters about themselves. This question usually opens the most serious part of the conversation, so leave room for it.

14. 14

    Have you ever lost words in one of them?

    Attrition is common, and people describe reaching for a word in their first language and finding only the second one. For some this is a mild annoyance and for others it is a real grief tied to a grandparent or a country, so follow their tone.

15. 15

    What does your accent tell other speakers about you?

    Within a language, accents carry region, class and generation in ways outsiders cannot hear. Ask where people guess they are from and whether the guess lands as a compliment or a placement.

16. 16

    Is there something you can only say in one of them?

    Some things, endearments, prayers, apologies to a parent, only work in one language. This question tends to produce the line that people remember from the conversation.

17. 17

    Do you translate in your head, or think directly in each one?

    Fluent speakers usually say they stopped translating years ago, but almost all of them can name a domain where they still do it: legal paperwork, medical terms, feelings, or numbers under pressure.

18. 18

    When did you know you were fluent?

    The marker is rarely a test score. People name arguing without preparing, understanding a film without subtitles, or realising they had been listening to a conversation for ten minutes without noticing which language it was in.

19. 19

    If you have or want children, will you raise them in both?

    This is where the practical cost shows up: whether it is worth the weekend school, whether they can face being corrected by their own child, whether the language survives another generation. Expect ambivalence rather than a clean answer.

20. 20

    Which language do you want to be thinking in when you are old?

    A closing question that people often answer instantly and then want to explain. It gets at which language holds their sense of home, which is not always the one they use most.