What is code switching?

According to Maureen Cutajar (“Code Switching in Conversation”) code switching is the alternate use of two or more languages in the same utterance or conversation.

Code switching is different from borrowing a word from other languages and integrating it phonologically and morphologically to the base language, however code-switching may often be the first step in this process.

Should you or should you not code-switch?

Code-switchers have been accused of being linguistically lazy, among other things. Not so, according to language expert Fran‡ois Grosjean, who writes in “Bilingual: Life and Reality” “Code-switching is a verbal skill requiring a large degree of linguistic competence in more than one language” Those who code-switch does not do so because they are lazy.

“Code-switching is actually not easy to do”.

Yet, most others believe those who mix two languages, do so not because they know two languages but rather because they do not know either language very well.

Yet others think speaking Sinhala or Tamil with a smattering of English give them status or that throwing in a few English words is the way to appear they are in tune with the new world. In short,they do it for “superduperness”.