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this post was submitted on 30 Nov 2025
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People often talk about the roles of language in communication, and in thought structuring, but you touched a third aspect not often talked about - identity and power. Your comparison is spot on, because I think this is the factor that matters in all three cases.
Basically: when you use a certain variety*, you're signalling your group identity. For something like "six seven" that's immediately obvious — it doesn't convey anything on its own, only that identity.
And with group identity comes control over a certain "space", metaphorical or literal. By using a different variety than the one someone else uses, you put a metaphorical "fence" between you and them, marking that space. I think it's both what you and your mum are doing, in your case it sounds like "just leave me alone, OK?", in hers it might be, dunno, "right now I'd rather not deal with you, but I need to, so..."
*"variety" in this case can mean anything from "a completely distinct and unrelated language" to "the same language, with some subtle phonetic differences", or anything inbetween. It's a loose term.
You don't get the opportunity to use the word "shibboleth" often, but this is one.
I think there is also another thing where the fence you erect by choosing another variety is not necessarily between you and someone else, but between you and yourself. This is something I notice in myself and my sister. We are both introverted and uncomfortable sharing personal feelings and emotions - her especially. And she has a strong tendency to express emotions in English and not her native language. I think the added abstraction acts as something of a shield, making the sharing feel less personal and thus less scary.
I used to write poetry and I experienced the same thing there. I had a hard time writing poetry in my native tongue as it felt too personal, so I only ever wrote in English and French.
I did remember the word shibboleth but explaining it was a bother, so I skipped it.
The "fence" being potentially internal is a great point.
Interesting. For me it's kind the opposite: I'm fine writing it in my native language or in Italian, but writing poetry in English feels... yucky, for some reason.
I feel like writing poetry in Chinese felt a lot "poem-y" like its one syllable per word, I can make each line the same length, looks more "symmetrical", and in Chinese, I can shorten typical 2 character words into 1 character in a poem, and that'll still get meaning across.
But I can't write it by hand, I have to type via Pinyin on a computer/phone.
Sometimes I wanna mix languages to represent different identities.
Cantonese = Home Life and relationship with parents and as a Cantonese person
Mandarin = Mainland China and it's associated politics
English = United States and it's associated politics, and the problems I faced in schools, and the racism and xenophobia, and life in general when I'm outside of home
Well English can be a yucky language in many ways, so I don't blame you!
That's interesting, because I do that too. Native language for family use, "common tongue" for outsiders and strangers, English when angry or want to be serious. They do feel like three stages of distance. Also, each language has slightly different preferences with slightly different ways of thinking, which leads to you often think different things in different languages. But more often than not, they just end up in a big muddle.