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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.
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.