SPEAK SPANGLISH TO ME BABY: Writing Bilingual/Multilingual Characters

(Some background here. I've always written for writers' magazines on topics of interest to me, and multilingualism in particular is one of my favorite topics for obvious personal reasons. This article, however, was rejected because it was too likely to get authors in trouble because of the current climate--something about worrying about co-oping other people's cultures, or getting languages wrong and then having to deal with angry readers. The latter I figure you handle with research, and I don't think it's any different from any other aspect of a Real Thing People Have Experience With that you're trying to write about... you're going to get in as much trouble for writing your Marine wrong in your romance as you are for having him use Puerto Rican slang when he's a Venezuelan. The former... all I can say is that I've always felt getting people to speak the languages I know co-ops them for my culture, rather than the other way around. But I recognize that my opinions are mine alone, and so I say... take this cheerful article with as many grains of salt as you think necessary.

But do write bilingual characters. I'm tired of the monolingual ones.)

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All right, friends. I read broadly in genre fiction, from science fiction and fantasy to romance and thrillers, and if there’s something I see a paucity of, it’s characters who know more than one language. Multilingual people aren’t rare! The last US census revealed that 1 in 5 Americans speak more than one language, and while polling the world’s harder, research suggests over half the human population is at least bilingual. And yet, so many stories fail to portray this common human trait! Let’s talk about the story potential you can wring from multilingual characters.

A Note About Accents

This isn’t an article about how you can faithfully portray accents in fiction, or even if you should. Accents indicate that the character is speaking English, and what we’re discussing is characters who aren’t. 

So how can you use bilingual characters in your fiction? Let me count the many ways!

A way to express culture. Languages inevitably bring cultural baggage with them; only think of the number of English idioms and the historical and cultural context required to understand them. Whether you’re evoking a real human culture with an existing language, or creating an alien (or fake human) language from scratch, you can use language to give flavor. It can be as mild as using a few words in Japanese to remind the reader of the character’s background… or using French to mention Cloche Volant, the flying Easter bells. (Seriously, look that one up. It’s fantastic.)

A way to keep secrets. When my mom and I want to communicate about my daughter without her knowing what we’re saying, we talk in Spanish over her head. (Or we used to, before school started teaching her enough Spanish to catch bits of what we’re saying!) Conversations conducted in languages that some characters know—and some don’t—is an excellent way to add mystery to a plot, or a divisive element to a relationship: “You were talking to your mom about me again, weren’t you.” Of course, this is a knife that cuts both ways… if you think you’re keeping a conversation secret by switching to another language, you never know who might be listening and whether they’re fluent… like the couple in the grocery who were talking about me, thinking I couldn’t understand them! Oops.

A hint into people’s home life/childhood/other lives. The languages you learn during childhood are a reflection of your situation; do you live on the border of a country where more than one language is spoken? Are your parents immigrants with their own native language? (And did they try to fit in, or did they stubbornly hold to their native country’s customs?) Are you part of a city with significant international (or interplanetary!) commerce? You can signal a great deal about a character’s background by addressing what languages they learned, and when. My daughter’s Spanish teacher has no ties at all to any Hispanic culture, for instance; she just liked Spanish in high school and kept going! Which is so different from most Spanish language teachers in the area that it makes a great character note. 

A way to signal intimacy or emotion. Knowing more than one language gives you options on how to express yourself. You might prefer one language for talking to family or loved ones, or you might cherry-pick words when a word in one language fits better than the one you’re using. But language choice can and often does reflect your emotional state. People often codeswitch into different/native languages when they’re upset or overcome with emotion. 

A path to trust… or conflict. Most people are delighted when someone makes an effort to learn their language, even when they make mistakes. This makes for great opportunities for relationship building (and is extra fun in romances, bromances, or forever-friendships). Since it also leads to the ability to share secrets, as described above, it can create new plot opportunities for characters in an existing relationship. On the other side of the coin, there are the handful of people who find it presumptuous or upsetting when someone tries to learn their language, whether it’s because they feel superior, or because they feel the new speaker is trying to co-opt their culture. And there’s the time-honored problem of getting it wrong, which can be treated seriously (“this caused a diplomatic incident”) or humorously (“you called the bus a WHAT? LOL”).

A Note About Spanglish

When cultures with different languages meet, at their borders the speakers will start creating a weirdling mix of the two in order to communicate. Anywhere you’ve got multiculturalism with multiple languages, you’ve got people creating what are called pidgins, attempts by native speakers to cross the linguistic borders. Once those pidgins get adopted by people as a native language (usually their children), we get what we call a creole: something that stops being phrases jumbled together and starts having real grammatical rules. For example, Spanglish, which started as a pidgin, is now a creole. I mention this so that if you decide to delve into multicultural settings, you’ll have another avenue of research for how language is used—it’s too large a topic for this article. 

These are only a few of the ways you can use bilingual characters in fiction, and while there are no doubt more ways this handful will keep you busy for books!

Handling the Mechanics

Having established why writing multilingual characters is useful, let’s talk about how to do it. As a bilingual character myself (with a minor in linguistics!) I will of course encourage people to do the research—and enjoy it! —if you’re going to use an existing human language in your fiction. Learn some words yourself… talk to a speaker, and a native speaker particularly if you can find one. (The internet makes this easy!) Be exacting, though; even if multiple countries speak the same language, they’ll have their own distinct version of it. Spanish from Spain and Spanish from Mexico aren’t the same beasts. (Advanced multilingual writers might want to delve into the friction between characters who come from these distinct cultures, and the language goof-ups that happen when they try to understand or co-opt one another’s slang and idioms.)

If you’re going to make up a language, either for a fantasy/science fiction setting, or to create a “fake” human culture that doesn’t exist, I salute you! Conlangs (constructed languages) are an entire different topic. They are also tremendous fun if you’re into that; I’ll mention some resources at the end.

But down to brass tacks (see? Weird idioms!). How do you get across your character’s multilingualism? You have two basic options:

All English, All the Time: Write out your character’s dialogue in English (or whatever language you’re using for your book), but tag it, like this:

She switched to Spanish. “But I know you’ll be there for me in the hour of the mamey. Won’t you?”

Notice that direct translation of idioms can also add to the sense that someone is speaking a different language. Even writing out ‘in the hour of the mamey’ in English strikes me as a little bizarre, and I know what it means. (If you’re curious, here’s an explanation, translated into English.)

Sprinkled like Delicious Confetti: Your other choice is to drop bits of the foreign language into the story and then mention the translation: 

“Te amo,” he said: I love you. 

Interestingly, older books often sprinkle foreign phrases and words throughout the text without bothering to translate them, because back then if you didn’t know Latin, or French, and smatterings of other languages, you were poorly educated and deserved to go to a textbook to look it up. These days, we’re lucky: most e-readers have a translate function, and highlighting a phrase usually gets you what you need. So if you want to go hardcore, you can try going almost contextless:

“Te amo,” he said, and my heart skipped a beat. Did he mean it?

That’s really all there is to it—though as everything involving writing, it’s all about the execution and practice, practice, practice.

Great Examples and Resources

To round out the article, here are some novels I think use multiple languages well, and a few books for people who want to learn languages or construct their own.

Fiction

• Shogun, by James Clavell – This classic work involves a culture clash between a British protagonist and the Japanese among whom he’s stranded, and the language figures largely in it.
• The Sparrow, by Mary Doria Russell – A science fiction novel with a Jesuit priest translator as a protagonist.
• The Anita Blake series, by Laurell K. Hamilton – The vampire Jean-Claude in this urban fantasy series was born in France and still codeswitches into French in some situations; in later books, he has discussions in French in front of the protagonist that she can’t understand, and it continues to be a significant part of his character.

Nonfiction

• Fluent in Three Months, by Bennie Lewis – I thought this was a great overview about how to master languages quickly, and I liked its emphasis on the difference between oral fluency and literacy.
• Spanglish: the Making of a New American Language, by Ilan Stavans – While mostly a glossary, the book is worth the price for its initial section about the history of Spanglish, and the cultural forces that created it.
• The Art of Language Invention: From Horse-Lords to Dark Elves, the Words Behind the Worldbuilding, by David. J. Peterson. This is a great overview of constructed languages, with examples from modern properties like Games of Thrones. It’s only one of the many books available about constructed languages… if you’d like some more, check this post: https://www.patreon.com/posts/conlang-book-16693044

And now, since this is a blog post and not a magazine article, feel free to tell me your thoughts about multilingual characters! Or recommend books you think are pertinent!

Also, this post is public, so feel free to share it. <3