code switching

Back from California where I had best-man duties at close friend's wedding. Close friend (CF) was born in Vietnam and raised in a predominantly African-American neighborhood on the eastside of New Orleans. We've been pals since ninth grade and from the start his code switching--combining Vietnamese and African-American vernacular dialect--has fascinated me. Part hip hop and gangsta rap diction and its attendant masculinity, part Asian-American syntax (ubiquitous singular nouns, etc.): "Bitch, I got to do my Physic homework," etc.

CF's younger sisters--in some ways tough, sassy, independent and in other ways traditional and thoroughly old-school--have some really neat speech patterns too. Once during a visit to CF's we were all sitting around when one sister, in high school at the time, got a phone call and took the call in the other room. Her other sister looked at CF, and offered boisterous commentary, all in Vietnamese except the lone English term "booty call."

Best-man duties included driving extended family around L.A. so I had ample time to soak in the sounds of the code switching, the poetry of which really grows on you. CF's parents, who are mostly monolingual and who are currently displaced in Baton Rouge (refugees for the second time in their lives), peppered their conversations with post-Katrina bits of English: "category five," "Rita," etc. Even CF's mom, who I've heard say maybe three words in English over the years, at one point said "FEMA" during a conversation with her sister.