There’s an interesting phenomenon with bi-lingual people - a kind of switch that triggers in the brain when they’re translating so that it becomes automatic. This can lead to confusion when you start picking up the language and trying to use it. For example, if a waiter asks me something in Bulgarian that I understand and I reply in Bulgarian, my wife will translate what I’ve said into English for them. This inevitably leads to embarrassment as speaking English is usually seen as being pretentious. I definitely won’t be exploiting this quirk or using it as motivation for learning more Bulgarian.
