The same happens to me often. Luckily for me, both Gen Z and people in corporate environments like to insert random English words in my native language, so depending on the context it might come up as pretentious corporate or “Howdy fellow kids”, but at least not like I’m a complete idiot.
In Hong Kong, mixing a moderate number of English words into speech is considered an indicator of good education. There is, however, a very specific way to do it, and doing it wrong will instead cause the opposite effect.
This effect is so strong that many English words have been actually absorbed into Cantonese as loan words and displaced their native equivalents.
The same happens to me often. Luckily for me, both Gen Z and people in corporate environments like to insert random English words in my native language, so depending on the context it might come up as pretentious corporate or “Howdy fellow kids”, but at least not like I’m a complete idiot.
TBH I’d rather look like an idiot than a pretentious corporate.
insert meme
You use the English word because you’re a pretentious idiot
I use the English word because I forgot
We are not the same
In Hong Kong, mixing a moderate number of English words into speech is considered an indicator of good education. There is, however, a very specific way to do it, and doing it wrong will instead cause the opposite effect.
This effect is so strong that many English words have been actually absorbed into Cantonese as loan words and displaced their native equivalents.