Languages and personal lexicons
Growing up, I didn't speak Spanish all the time, though my mother is a first-generation Mexican-American who speaks Spanish fluently. Although she didn't actively teach my brother and me Spanish, she did use certain phrases and worked their way into our family's lexicon, just because in her mind, it was faster or easier to get the point across in Spanish than in English. By this point, I feel comfortable saying that I can read and write Spanish fluently, but I don't speak it all that often. Even so, there are some of the same phrases of my mother's that I hear coming out of my mouth when I'm not thinking. It's easier and faster for me to say "fĂjate" than it is to say "look at that!", even if I didn't actually know that's what it meant in English. Even though my husband doesn't speak Spanish at all, he's learned what some of the phrases mean just through the way I use them. Similarly, I've picked up on a couple