This is discussion archived from a time before the current discussion method was installed.
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Fast Eddie: Darn. I was going to try to insert a few proverbs in front of a few nouns, but it got fixed. ;-) The longest way around is the shortest way to _____. That sort of thing.
Norwegian Guy: Speaking as a former exchange student in the US, I found it hard to keep some commonplace Norwegian words out of my vocab. For instance, I eventually surrendered in my struggle against "ja", and ended up at a vaguely Midwestern "yeah". I would also, at times burst out with "nei", and I'd count in Norwegian. Otherwise, my accent is good enough that I'm asked whether I have one. Just to support the case that this trope is not entirely unrealistic.
GAC: Couple thoughts here. First, maybe the title to this one isn't the best. When browsing I have often read "Poirot" as a dialect spelling of "pirate" — rather confusing to say the least. — A corrollary to this trope, if its represented in media (I doubt there are any well-known examples) would be the tendency for multilinguals to accidentally select a word from the wrong second language. I often find myself using "dui" ([dwej], " dway", with a falling tone, Chinese for "correct") in place of "si" when speaking Spanish, and I remember once hearing a Hong Konger (presumably Cantonese-speaking) translate a Chinese word into German rather than English.
