At the very least I suggest linking to the wiki along with the other links at the top of the page.

Trilingual! Well. I can say that it would be strange to mix up languages 2 or 3 with language 1 (the native language), but much, much more common to mix up the two non-native languages. From personal experience, when I’ve been speaking or listening to Japanese (my second language), it’s then very difficult to switch to Bulgarian (my third), although I never confuse either with English. What ends up happening is I’ll say something with Bulgarian grammar, but Japanese vocabulary (or vice versa). Also, small words like the equivalents of “but” or “um” or “hello” are easy to mix up. That’s because we don’t think about those utterances as words with meaning, but as social sounds designed to move a conversation along. The same for phrases like “damn it!” or “you got it!” or “I did it!” It’s much more likely those phrases will come out in the wrong language than the words in a sentence you have to think about: “I am unhappy because you disrespected me earlier today.” Of course, it’s possible that you don’t know the correct grammar or memorized it wrong, in which case, you’ll make the same mistake every time.

Writing accents is hard, I think., because we are much more forgiving of mistakes in grammar when we listen to speech. A person might say to you “You can say me where is the bathroom, yes?” and you’ll probably give them the benefit of the doubt, but when somebody writes it down, it’s suddenly a glaring problem.

Yeah, I’m on vacation. I’ve got nothing better to do than write long responses.

One last question: How many languages does Phe speak? It seems odd that Luca would speak about something so emotional in his third language. If nothing else, he would want the firmer strategic ground that speaking in his first language would give him, especially if that puts Phe at a disadvantage.

Luca is trilingual, with the main language (Santri) being his weakest. So he tends to mix up the grammar and the words a lot more (especially when stressed out or after a long day). Like you mentioned, he does his thinking in Pasori and has to translate it in his head before talking. I’ve also read that second language learners can mix up their grammar/ syntax, which is why I have so much of it here. And I do have a corrected line like you mentioned coming up later Maybe he doesn’t know he’s making the mistakes right now!

A word on inserting foreign words into speech: I’m an English teacher in Bulgaria, so I talk to a lot of people who are non-native speakers of all the different levels of proficiency. Even for very poor English speakers, it’s very rare to insert non-English words into a sentence. For beginners, everything they say is in English because they have to think out the whole sentence ahead of time, then translate it, then speak it. More advanced speakers can think in English, but then they don’t think in their native language, and so don’t use Bulgarian words. If there is a word that doesn’t map into English, then usually people say something like “It is my…um…kak da kazvam imenden?…it is the holiday for people with my name.” The exception is expletives like “my god!” or “huh.” Which aren’t really language, but sounds we make subconsciously—and even those go away as a person becomes fluent. In a very stressful situation, then a non-fluent person might shift over entirely to their native language (”What are you doing? Bozhe moi, kak gluposti! Spri sega! Stiga!”)

It may be that Phe and Luca both speak both languages fluently, in which case we can expect them to switch back and forth depending on their emotional state and the “flavor” of what they want to express (my wife finds it easier to speak with me in English about politics and in Bulgarian about shopping for dinner, for instance). Probably most of the Pasori are bilingual, and speak both a “court language” and a “home language,” like the 19th century Russian court speaking French. Most of the time, those guys didn’t speak Russian to each other ever (in fact many learned Russian from their nannies or not at all). So it looks like, for most adults, languages are binary—you are either speaking one or the other—and mixing them causes enormous stress and frustration.

…which I think you can use to your advantage.
Something like this.
…grr…You are the problem.
or
You are…dzarlat…damn it! You are…the problem!
…Why you would speak for them?

Hope I’m not being too much of a jerk posting this long message. I’m just finally happy to have an opportunity to share something I really know about.

Finally…is there going to be a Pasori-English dictionary or phrasebook any time soon?