system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
ELI5: Why do multi-lingual people seemingly, with no reason, switch between languages while talking to someone who is also multi-lingual? What benefit does it have over staying with the language they started the conversation with?
gpt
It's called code-switching, and it allows the speakers to draw from both languages' vocabularies to express ideas. Some words in one language don't have nice, short, or eloquent equivalents in another, so if you're speaking to someone who knows both languages, you use whichever one helps you to most easily get your ideas across.