mlsanityData to 14 Oct 2026

Lost in the Mix: Evaluating LLM Understanding of Code-Switched Text

arXiv 2506.14012 ↗First posted 16 Jun 2025cs.CLcited by 10

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Abstract (arXiv)

Code-switching (CSW) is the act of alternating between two or more languages within a single discourse. This phenomenon is widespread in multilingual communities, and increasingly prevalent in online content, where users naturally mix languages in everyday communication. As a result, Large Language Models (LLMs), now central to content processing and generation, are frequently exposed to code-switched inputs. Given their widespread use, it is crucial to understand how LLMs process and reason about such mixed-language text. This paper presents a systematic evaluation of LLM comprehension under code-switching by generating CSW variants of established reasoning and comprehension benchmarks. While degradation is evident when foreign tokens disrupt English textunicodex2013even under linguistic constraintsunicodex2013embedding English into other languages often improves comprehension. Though prompting yields mixed results, fine-tuning offers a more stable path to degradation mitigation.

Key facts. Cited by 10 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026). Builds on 30 of its 52 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 16 Jun 2025.

Builds on

30 of 52 references.

References · 30

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18 more
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Cited by year (2026 to 14 Oct)

Citing papers per year: 2025: 5; 2026: 5.

10 papers.