Speaking in tongues

[sistermagpie]

Today was S's last day in my Saturday ballet class, because she's been transferred back to Germany, which is where she is from. She said she hoped one day to get transferred to India because she speaks Hindi, which I thought was really cool. She said Hindi sounded something like German and English because they're all Indo-Germanic languages.

C, who is also in this class, is from France. So we started talking about speaking different languages and C said that she was much more outgoing about her feelings in English, that she was very shy in French but now sometimes got frustrated speaking to her family or her best friend thinking, "This would be easier if you understood English." She felt she was sort of hiding behind the language but also letting her true self show more...which made sense to me, somehow. I'm sure if I ever finally mastered another language well enough to communicate in it I might feel that way. It also made me think of a discussion about TTT where somebody said it was fake the way Elrond and Arwen switched from English to Elvish in mid-conversation, only to have some multi-lingual people say no, that was very realistic, that they often switched languages depending on the subject. Some things are more easily spoken about in different languages.

So I thought I'd throw this out to the amazingly polyglot people on lj--I know some of you speak more than one language...do you find differences in yourself from one language to another? Do you all often speak English or just write in it? I used to have a bookmark I made that said, "To speak another language is to possess another soul" or something like that--does it seem like that? Does what C said make sense to you?

Comments

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

I must admit, it's hard for me to imagine you struggling to express yourself in English because you sound like a native on lj! In fact, I think I made a reference to you during the conversation with S&C because at one point S was under the impression, somehow, that *I* was Swedish. Don't know how that happened. Both S and C speak English fluently, but it was funny, for instance, that S, whose German accent is very noticeable, was complimenting C on the fact that she had no accent at all...but she does have one. It's not one you can immediately identify as French--it's very pretty, actually. But I guess it took a native speaker for it to stick out since it's so subtle.

The other thing where C is a great example is where you were talking about how you're just trying to be understood so you can't always be so precise...often that can lead to a person speaking really beautifully. Maybe English is a language that lends itself to that sort of thing since it's not very rigid in the way people are expected to talk--in America especially. Like, I love listening to young children try to communicate something that's just a little above their heads because they'll often come out with something really poetic that works. For instance, once I was walking down the street and a little kid and his father were walking near me. As they passed McDonalds the boy asked if they could go there for dinner and the father said no. So he asked if they could go there for dinner "sometime," obviously meaning "sometime soon." So the father said, "Sure. How about June 18th, 2067?" Totally taking advantage of the kid's not expressing himself perfectly. So now I'm listening closely as the kid frowns and tries to think of how to respond. He said, "No. I mean, can we go there sometime..." And I know the correct phrase he's looking for is, "sometime in the near future" but he won't know that. But finally he comes up with, "Can we go there for dinner sometime around now?

For some reason I just loved this. It wasn't like listening to somebody inarticulate, it was like listening to somebody who spoke creatively. I think the same thing can happen if someone starts with a different native language. If they get to the point where they're very fluent in the adopted language the more interesting influences of the original language can start to shine, you know?

The fact that words simply mean more to me in my mother tongue, than in any other language, automatically makes a good poem, or other type of lyric, more beautiful then I would find it in English, French or Spanish.

Yes! I don't know how young you have to be when you become bilingual for words to have the same weight in both languages. Heh. Makes me wonder if the porn experience is slightly different for native English-speakers on lj than it is for people writing in a second language. Like, cathexys said the word for "sex toy" in German sounded obscene, but I wonder if a lot of the words commonly used in porn sound significantly less obscene to non-native English speakers.

[trobadora]

I wonder if a lot of the words commonly used in porn sound significantly less obscene to non-native English speakers.

Personally, I think it's all about exposure. English porn sounds less obscene to me than German porn, but that's because I've read tons of smutty fic in English and nearly none in German. I don't think I can really compare the level of obscenity unless I've had about equal exposure to both.

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

Clearly, you need to get to work on that.

[trobadora]

I know - my education is sorely lacking...