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

[bochup.livejournal.com]

Hmm, I'm Singaporean-Chinese, and I speak and write and swear in English and Chinese. Personally, I don't find a difference in myself when I switch from speaking English to Chinese (and vice versa), but that's probably because I grew up learning both and hence do not see English as a 'foreign language'. Most of the time, the language I choose depends on who I'm speaking to. If I'm speaking to another Chinese who is well-versed in Chinese idioms, I'll be able to express myself better in Chinese and with fewer words. Otherwise, speaking Chinese or English really don't matter all that much.

And about switching languages in mid-conversation? Happens all the time here. When I was in high school, my principal was a 'Nazi' and forbidded us from speaking in mixed English-Chinese-Whatever, but no one cared. It's very common to speak in a mixture of English-Chinese-Malay-Hokkein-Hindi-Cantonese-WhatHaveYou when you live in a multi-racial society. It helps to bridge the gap between cultural differences; it makes conversations more 'casual', and consequently, the best way to express myself (I guess) is to speak and think in a mixture of languages I know, choosing specific words/phrases/sayings/expressions that happen to express my thoughts and feelings most accurately. I'm not sure if I've articulated it well, but the connection between language and the self has a lot to do with the individual's own attachment to certain words/sayings of a particular language. For example, I may speak English most of the time, but I find myself inserting Chinese, Malay, or dialects in instances where they will make my point (in the conversation) more succinct.

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

Ah, that seems to fit it with what a lot of people have been saying. If you grow up speaking both languages it's very different than if you learn one later-or perhaps it's more accurate to say if you start speaking one later. That is, you might learn a language from an early age in school, but only use it regularly when you move to a different country when you're older.

For example, I may speak English most of the time, but I find myself inserting Chinese, Malay, or dialects in instances where they will make my point (in the conversation) more succinct.

That does make sense--and also fits with the idea that growing up as bilingual is a different experience that learning one language and then another, or having the languages separated into what you speak in one place or another. I love the idea of creating a third language that mixes the two together. It's both more personal (since each individual might have a different preference for what expressions they like in each language) and a standard language (because I'm sure some expressions naturally get used by everyone).