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

[moonfruituk.livejournal.com]

I totally know what she means. I'm english, living in France this year, and I speak French pretty well - I can express most things I need to express, and I speak in French almost all the time, with the teachers I work with. In fact there's only one who I speak English with almost all the time. Most of the time, I do fine and I can express what I mean in French, but just sometimes, when I'm really wound up or really unhappy, I have to go back to English just because I can't manage in French. Like the other day, something happened that reminded me of when I'd been assaulted, and I couldn't explain how I felt in French - the words just weren't there.

However, there are some things that I can express better in French, just because the language has a neater way of saying them - little phrases and such things. And with some people I do switch in and out of French, or they do - especially when we're tired and neither of us can keep up the effort in a foreign language for that long.

As far as writing goes, I only write in English. I have a little notebook where I record random thoughts and stuff people say, and unless someone says something in French, everything in there is in English. I can't play with French the same way I can English.

As to possesing another soul, I suppose to an extent that's true. I do feel slightly different when I speak French, just a bit more, well, French. Foreign, I guess. Like I'm not my boring old English self.

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

I do feel slightly different when I speak French, just a bit more, well, French. Foreign, I guess. Like I'm not my boring old English self.

I think that's definitely part of the fun of speaking another language, particularly since it is almost like a costume you can hide behind. Sometimes you want to take it off because you have something to say you don't have the words for, but other times, like others have said, you can almost be more outspoken because you don't have the same attachments to the language.