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]

My name is ___ = 'Mera naam ____ hai.' I can see where it would sound like English to a non-speaker...

Yes! I think that was it. Her name was Sonja which is pretty European (don't know if there are any Indian names that sound similar), but it was the "Mera naam" that I think sounded surprisingly like "My name..." At least it sounded more like it than something like, "Je m'appelle."

I'm sitting here with my jaw dropped over your description of Indian languages. Different regions AND different levels of the same language. Wow. It's almost like...the idea that you're more fluent in English and speak it at home because it's easier seems almost like something you'd see in a Hollywood movie and everyone would think was ridiculous. You know, like, "If they're an Indian family why are they speaking Indian?" the way the bad guys in American movies always helpfully speak in accented-English so that the good guys can overhear them.:-) You know, now I think of it I think Anne Frank said her family often spoke English in the annex for a number of reasons.

But your family sounds hysterical, especially with of course everybody forgetting who speaks what. Makes my own loud family gatherings sound like something out of Brideshead Revisited by comparison!

[ringwraithe.livejournal.com]

I have a Sonja in my class...she's an Anglo-Indian who spent some years working in Britain, it'd be really funny if it was her you met :P We have 'Sonia' in our country, which sounds quite similar.

Yeah, there's generally a proper form and a vernacular form, like English...and there's the very colloquial form, and there's the uppish form. If you learn the language formally, you'll learn the latter. Very confusing.

It always makes me growl when someone asks me if I speak Indian, because there is no such language. In France, my uncle was writing the name for this Japanese/Indian duo's debut album in Hindi for them, and he asked what languages they sang in. The answer was 'Japanese and Indian.' Meh.

I frankly think LotR is a lot more realistic in some ways than some movies. The subtitled Elvish, for example. As opposed to accented English. :D

Not really...I live in the South where most of Dad's relatives are...and our family is slightly more serious-humourish, eccentric and all...and I take after them. My northie relatives are loud, cheerful and all talk at once, so they make me feel confused and lost...especially when Mum mixes up her languages :D Indian families are interesting when you're a hybrid.

Standard Disclaimer: Indian families you see on TV are not really us! Meep. Though Goodness Gracious Me is very funny.

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

Indian families you see on TV are not really us! Meep. Though Goodness Gracious Me is very funny.

LOL! Gotcha!

In fact, that makes me remember an article about how in a way the most realistic American family on TV was The Simpsons. So it was a show where sometimes people from other countries were like, "Wow, an American family that seems more like mine."

I'm glad to know there is no language of "Indian," because it sounded really strange to me to say it. Guess it's the same thing with "our" Indians--Native Americans I mean. Many nations, no one language.

I frankly think LotR is a lot more realistic in some ways than some movies. The subtitled Elvish, for example. As opposed to accented English. :D

LOL! Can you imagine them coming up with an Elvish accent--I mean, other than saying, "Okay, you elves are going to speak in a very formal English accent."