Non-bilinguals tend to think of foreign languages as accessories or tools to be collected and applied, but anyone who has really achieved fluency in a second language has felt his ego go through the ringer. All pretenses are let go and one must reinvent oneself in a new cultural context. A Bulgarian once said to me in accented English: I wish you knew me in my native language. Im much funnier. I can tell the best stories, much better than I can in English. An Englishman, living in Norway once said to me: Whatever you do, dont learn the language. Youll lose your whole personality. There is so much truth in both statements, but not the only truth. You lose your facades and rhetorical tricks, and it takes a long time to get proficient enough to create new ones. In the meantime, you are yourself, no more and no less, stumbling around in a minefield, being a bloody foreigner, raising chuckles and either learning to accept it all, or feeling the pain too keenly and excusing yourself from the battle. I think I saw the Bulgarian better than she realised. The English guy was just conceding defeat. Sometimes, I try to import my truer, more honest and self.effacing Danish personality into my use of English. Then people ask me where I got the strange accent.
Posted on: Thu, 26 Jun 2014 08:18:52 +0000