You Are What You Speak

By Madeleine Kando

I have a confession to make. I suffer from multiple personality disorder. It is the fate of many people like me who grow up bilingual or multilingual. But you know what? I LIKE it. I like being French one day, Dutch the next and American the rest of the time. I find myself being able to put on many different attires.I grew up in Paris and, to tell you the truth, I have mixed feelings about it.
Don’t misunderstand me: I admire the French culture: French movies, French cuisine. And French literature is absolutely mindblowingly beautiful. But I have the advantage of looking at things from a ‘cosmopolitan’ perspective and my personal experience in France as a Hungarian refugee after the Second World War was not exactly what you would call a positive one. I don’t suppose the French would agree with me, but at the time, the French didn’t fit my definition of a welcoming society. And because all one’s memories are so intertwined with the language one speaks, when I put on my French attire I definitely don’t feel like it fits me all that well. I put it on for special occasions, when I meet the parents of my French students for instance (why not teach French when you speak it fluently?). But I don’t feel all that comfortable in it. I am glad when it’s time to take it off, and slip into something more comfortable.

Now let’s see.. what else is in my wardrobe? Oh yes. My Dutch attire. I like that one probably even less, only because I was being fitted for it at a very critical age in my life: my puberty. In fact, I would’nt even call it an attire. I would call it more of a prison uniform.

Again, I have to apologize to all you Dutch nationals out there who are reading this. You DO fit the definition of a welcoming society, you have a time honored tradition of welcoming the oppressed and persecuted, including me, poor Hungarian refugee. But my personal experience growing up in Holland has revealed a lack of ‘broad mindedness’ on a personal level which resulted in my extreme dislike for wearing this particular attire.

You already have guessed what I am getting at with this metaphoric allusion to ‘attires’. I am talking about a country’s culture. The act of speaking goes way beyond expressing words. Speaking a certain language not only gives voice to your thoughts, it also expresses the nuances of those thoughts through the filter of the society that that language belongs to. And there is something uniquely extraordinary about people who grow up with different languages, they can step out of the mold of a particular culture and see it in a much more objective light. That gives someone a very special perspective.

Language is a verbal representation of a whole society’s history, culture, social norms... We, as individuals, are in fact an amalgamation of everything that a society is made up of. And of course, a society is the sum of the individuals that it encompasses. It’s not just a matter of language: the entire culture associated with that language is really what we are talking about. Parents who wish to teach their children their own native language, see it as a way to pass on their ‘cutlure’, a piece of themselves. In my case, I was so busy trying on my own new found American attire that I didn’t really focus much on passing on the other hand-me downs to my children. They are monolingual individuals. I have not managed to pass on my own 'cosmopolitan culture'.

But let me continue with my wardrobe metaphor and present to you my PIECE DE RESISTANCE, my American attire. If there is a favorite in my wardrobe it is definitely this one. It fits me like a glove, but at the same time it does not constrict me in any way. It is a designer piece, designed by ME in fact.

I learnt English as an adult, and I am sure I must speak it with a foreign accent which I blissfully cannot hear myself. To me this attire represents American know-how, American pragmatism, American friendliness and openness, not to mention the fact that I have a suspicion about the English language itself. I suspect it has become the dominant (second) language on earth because it is innately suited to do so.

As a non-native English speaker, I sometimes look at the English language from the outside in. Like a Neanderthaler would look at a car. Let me give you an example: At times, to cope with the feeling of depression that inevitably sets when one listens to the news, I find myself counting how many 'action' words are being used by the newscaster. It's a fun game to play. Action expressions can not really be translated accurately in other languages. How do you translate ‘jumping to conclusions’ in Dutch? Or ‘all the figures lined up correctly', 'He beat all odds', ‘ out of reach’,’taking steps’, ‘take charge’… How do you say those things in French? I could go on forever. I am not sure why American English is so action oriented, but it is. And that makes it a dynamic and easy to learn language.

Now, I won't start on the written part of a language because that would take another few pages to cover, but let me just allude to it here: when I read a Dutch newspaper I feel like I am walking through molasses. Slow and cumbersome. And even though French is a beautiful, poetic language when it comes to matters of the heart, it is archaic and convoluted in a practical sense. The plasticity of the English language is missing. No wonder English has become the dominant language of the world. The French feel threatened by English to the point of forbidding certain words in the French language. You cannot say ‘computer’ in French, you have to say ‘ordinateur’ or else they’ll get you. This is just as absurd as our attempt at boycotting the words ‘french fries’ during the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Did YOU ever order ‘freedom fries’ at McDonalds?
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