im ukrainian, so im able to communicate the next thoughts to you only in english: lately I've been thinking a lot about how i strive to learn foreign languages (spanish included 😋) to read books in their original languages. i want to be able or at least try as hard as possible to fathom their original essence. i want to feel and enjoy those languages in a way i feel and enjoy reading in my native. i really like to read in ukrainian, especially books of ukrainian origin which dive deep into our historical or cultural context and are difficult for foreigners to comprehend fully. while i can't abandon using english completely, i think i managed to find a way to reduce its colonizing impact on me. even though you can hardly say this way is easy.
thank you for reading and sharing your experience with us!! i’ve trying to do the same. reading colombian authors is such a delight and i can’t believe i stay away from such talent and understanding for so long.
As someone who is more fluent in english than their mother tongue i really wish i could communicate more in my mother tongue. i think it’s so important to question why we choose english in certain situations. I loved reading this and getting the perspective of other bilinguals on communicating/writing in english
Loved reading this. As a brazilian who spent my late childhood years on the anglophone web, I constantly struggle to find the right words to express myself in portuguese. I only feel understood when speaking to my sister, who shares the same experience. I tell her the most random things while mixing languages and I dont really have that connection with anyone else.
i’m chinese, reverse-colonized (immigrated) when i was 9, and there’s a special designation for people who immigrate from their homeland in their teens — the 1.5 generation. english is my primary writing language as it is for you. i cannot write, in the literary sense, in chinese. due to the logographic characters i’ve also forgotten how to physically write chinese. what’s worse is to become a US citizen means to give up chinese citizenship (china is proud, they only let you have one; it’s also neigh impossible to get it back). though sometimes, if i’m lucky, i still dream in my mother’s tongue
just rambling now, because its not often i run into a bilingual interested language and bilingualism. ive also thrown around the idea of writing a bilingual story(?) not the kind where every paragraph is written twice, but where the languages switch in different situations, talking to different people, as it naturally does. i get that this massively cuts down on the amount of people for whom the story is legible, but if one were in of me, i would read the fuck out of it. personally. maybe versions entirely in one language could be provided as translations or something.
i found out that “Chemistry” by weike wang has interspersed Chinese, and in an interview with the she mentioned that Junot Díaz drops entire paragraphs in spanish. i thought you might be interested to know
loved this piece! made me think of “trado” by svetlana cârstean and athena farrokhzad, an anthology on translation as an act of betrayal but also as an act of love
this was everything. i've also been tussling with my relationship to English and i think your piece might have expressed that discomfort even better for me than my own essay did. we are all trying to work our way home. i'm so grateful you wrote this and shared it with us 🫶🏿🫶🏿
ayan! i appreciate this so much. it is hard battle but all we can do is acknowledge it, and do a better job at keeping in touch with our roots. we owe it to ourselves.
I heavily relate to this and I haven't had the confidence to talk about it with anyone;
Not being able to find the words to say something in portuguese while I can say it in english, not knowing many brazillian comedians (I'm in to comedy) but being able to list a huge list of foreign ones that aren't even very popular, not being able to have conversations about brazillian films cause I haven't seen many, these things happen a bit too often in conversation. But I can't talk about it (complain) out loud... If I do, while it isn't my intention, it sounds like a humblebrag.
"omg did i tell you already that I speak english soooo well, like damn I'm so bilingual"
The internet has created the possibility for ppl to spend most of their youth inside a bedroom and to create their own little environment of which they will be a product. It's entirely possible for a latin-american kid to have spoken more english by the time they're 20 than their own native tongue.
my mother tongue is Traditional Mandarin and i majored in English in uni. Back then i chose this major because i too feel like i get to express myself in a somewhat distant but comfortable way in this foreign language and no other language had made me feel that free before. However, graduating from uni, i realized these four years of higher education were only trying to shape my thoughts into something isn’t even compatible with the systems and values here in my homeland. That last semester we were studying postcolonial literature, and i brought up this topic to my European professor, asked him why is that i am made to think like a Westerner even though i am not and won’t be living in the faraway Western world? and he remained silent.
Your situation and mine aren’t really the same, but your writing just somehow echoed and expressed so much of what I’ve been thinking about all these years. I am really glad that algorithm or whatever brought your writing to me. Thank you for writing this! This article really meant a lot to me.
I think most of us use English in case someone pointed out mistakes in our Writing we could simply say “it isn’t my first language” and shift the blame, but how embarrassing it is if you made a mistake in your own first language
I think most of us use English in case someone pointed out mistakes in our Writing we could simply say “it isn’t my first language” and shift the blame, but how embarrassing it is if you made a mistake in your own first language
I'm brazilian, and in brazil, once we finish highschool we have to do an exam called ENEM. In this exam, among answering 180 questions, we need to write an essay about a theme they give us. The essay, of course, must be written in portuguese. My biggest problem with this exam weren't the ungodly amount of questions, it was the fact that I — a girl who started learning english by herself as a child because she didn't like how my little pony songs sounded in the brazilian dub — simply could not think in portuguese while writing. I like writing and do it since I was little, but since the pandemic, I too find way easier to express my thoughts in english. It's nice to know there are more people out there going through the same :)
this is one of the most interesting pieces i've read on here! it is very well articulated and as a bilingual myself, i feel like i understand myself better after reading. thank you both <3
i loved this article ❤️. i struggle so much with my relationship with english because of the content i consume, i decided to start reading more books from my country (Brasil). This was honestly the perfect read ✨️
this is really nice piece, thank you!
im ukrainian, so im able to communicate the next thoughts to you only in english: lately I've been thinking a lot about how i strive to learn foreign languages (spanish included 😋) to read books in their original languages. i want to be able or at least try as hard as possible to fathom their original essence. i want to feel and enjoy those languages in a way i feel and enjoy reading in my native. i really like to read in ukrainian, especially books of ukrainian origin which dive deep into our historical or cultural context and are difficult for foreigners to comprehend fully. while i can't abandon using english completely, i think i managed to find a way to reduce its colonizing impact on me. even though you can hardly say this way is easy.
thank you for reading and sharing your experience with us!! i’ve trying to do the same. reading colombian authors is such a delight and i can’t believe i stay away from such talent and understanding for so long.
As someone who is more fluent in english than their mother tongue i really wish i could communicate more in my mother tongue. i think it’s so important to question why we choose english in certain situations. I loved reading this and getting the perspective of other bilinguals on communicating/writing in english
thank you for reading and sharing, atanda. this one is very special for me and seeing other people relate means everything <3
Loved reading this. As a brazilian who spent my late childhood years on the anglophone web, I constantly struggle to find the right words to express myself in portuguese. I only feel understood when speaking to my sister, who shares the same experience. I tell her the most random things while mixing languages and I dont really have that connection with anyone else.
i’m chinese, reverse-colonized (immigrated) when i was 9, and there’s a special designation for people who immigrate from their homeland in their teens — the 1.5 generation. english is my primary writing language as it is for you. i cannot write, in the literary sense, in chinese. due to the logographic characters i’ve also forgotten how to physically write chinese. what’s worse is to become a US citizen means to give up chinese citizenship (china is proud, they only let you have one; it’s also neigh impossible to get it back). though sometimes, if i’m lucky, i still dream in my mother’s tongue
just rambling now, because its not often i run into a bilingual interested language and bilingualism. ive also thrown around the idea of writing a bilingual story(?) not the kind where every paragraph is written twice, but where the languages switch in different situations, talking to different people, as it naturally does. i get that this massively cuts down on the amount of people for whom the story is legible, but if one were in of me, i would read the fuck out of it. personally. maybe versions entirely in one language could be provided as translations or something.
question: do you still live in columbia or no?
thank you for sharing, kenneth.
i think a bilingual story it’s brilliant even if it’s not universal. it makes it more special. i would say go for it!!
and yes, i’m still living in colombia
i found out that “Chemistry” by weike wang has interspersed Chinese, and in an interview with the she mentioned that Junot Díaz drops entire paragraphs in spanish. i thought you might be interested to know
loved this piece! made me think of “trado” by svetlana cârstean and athena farrokhzad, an anthology on translation as an act of betrayal but also as an act of love
omg, i never heard of this before but i will be definitely checking it out. thanks!!!
this was everything. i've also been tussling with my relationship to English and i think your piece might have expressed that discomfort even better for me than my own essay did. we are all trying to work our way home. i'm so grateful you wrote this and shared it with us 🫶🏿🫶🏿
thank you for reading💖
ayan! i appreciate this so much. it is hard battle but all we can do is acknowledge it, and do a better job at keeping in touch with our roots. we owe it to ourselves.
Me identifico. Gracias por esta pieza <3 subscribed!
Hey there Luisa!
I heavily relate to this and I haven't had the confidence to talk about it with anyone;
Not being able to find the words to say something in portuguese while I can say it in english, not knowing many brazillian comedians (I'm in to comedy) but being able to list a huge list of foreign ones that aren't even very popular, not being able to have conversations about brazillian films cause I haven't seen many, these things happen a bit too often in conversation. But I can't talk about it (complain) out loud... If I do, while it isn't my intention, it sounds like a humblebrag.
"omg did i tell you already that I speak english soooo well, like damn I'm so bilingual"
The internet has created the possibility for ppl to spend most of their youth inside a bedroom and to create their own little environment of which they will be a product. It's entirely possible for a latin-american kid to have spoken more english by the time they're 20 than their own native tongue.
It's kind of sad, but also kind of amazing (?)
Ok I gotta write a piece about this as well
Love your work, you're awesome
my mother tongue is Traditional Mandarin and i majored in English in uni. Back then i chose this major because i too feel like i get to express myself in a somewhat distant but comfortable way in this foreign language and no other language had made me feel that free before. However, graduating from uni, i realized these four years of higher education were only trying to shape my thoughts into something isn’t even compatible with the systems and values here in my homeland. That last semester we were studying postcolonial literature, and i brought up this topic to my European professor, asked him why is that i am made to think like a Westerner even though i am not and won’t be living in the faraway Western world? and he remained silent.
Your situation and mine aren’t really the same, but your writing just somehow echoed and expressed so much of what I’ve been thinking about all these years. I am really glad that algorithm or whatever brought your writing to me. Thank you for writing this! This article really meant a lot to me.
I think most of us use English in case someone pointed out mistakes in our Writing we could simply say “it isn’t my first language” and shift the blame, but how embarrassing it is if you made a mistake in your own first language
I think most of us use English in case someone pointed out mistakes in our Writing we could simply say “it isn’t my first language” and shift the blame, but how embarrassing it is if you made a mistake in your own first language
I'm brazilian, and in brazil, once we finish highschool we have to do an exam called ENEM. In this exam, among answering 180 questions, we need to write an essay about a theme they give us. The essay, of course, must be written in portuguese. My biggest problem with this exam weren't the ungodly amount of questions, it was the fact that I — a girl who started learning english by herself as a child because she didn't like how my little pony songs sounded in the brazilian dub — simply could not think in portuguese while writing. I like writing and do it since I was little, but since the pandemic, I too find way easier to express my thoughts in english. It's nice to know there are more people out there going through the same :)
this is one of the most interesting pieces i've read on here! it is very well articulated and as a bilingual myself, i feel like i understand myself better after reading. thank you both <3
i loved this article ❤️. i struggle so much with my relationship with english because of the content i consume, i decided to start reading more books from my country (Brasil). This was honestly the perfect read ✨️
i adore u!!