When a Tree is a Baum and a Durvo at the same time — about mingling languages
My current language of expression is English, my language for everyday life and complexity is German, and my language for family and a certain sense of completeness is Bulgarian.I don’t understand how it came to this linguistic division of my mind. Ever since I’ve started learning English, I’ve associated it with music (probably popular), theatre, literature and global /digital communication. I read a lot in English, novels and non-fiction. Sometimes, I think it gives me the possibility to shape an identity for myself that is not connected to my origin. It is no coincidence that I associate English with mobility, high culture and probably also freedom of speech since that is the cultural standing of English. However, my understanding of these terms has changed a lot throughout the years — especially by reading texts like “Decolonizing the Mind”. Mobility connected to imperialism, high culture to the violence that comes with civilization and freedom of speech with the power over discourse.
German is the language I grew up with. My parents were concerned about me and my sister learning it properly right from the start so that we wouldn’t have trouble in school or get bad grades. It has been the language from my everyday life: I speak German with my friends; I talk in it about my emotions, I discuss politics, social change or abstract theories, I write in it for most of my education and I’ve read in it a lot. It is part of a certain me. However, it is also the language I associate with bureaucracy, institutional challenges, and contracts. My feeling about German is very ambivalent: It is the language I know best, but to a certain extent it is not my chosen tongue. My attachment to it isn’t strong. I understand that I’m not able to express myself the same way in either English or Bulgarian as I can in German. Still, something in me revolts to call it my home or my mother tongue maybe because I see myself as a foreigner in it.
I’ve visited Bulgaria every year at least once. I treasure my trips there a lot and the older I got the stronger my desire for these visits became. I am very grateful to my parents that they brought me and my sister up bilingual. My sister is more fluent and literate in Bulgarian than I am although — and this is speculation on my part — I feel her connection to Bulgaria is less strong than mine. I’ve had problems with the language ever since I can remember. I use the German grammar and language structure and apply it to Bulgarian and I can’t flip or roll or trill the ‘r’ which marks my difficulties to master the language completely. As a child I might get mocked but I didn’t think about it too much and just blabbered along. However, after a while my problems in pronunciation started blocking my mind which resulted in frustration and growing insecurity.
The more I learned the less I could communicate my thoughts to my relatives. Even when I talk to my parents I often revert to German because it is easier for me. In Borderlands, Gloria Anzaldua talks about how important language is for her identity and how hurtful and violent it is for her use of language to be condemned as illegitimate and inappropriate. “Ethnic identity is twin skin to linguistic identity — I am my language. Until I can take pride in my language, I cannot take pride in myself” So, for her it is an outer force that tries to rid her of her expression and her chosen way to communicate whereas my slow loss of Bulgarian is a result of my lack in investment and therefore an erasure of a part of myself.
Every language shapes the way I think in a specific way and functions as a tool of expression. As Ngugi Wa Thiong’o writes:
Language as culture is thus mediating between me and my own self; between my own self and other selves; between me and nature. Language is mediating in my very being.
So, a tree is a tree, a Baum is a Baum and a durvo is a durvo: It’s all the same and yet it is not. I am not the same when I speak the different languages. Does that give me power over them or do they overpower me? Do I gain a richer identity by learning more words and if yes, do I loose parts of my identity when I loose words?
