Turkish is my mother tongue. The language of my grandmother, poetry and dreams. The amorphous shapes appearing in the dregs left at the bottom of coffee cups, waiting to be read. The sound of wind chimes. It is the smell of earth after a sudden storm, when you inadvertently search yourself, check your flesh, not sure whether you have been touched and renewed by the rain or hurt by the thunder and hit by the lightning. It is the colour of blooming flowers. The same colour as bruises.
French is the language I have encountered as a little child and then lost entirely. It slipped through my fingers, I could not hold on to it. I still hear it though, like a brook bubbling over smooth, rounded stones and pretty pebbles, somewhere in the distance, out of my reach.
Spanish is the language of my teenage years. The one that shaped me and stayed with me and made me deeply appreciative of melody, cadence and rhythm. Olive trees, juniper bushes and sunny, soothing sunflower fields. The morning chorus of birds. The one that raises my spirits.
And English…. English is my sanctuary. Refuge. Harbour. Port in a storm. It is the place/space where I have taken shelter carrying a tattered suitcase of loneliness and bearing multiple scars, some visible, others not. It is where I have healed slowly, so slowly. It is where I have thrown my literary voice against a wall and shattered it and then reconstructed it anew, shard by shard. I write in English not because it is easier for me, not at all, but because it gives me a sense of much-needed freedom. I need that freedom in order to be able to write my stories.
Here is something fundamental about us immigrants. Our minds run faster than our tongues, which means there is always an emotional rift, a tiny fracture, a linguistic divide we can never fully bridge. An existential gap. A deep awareness of some hidden loss and longing. The crack between the tiles. You can also call it melancholy.
A long time ago I discovered something quite silly about myself that made me think seriously and carefully about the role of language—languages—in our lives. So this is what I found out: I could swear easily, and if need be profusely, in English (and to a certain extent, in Spanish) but never ever in my mother tongue, Turkish.
Why this psychological restriction in one language but not so in another?
Having chanced upon this odd piece of self-observation I looked around to see if anyone else was experiencing something similar. And that is when I was surprised to realise that actually many immigrants, nomads, refugees, exiles and commuters— as James Baldwin would describe himself— were expressing separate emotions in separate languages.
Was this random or was there a pattern to it?
Do we associate different emotions with different languages? If so, I do not think we do this deliberately. It just happens, perhaps without us even being aware of it most of the time. But why and how do we make this linguistic switch, back and forth?
I have friends who voice their joy and excitement better in English but if they feel hurt or a bit gloomy they immediately go back to speaking Arabic or Persian or Kurdish or Italian and so on. I have friends who crack louder and smarter jokes in their second language but sound far more serious in their native tongue. I know of so many immigrant parents who, when they want to be a bit more authoritarian, they reverse to their original language.
Still to this day, if a story I am working on has a thread of melancholy, sadness, longing or duende, I find these emotions easier to articulate in Turkish. But when it comes to humour, which I treasure and adore, and when it comes to irony and satire, I find these much easier to express in English.
I love humour. Not an arrogant kind of humour that looks down upon others and makes fun of their flaws and follies, but a compassionate, all-encompassing humour that understands essentially both the strength and the vulnerability of being human.
All of this fascinates me. I cannot help but wonder are we slightly different people in different languages?
As a Dutch woman who has lived for most of her life in Greece, I can totally identify with what you wrote. Yes, it is easier to swear in Greek, it is also easier to express love in Greek (doing so in Dutch makes me feel awkward and self conscious). But when I have to count, I revert to Dutch!
Spanish is my mother tongue. The language I learned at home from Mexican parents. From them, I also learned love and respect, and since no family is perfect, from my father, I learned what incessant, angry swearing is.
English is my second language. The language I learned in school. It is also the language I have used throughout my professional life.
Since I was young, I spoke Spanish at home and English outside of home.
If I want to feel like I expressed something from the depths of me, I speak in Spanish. It is almost a visceral experience because when I talk in Spanish, I am not only using a language, but I am also expressing with my emotions, my body, my culture, my conditioning, my family, my being. In contrast, I can say the same thing in English but not express it in the same way. For me, English is more cerebral and analytical. I can be direct and concise in English. English seems to filter through my brain; however, Spanish feels like it comes from within.
I can tolerate swearing in English, but I cannot tolerate swearing in Spanish (thank you, Dad).
With its beauty and traumas, Spanish is home. English is a foreign land that I have gradually made into a home. Spanish comes with its culture and family history. And like any foreign land, English comes with its own customs and traditions that I adapted to.
Both of these languages have evolved within me as I have grown and changed over time and through experiences.