Commuting Between Languages

No one gets angry at a mathematician or a physicist

whom he or she doesn't understand,

or at someone who speaks a foreign language,

but rather at someone who tampers

with your own language. Jacques Derrida

Elif Shafak is a Turkish writer whom I was watching on Ted Talks. She summarized so well the conundrum of the multi linguist. Like me she's not an immigrant, refugee or exile. She talks about a commute between languages when she's writing and how that gap gets her  frustrated. However, this frustration gets her creativity going when she's writing. English is an acquired language for me and millions of others. She says, "When you are a latecomer to a language, what happens is you live there with a continuous and perpetual frustration. As latecomers we always want to say more, to say better things, crack better jokes, but we end up saying less. Because there is a gap between the mind and the tongue, and that gap is very intimidating. But if you manage not to be frightened by it, it's also stimulating."

 I wholeheartedly agree with her. I love everything about my third language English. I love how it sounds, how difficult it is, how varied, how so many words can represent the same thing. I love that I understand it so well and other foreigners have such a hard time with it. I enjoy very much the edge that I have over even native speakers or people who speak English as their only language. I am not frightened by the gap Elif talks of. Thanks to English being most Kenyan's third language.


Even with that grand statement that I just made, I have to confess that I think very carefully about what it is am saying. In the back of my mind English will always be an acquired language. I am careful to phrase sentences right, be grammatically correct. I do not want to offend the English language or the native English speaker at all. I feel like I've been trusted to know and speak this language well and I will not abuse my privilege. I take it so personal when native speakers speak English with absolutely no regard to the rules. I mean, how much effort does it take? I have to think in one or two different languages then translate, then string the words correctly before offering them to the listener. I do not like my words being out of place. I feel as if I've failed somehow, if I do. 

“Those who know nothing of

foreign languages know

nothing of their own.”       

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

That gap, that lag time, Elif talks about, that is where my creativity lays. That's where I sort out words and pick what I think are the best ones before I speak them. That gap is my play area and the best part is that it's all mine and cannot be dictated by anyone. So if you listen to a foreigner with a good command of English speaking and you wonder, "Why are they being so deliberate, not rushed when they speak?" It's because they are taking great care to offer the choicest words, to present the best so to speak. Not because they're bragging but there is a certain reverence for a foreign language once you've almost mastered it.
I am currently trying to learn Spanish as my fourth language. Boy, Oh Boy, is it kicking my butt! When I read it, am fluent. When asked a question however, I stammer and hesitate and get tongue tied. I so desperately want to be grammatically correct, I also want to sound as if Spanish and I are friends. I want to sound comfortable, not scared of it. So I do understand that gap she's talking about. When you are a late comer to a language or to anything really, you have to pay your dues. I have to keep reminding myself to be humble and patient and wait. 
Soon enough I will have a great command of Spanish as I do English.... but soon is no where around the corner.... and that's frustrating!
You know another thing speaking different languages does? You are able to move in and out of identities. As many identities as the languages you speak. So in one moment I can be an African, speaking Kikuyu and Swahili, then I commute on over to English where I can bring on my British identity or American...whichever I choose. Now that am speaking Spanish, I feel (not I am) very Latina. It's a thrilling ride and am sure my brain will thank me later, God willing, when am 90 years old and still have all my faculties. 

Seize the diem!!!