Bilingualism is it good? Or is it bad?

[obichi]

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[Blackcurrant]

Bilingualism... Good or bad?

This from a friend who lived a bilingual life and as I gather from conversations: We speak our foreign/second language (for those who learnt it at school) only to be shocked one day into realizing that we are being understood in very different terms. If you use the language,that is, for anything more than shopping or ordering a coffee or going on guided tours. And in that process, we catch a glimpse of ourselves through the eyes of our foreign host -- not the self we had come to know, but another.

So, you speak French fluently, perfectly, only to discover as you LIVE in that language and culture (au fur et à mésure) an American or British self speaking through you. Invisible until now, but suddenly thrown into sharp relief. What you thought as your usual "open, personable self" is, in the eyes of your French hosts "garrulous and pushy". The typical references to "I", "me" and "what I'd did", an essential part of opening up and building up trust in The Anglo-American social order is take as a sign of egocentrism in some Nordic cultures. So there it is. The grammar and vocabulary which you mastered in school, through study and hard work, betrays you every day. Not because of grammar or vocabulary mistakes, but because of your trying to force foreign meanings into them. The early reassurance of equivalent meanings (illusion of the bilingual dictionary) vanishes, replaced, possibly, with a deep-seated unease. Or sense of freedom.

So, you are not quite who you thought you were. And that is not easy. In fact, it can be Deeply frustrating. For example, when the foreign/second language you live in offers you none of the identities that you value and believe in. A "good student" in China, Japan or Finland contradicts everything you have been raised to believe in as you grew up in England or the States. You sit uncomfortably (even angrily) as you see what can only be described as "abject behaviour" or "indifference" or sullen "silence" rewarded, while your enthusiasm and "active participation" (how so very Anglo-American!) is punished. These are the most obvious instances of difference. Most of the time, they are subtle and pass unnoticed as we exchange words thinking we share the same universe.

It is not easy trying to exist as your (former) self in a different language.

Is that "good" or "bad"?

Edited December 9, 2013 by Blackcurrant