Imagine starting a sentence in German, switching to English in the middle, and finishing it in Spanish. How would you feel? You would think it feels amazing and I am not going to lie, it does but, at the same time, I feel overwhelmed. I begin to wonder how my brain is able to switch between three languages, how other people are able to understand me, and by then, I end up losing track of the conversation.
Being polylingual is something I’ve always wanted for myself. My parents didn’t force me and I was not pressured in school to learn seven languages. It’s something that has always been there in my mind, in my personality, in my being. When I was little, I knew I would speak as many languages as possible when I grew up, as I knew that the sun would rise the next morning. Multilingualism is something I always took for granted and to be honest, I didn’t really work hard for it; for me, languages come easy. I love grammatical exercises and listening to other languages. While I was in the school, I learned to speak English, Portuguese, Latin, and French. In my exchange program in the Czech Republic, I learned Czech and att the beginning of this year, I started learning German.
You might be thinking that being able to speak seven languages, everything comes easy for me. But, for me, multilingualism is sometimes a problem. After speaking in English the entire day, I am unable to speak Spanish (my mother tongue) correctly. And if I am unable to correctly speak Spanish after only one day, how do you think my French sounds having not practiced it for more than a year? Or, my Portuguese that I stop learning when I was 14? They’re almost gone. I can still understand when people speak to me or when I read, but if I try to express myself, that is a completely different story.
Another problem is that I can’t express myself the same way in different languages, which is very frustrating. There are some expressions that only work for certain languages and when you translate them, they lose their meaning. When I try to explain certain Czech or German expressions to my friends who do not speak those languages, they look at me funny for thinking the expression made sense in the first place. What they don’t understand is that it does make sense in Czech and German however, the “cool” part was lost in translation. Another example would be when I want to use my Argentinian slang but, I can’t, because those words don’t exist in other languages. Sometimes problems arise even when I’m speaking Spanish to other Spanish speaking people from different countries. It’s quite funny when we try to decipher the different expressions each country has. There are words from my Spanish that could mean something completely different in someone else’s.
Being polylingual has it benefits. It is amazing to think that I can speak and understand so many languages. It feels wonderful to be able to communicate with people in their mother tongue and understand their culture. For me, learning a new language is also about learning the history and culture of countries that speak it. However, it also has its drawbacks. Quite often I forget words in Spanish but I remember them in English so, I say them in English and my Spanish speaking friends stare at me as if I am crazy. But I don’t care, I will continue to learn and mix up new languages all while proudly making a fool of myself.