These are thoughts I’ve had for a very long time but I’m only know putting them into words. I grew up with my native language as Spanish. Nowadays my Spanish is so rusty that I hesitate to call it my native language, so I’ll call it my first language. I don’t recall exactly when but I began learning English at a very young age. I took french lessons for a few years when I was in elementary. I’ve forgotten most of what I learned back then but there’s a few things that still remain. Some things just feel so natural that my brain never let go of them. To this day, whenever I think of the phrase “I don’t know” my brain’s immediate reaction, our first electrical impulse, is to think “je ne sais pas”. For more than 15 years now I’ve been thinking “je ne sais pas” and what comes out of my mouth is an abrupt “I don’t know” or a meek “no se” depending on where I am and who I’m talking to. Je ne sais pas has not escaped my lips in 15 years and yet it’s such an intuitive phrase for not knowing something. It just sounds like the condition of not knowing.
I have a fondness for words and phrases with that quality. Sounding like what they mean. I don’t only mean onomatopoeic words either. I think phonesthemic is the actual term. I’ll speak words like mellow, gleam, snarl, ethereal over other more common words because I enjoy the sound of them. And of course actual onomatopoeias in the form of japanese words like ぐるぐる、もふもふ、ぼちぼち…
This might be different for everyone but I also find that some languages suit certain moods and emotions better. This in particular I’ve thought a lot about so let me explain. When I speak English around my friends I tend to be very liberal with my use of profanities. I’ve been working on changing that but that’s a different issue. In general, I feel like English profanities feel weak. They carry a lot less weight than profanities in Spanish. Words like “fuck”, “bitch”, and “cunt” mean very little to me compared to “puto”, “pendejo” or “perro”, which is interesting since the last one isn’t even an expletive depending on context. At first I thought it was because of the heavy “p” sound at the beginning of each (I still think that might be part of it). Because of this, for some time I thought Spanish was better suited to express rage. Then I thought that this perception was perhaps only caused by my own upbringing. Of course growing up in a spanish speaking household my mother heavily emphasized the severity of those words, and why I shouldn’t use them. And in turn she’d only use them when she was infuriated (this anger often directed at me). This created a strong impression on my young mind; there’s a sort of sacredness (this isn’t the right word but I can’t think of anything else) to these words that makes them feel extremely heavy. In contrast, when watching American movies or tv shows they would throw around curse words like it was nothing. So I thought nothing of them. I tried asking my friends who grew up with English as their native language about this, but none of them had considered this before. I did get that they think a lot more heavily about their English profanities than I do, in particular it seems like the word “cunt” carries a lot more weight than I thought. However, since all of my American friends speak only English, I couldn’t get a good comparison of what they think about the weight of English profanities compared to those of other languages.
I strayed a bit from what I actually meant to write just now, but like I mentioned before, I seem to think in a specific language more than others depending on how I’m feeling. Once again, this is probably influenced by my own experiences but I think it’s worth mentioning. It goes something like this. If I’m depressed, English comes around more naturally. If I’m angry, Spanish. If I’m lonely, Japanese. Now, I don’t think there’s any aesthetic or aural or textile or synesthetic quality that makes one language more predisposed to a specific mood, so I will explain the circumstances that (I think) make me relate each language to that specific feeling. The first two have obvious reasons. The catalyst by which I would begin speaking English everyday was very miserable to 14 year old me. The movement of one country to another, the relinquishing of my previous culture and person. Distress was the first and strongest emotion when I was forced to speak a language that at the time was very unfamiliar to me. Spanish of course has that whole thing with profanities that I explained earlier but there’s one other more recent motive. The things that I had to go through for the past 5 years, the reason I was put in such a sorry state in the years 2014 and 2018, the man that wronged me and the only person that I can truly say I hate. I had to face him in Spanish, every single time. If we’re talking about Japanese, then most of my first experiences with learning the language came as a result of extreme isolation. Nowadays it’s different but first impressions last.
I just wrote a mess of words but maybe they will make sense to someone. If nothing else it serves as an archive of my contemplations of language. Well, actually today I meant to write about something different. On failure and planned failure. But I still have to sort my thoughts on that so I’ll leave it for next week. Maybe. Uncertain. This is that kind of blog.
01/20/2020
Stranger Journey 