I’m going to learn Spanish. I don’t think it’s possible to live where I live, in this time, without participating in a world that is rich, vibrant, joyful, Indigenous, wonderful and welcoming. All of my favorite parts of living in California have been centered on what little I have experienced of Mexican, Salvadoran, Honduran and other cultures.
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I get to speak 3 of my other non-English languages regularly where I live, which is pretty much the only thing that keeps me in a good place. I get to access so much more of this country and the people in it.
My wife is doing her Masters thesis on immigrant grief.
For me, language is part of it. I am a native speaker of English, but my modes for love, warmth, food, hearth and home are also in the other languages that I speak. I am a different person in each language. I experience the same places differently in each language.
A few days ago, planted face down on an acupuncture bed in Oakland, learning that I can speak about my body and its aches in Mandarin just like I used to in Bukit Timah.
Today, my neighbor told me in Teochew that she was going on vacation for the first time in decades. Everyone else in the building just sees her as a ‘poor English speaker’. I see her as the kind grandma who reminds me to celebrate festivals I don’t actually celebrate. (She’s Vietnamese: and she thinks we have the same holidays. There are overlaps)
Then we went to our favorite restaurant in San Francisco, where nearly everyone spoke Tamil. I don’t really speak Tamil at all, but my grandparents did, with our neighbors, and I understand it better than I speak. I know all of the food words. The Tamil lady came over and told me to buy a nicer ring for my wife because ‘we Indian women like nice rings’.
I order Indonesian coffee down the street from Indonesian coffee roasters. I get a lemper to go, it tastes exactly like in Indonesia (just at a shocking price in rupiah). My Thai is getting rusty, but still good enough to get Thai spicy food I need. No chilli, no life.
Whenever I can, I spend time in the Mission and in Fruitvale because I love being surrounded by Spanish and all the indigenous languages of Mexico, Guatemala and elsewhere.
Hearing all the languages spoken including the ones I don’t speak, remind me that I am not alone.
My wife was trying to articulate her own immigrant grief, as a southeast Asian person who grew up in Paris. She feels she has a completely different personality in French, and in Paris. In her class, she said ‘I’m a bigger bitch in Paris’
They’ve started making tshirts of it and they wear it to class.
I think there’s something there:
- when I read what I write in Mandarin, I feel almost like I’m reading a different person. It’s not the same voice that I have in English. It’s also very distinct, like in English, but completely different. I am softer, and more ‘emo’ but also reserved.
- when I speak Teochew, which I consider my ‘co-native language alongside English’, I don’t need to think: words just come out and they are always right. All of the Vietnamese Chinese aunties in my neighborhood believe that I come from Swatow, actually, because I have an old woman’s Swatow accent. The accent of the 1930s Swatow that my grandparents left. It makes 70 year old Vietnamese Chinese aunties conscious about theirs.
- my love language is Indonesian. Truly, I don’t think I can ‘feel’ as strongly as I do in Indonesian. Is it because of all the lagu galau I listen to? It makes me ‘baper’ (bawa perasaan, or, very emo)
- I don’t speak any Spanish yet, but I have a good feeling about it. I’m excited to meet the person I will become in Spanish. It’s probably someone I’ve never met before.
@skinnylatte if that is of any consolation , I worked with someone who spoke perfect accent-free English and has never been outside of #Kazakhstan
@saper unlike that situation, Spanish is spoken by millions of people where I live, so I think it’ll be immersive
@skinnylatte I am sorry, I misread your post. Apologies.