English has taught me more than my native language ever could
Dear English language, thank you! Sincerely, a shy German girl.
Writing has always been my escape. Ever since I was a child, writing things down and keeping a journal are an essential part of my existence. My thoughts only ever seem to make sense to myself once I’ve written them down.
I write when I am sad. I write when I am happy. I write when I am confused. I write when I am undecided. And the writing doesn’t stop until my heart, my brain, and my soul have come to understand one another.
While I always filled several notebooks per year, writing has never felt as cathartic since I stopped writing in my native language, German. As beautiful and meaningful as the German language can be, it is also the language that defines my past, a time and self I’d rather shed completely than embrace with open arms.
Writing, speaking, and thinking in German feels like a tightrope around my body, restraining my arms and legs, allowing me to move just enough to survive but not enough to live. Like my past and all the things that happened, but cannot be faulted for, are tied to myself against my will. Like the entire language itself is holding me prisoner.
English, however, allows me to be free and loud. A language learned, not forced, untainted by the darkest parts of life. A language that turns me into a whole new person, allowing me to see my life through a different pair of eyes. Allowing me to be bold and free.
Unsplash, by Patrick Fore
I think it was in kindergarten when I first realized that the big pop stars I heard on the radio were not singing in German. It wasn’t until primary school that I realized that it is not a specific language of music that you have to learn to be a pop star, but that they were all singing in English, a language spoken by many people.
How I made that realization at six or seven years old I am not sure, but that moment stuck with me for a long time. Because I wanted to learn, I wanted to understand what they were singing. Not one adult in my life could speak English enough to understand the lyrics, and Google Translate didn’t exist back then.
Since swearing is considered part of normal discourse in Germany (therefore allowed on the radio and live TV where songs are not censored), the first few words I was able to understand were fuck, shit, and bitch. I’ve heard the older boys screaming them in the school halls often enough to know what they translated as. In retrospect, listening to all the swearing might have been a weird way to be introduced to a foreign language, but it certainly was an honest one.
Back then, it wasn’t until 5th grade that we started teaching children English. As a 10-year-old, I had never been more excited to go to school and learn the language I kept hearing on the radio. Finally, I would be able to understand all of my favorite songs. The teacher handed us our books and dictionaries and talked us through some basic grammar, the alphabet, and the numbers. It went well at first. Until it didn’t.
Or more precisely: Until we had homework for the first time. We were tasked to learn a certain list of words and the proper translations for the next lesson. At home, I studied the vocabulary for hours, wrote them down in my little notebook, and sounded them out while walking across my childhood bedroom. Later that evening, the stereo played my favorite English songs and I danced in my bedroom, ecstatic about all the possibilities this new language would give me. The next day, I skipped on my way to school, my excitement clearly needed to go somewhere. So I hopped and danced, and I am pretty sure I even whistled while doing so, because there it was, the day I had been waiting for ever since starting school.
At the beginning of class, we had to stand up, and the teacher explained the rules of his game: He would point at a random student, would say a German word, and the student had to translate it into English. If you were right, you were allowed to sit down. If you weren’t you had to stay standing. This game would go on until every student got at least one translation right.
My heart sank. I hated games like this. Speaking in front of others while standing up? No, thank you. Gone was the excitement from moments ago, and gone was all of my hard work from yesterday: Suddenly I couldn’t remember a single word I had learned.
In the end, my biggest fear became reality: I was the only student left standing. My brain froze every time the teacher pointed at me. The color of my face turned white, then red. There I stood, standing out like a sore thumb. The epitome of failure.
To my horror, this game was repeated every class. Every day of the week, I had to stand up and stutter my way through an answer. Who was I thinking learning a second language would be easy or fun? Who cares if I can understand the songs I listen to, as long as I like them, right?
It was a downward spiral, excitement turned into indifference, and my grades reflected it. Having made an incredibly bad impression on my teacher over and over again, I never scored higher than a C-. At the end of 5th grade, he, a grown adult, left me, a then 11-year-old, with these parting words: “You know Annika, someone like you, with such incredibly bad understanding for foreign languages, will never make it in this world, let alone get a job.”
The damage was done. I was bad at learning foreign languages. Period. So no wonder that French class was no better. Having to pick a second foreign language to graduate high school seemed like a sick joke back then. Somehow I’ve managed to pull through with a D for seven consecutive years. The only things I have to show for today are: “Je m'appelle Annika” and “Arthur est un perroquet”.
When I signed up to study economics and finance I knew that the English language would be there to torment me again. I knew I had to get better, but I thought I’d be able to pull through somehow. I expected English textbooks and academic articles in English. I did not expect a Professor with the thickest British accent you can imagine. There I was, at 20 years old, hungover from the party before, feeling like my shy 10-year-old self again, when the Professor asked me for my opinion on common vs. code law. I stuttered my way through the answer, left class early, and decided right then and there to screw my 5th-grade English teacher and make him eat his own words.
My plan was this: Make it fun. So I bought the entire DVD collection of Gilmore Girls, with the plan to watch it in its entirety, in English with subtitles. The ultimate goal: To understand the TV show E.R. in English, without any subtitles. Why E.R., you ask? Well, because following the show in German was hard enough. Doctors, nurses, and paramedics all talk at the same time while there is loud chaos and dramatic music playing. Since you are reading this in English, you already know how all of this turned out: I am proud to report that I’ve watched all 331 episodes of E.R., in English, without subtitles. You may call me Dr. Annika now.
It wasn’t just the Gilmore Girls who taught me how to speak, write, and read in English. They were the catalyst of a life-changing journey. After the Gilmore Girls came the English books, other TV shows, and movies. Years later I even started to think in English. It must have been a slow process because I never actively made the decision to switch the audio in my head from German to English, it just happened.
Once the audio settings had changed, the default language for journaling became English too. Writing about my life in a language I learned solely for myself, has opened up a new world I never knew existed. Now I can process my past without the restraints of my mother tongue. I found words for feelings I always had a hard time describing and through these words my heart, my brain, and my soul started to understand each other more, allowing me to heal and find a strength like never before. Allowing me to find a safe haven, a language existing without the good and the ugly of the past.
While I’ve mostly gotten over the insult my 5th-grade English teacher threw my way, I still find myself second-guessing my own knowledge. I double-check words left and right to not make a single mistake. And to this day I am still not sure: Is my English good enough to publicly write in English? It took over 20 years of writing online and deleting it shortly after every time to get over this fear. For the most part at least, because I still hide under my desk every time I hit “publish”.
At the same time, however, I realize that every tiny mistake is a part of me. The fact that I speak two languages, that I consume knowledge in both, process my feelings in both, and that I am surrounded by both languages every day at work, is so uniquely me that it objectively could be seen as a mistake, but actually is me expressing my most honest self.
XOXO
Annika
Some articles and notes that inspired this essay:
This note from sonja ringo
in 7th grade i excitedly told my teacher that i wanted to write a memoir and he scoffed. he made me feel so small and laughed mockingly, saying ‘you haven’t even lived yet, what would you even write about?’
and because of his reaction i didn’t write it. and i wish so badly that i had, because regardless of my age i had been through a lot & also.. who are we to tell anybody else that they don’t have a story to tell?
Different Emotions In Different Languages by Elif Shafak
Turkish is my mother tongue. The language of my grandmother, poetry and dreams. The amorphous shapes appearing in the dregs left at the bottom of coffee cups, waiting to be read. The sound of wind chimes. It is the smell of earth after a sudden storm, when you inadvertently search yourself, check your flesh, not sure…