Mother tongue

Following my previous piece of personal wisdom, but on a separate note, I realised this interesting superposition for the language.

It’s very easy to say ‘English is not my first language, so sorry for all the mistakes.’ I see that a lot online.

And sometimes offline too, since I live in non-English speaking community these days (the very west of Ukraine).

Thailand

I have a friend, ten years ago he would start any English conversation with this clumsy ‘sorry, not my first language, so I’m very bad at it’ excuse.

It was painful to hear, and I couldn’t even listen till he finishes this silly excuse. His English wasn’t the worst and I kept telling him he needs to actually stop blocking himself from using his language skill. Relax, and just speak. Regardless of whether he’s good or not, it does not matter.

That’s how I lift-off in the first place, I use the skill.

I went further than just using the skill. I wanted to communicate with the people of my world, even despite I came from a foreign land.

I came to the realisation that English is actually my first language.

Belarus

In my childhood, I’ve been spoken to in Russian.

Despite the advanced and quite deep understanding of their language, I don’t consider myself Russian.

Sounds like an offence to me. I’m not a barbarian, even if I have some experience of living in their barbarian land.

I lived in Belarus, but I don’t consider myself Belarusian either. I barely know their language.

Haha, as most of the country of Belarus is. Which is a cruel joke, it’s a tragedy.

I barely understand it! Not to say the speaking skills.

Sweden

I remember in Sweden, I had been showing my mother what my world looks like, and these Jehovahʼs Witnesses approached us.

I have a really good time just recalling this situation! That was fun!

They started talking to us, my mum first. I said something like ‘sorry my mum doesn’t speak Swedish,’ they were like ‘not a problem, we can speak English’ to which I laughed ‘sorry, she doesn’t speak English either, and more than that, she won’t even understand you speaking English.’

‘Not a problem!’ the guys were smiling, ‘what is your first language?’

‘Well, you see, my first language is English, but hers isn’t’ I was almost laughing. ‘No way, your first language isn’t the first language of your mum?!’ they couldn’t believe me. ‘Yes, exactly, that’s what I’m telling you!’

‘And that’s pretty much explains everything in my life, with why am I so distant to her, I don’t speak her language’ I added to myself.

That’s the tragedy of my life, to some degree. Well, maybe its a tragicomedy.

I made English my first language long before that conversation. Particularly that’s the reason I was able to engage into it. But it’s only then when I realised that it’s not some ‘fuck off guys’ excuse.

They offered me to listen to their thing in Swedish or English and translate to my mum later, but I politely declined, saying it would be a bit rude for her to just wait till we finish some long conversation and not engage into it, plus we’re in a bit of a hurry right now.

Russian

I don’t understand the Russian language, and I never did.

That’s the truth that dawned upon me, at some point in my life. When I started using English.

I understand its grammar, I’m trained in it by some incredibly talented teachers (not joking).

And I could say I was fortunate to have that woman in my life, she was truly a genius and she influenced me more than anyone else, as a teacher. But not because of her teaching us Russian language and literature. Rather because of her, who she was, how she approached us, kids. How talented she was.

It’s a shame her discipline was this silly language of people who never saw any civilisation during their entire history. I’m very well trained in Russian grammar and punctuation (which I never grasped, so illogical it is, however Ms. Lydia did her best to teach me that too).

So. Saying all that, I never understood Russian culture.

Even — again — I know it very well, better than the fellow Belarusians, so that’s why I have no illusions here.

I never understood anything Russian, and their language looks incredibly illogical to me too. It looks like they stole most of their language from neighbouring nations —

those they were busy with genociding.

And they changed things to the opposite meaning, engaging into doublespeak long before Orwell coined the term. My head was exploding all the time during my childhood, so much I couldn’t grasp any meaning from the language. It feels more like I was trained to have equations in my head, this word means this, and that word means that. I never understood the etymology, never. To me, it bore no meaning behind words.

Therefore, I’d dare to say that I started living my vibrant life only since that point in time when I realised I understand everything about English. And it looks mostly logical to me. Mostly, as there are some weird flexes of the language, but you can explain most of them with the history. With the fucking history.

Which you do not try to overwrite, and pretend you’re someone else (like Russians do with Ukraine right now, trying to claim for the entire world that they and Rus’ (Ruthenia) is the same. Which it is not, they just stole the name, and modified it, that does not make them Ruthenians automatically.)

English

There is a lot meaning in English language, and I’m constantly learning by just using it. I have learned from Oxford Dictionary more than I learned from encyclopaedias in Russian, I’ve been reading as a kid.

As much as I don’t enjoy meeting a Russian speaking folks anywhere on our planet. They’re foreign to me. My joy of understanding them is the joy one would get from understanding their molesters.

I may feel this to Ukrainian refugees, even I meet them far from Ukraine. But I cannot name Ukraine as home and Ukrainian language as my first language. I have just happened to have this shared experience with them, and experience of some tiny part of their land. I’m a foreigner here.

𝄞 ‘I’m an alien. I’m a legal alien. I’m an Englishman in ~~New York~~ the city of Lviv.’

What I should have started with, if I wanted to make this thought short though, is that while speaking your mother tongue —

or your first language in my case —

you don’t mind making any mistakes. As in contrast to speaking a foreign language, where you try to not make a single mistake and speak ideally.

Sounds familiar?

I’m defining English language now, because I’m the bearer of the language. I’m not a foreigner to it, it’s my language.

With Russian, I’d say I barely survived living in that language. And I was very fortunate to leave it behind early on. If it was for me, I would just deny it of its language status. It’s artificial, it’s the language Russians do not speak, it’s the language for the export. They force that language upon the enslaved nations, so to erase their identity. But they don’t speak that language themselves. Tolstoy & Dostoevsky are for the export only, not for the in-house reading.

& makes them so Tom & Jerryish to me, I almost laugh.

That’s the tragedy of the second most complicated language on the planet. It’s artificial, and they have the second — quite barbaric, actually — language, spoken in-house.

And the first one of the most complicated languages, Chinese, I believe bears the same tragedy of an empire. Plus their signs, probably a much more complicated thing to learn, as compared to 26 letters of the English alphabet.

First Language

So for me, I cannot tell Russian is some kind of language I speak or understand. I cannot name it as my first language, or zero-language, or second language, or I cannot give it any other number in my head. It’s just the language that dissolved naturally, once I got more understanding of the languages it stole most of itself from. It. Is. Artificial. Unnatural. It was forced upon people across over 10 timezones, including even Königsberg, which was never a ruzzia.

Most things I want to express, I don’t know how to express them in Russian, but I can express them in English no problem. I have a modest vocabulary, and I’m constantly in awe of exploring new words, definitions, meanings.

It’s the same with Ukrainian for me, it’s difficult to explain myself properly. But the reason is just different, Ukrainian language is a vibrant language that has all the needed instruments. It’s me, who understands the language very poorly, since I’m not native to it, it’s not my first language.

However Ukrainian is not artificial, and so knowledge of the neighbouring languages, especially Polish and Belarusian, is of a great help here.

Sick

The defining metewand for me here is when I’m sick, when I’m in bed, with fever. I want to read something, but there’s not much strength to concentrate, and so I read something silly, just to occupy myself with something. These days, I naturally fall off for English as the easiest language in my head.