Language Identity

 My next post doesn´t exactly describe a happy moment, it is more about the way I felt about moving to a new country without knowing the language:

And then I realized what language can mean.

It can weave into your identity, modify or model your way of thinking, support your thoughts.

It becomes a part of you, which can be lost like any part of a puzzle.

The homeland of my mother always meant a lot to me. Through her influence I was guided through childhood and youth with the background of Slavic mentality. Sometimes almost in a clash with my father´s principles—rooted in Germanic culture. I remember my attempts to learn Serbian before moving to Novi Sad, and I remember them as not very successful. The rhythm and melody of the Serbian language are completely different to any other European language I had learned until then. The fact that in my earliest childhood, my mother used to talk to me in Serbian, didn´t make it easier. The phrases and words acquired back then subconsciously, had been sorted out by my brain as soon as I started to go to kindergarten, where everyone used my native language, German. Being responded to exclusively in German, my mother gave up her attempts of raising me bilingually, and my ´´Serbian puzzle´´ fell apart.

I decided to put my learning on hold until my move to Novi Sad, the city of my heart. I remember the day I arrived as if it were yesterday, everything was exciting and new and the few ``negative´´ aspects I simply idealized. Unfinished streets seemed just adventurous. Ruined houses added to a certain Mediterranean charm. It was a sunny day—the air already hot at the beginning of April. I remember street signs and advertisements written in Cyrillic passing in front of my eyes. Of course, I couldn´t decipher them, but they seemed beautiful to me, artistic, somehow resembling hieroglyphs.

After my arrival, I was surrounded by that language of my earliest days and I loved it. The rolled `r´ makes it temperamental. Luckily, I didn´t have to replace `r´ with `l´, the not all that discrete trick of German speakers who can´t roll the `r´, for example in Italian opera arias; sounds odd. After a few weeks in the secure environment of friends and family, who all knew English, I had to admit that engaging my musically educated ear would not be enough to acquire a language. A Summer School for Serbian helped me to master the basics of the language in the safe environment of other foreigners. But that was just the basics, my real trial was reality afterwards. I found myself able to lead a minor conversation, but unable to really express my thoughts, not to mention my inability to make humorous comments of any kind. Also, it was almost impossible for me to follow a fast conversation with noise in the background, which is really hard to avoid when going out with friends. At least by then I could read the Cyrillic advertisements on my way home and add some lines on my own. In my head of course, I wouldn´t want to become a foreign criminal.

I guess my temporary despair and helplessness in expressing my thoughts was my share of cultural shock. A pretty mild one, I must admit. But it led me to fully understand the ``one language, one self´´ paradigm, the linguist Michael Erard mentions. According to him, speaker, citizen and self are governed by the same linguistic norms. I felt pretty relieved, when I realized that there is even a scientific explanation for my feeling uncomfortable—the linguistic norms of my self and the citizens around me couldn´t have been more different. But, step by step, I recognized words I had read in the speech of others (a euphoric feeling every time, even if the word in question was only a tiny connection word), I could make up word plays which I had loved so much in my mother tongue (well, that was a whole Ode to Joy playing in my head, with all parts of the orchestra) and I almost didn´t have to lipread anymore in noisy surroundings (and a decent amount of lipreading is pretty common in today´s noisy society anyway). With the acquisition of vocabulary through everyday situations, I started to take on the Serbian way of communicating as well. I began to think in Serbian and to replace the long and complicated German sentence structures with short, straightforward Serbian ones. Herein language mirrors the culture and interaction of the citizens of a country perfectly. I noticed that Germans wrap up their thoughts, they tie a rope of endless multi-clause sentences around them. Serbs, on the contrary, communicate their thoughts directly and straightforwardly in short, clear sentences. And in this way they act as well. There is little hiding, or beating around the bush. Thoughts are communicated. Mostly immediately. Negative and positive. After a while, through the language, I learned the culture. Through the culture I learned the behaviour. And finally, through the behaviour I partly formed a new identity. Partly, of course, I am still what I am. But I am that in a Serbian way.

A few days ago I was at a German barbecue. I felt unbelievably insecure talking in German, my sentences resembled Serbian sentence structure. Somehow I felt as if I was walking on ice with every new thought I wanted to communicate. It has been a few years since I moved to Serbia, but it is nevertheless startling how fast you lose parts of the puzzle, even in your native language. But after all, change probably is the only constant in our lives. And it is just impossible for the brain to keep all the information after every change.

So, I was at this barbecue. Talking on ice. And my conversational partner asked me: ``So, how long have you been studying German for?´´ That was it. I had become completely immersed in, and adopted, Serbian identity.