I FEEL FREE IN A FOREIGN LANGUAGE

by Suzy Semenza, Italy

I spent my first holiday abroad as an adult in a very nice alpine site in Switzerland where people speak German.
I lived in a house with other young people from different countries, which was founded for political and cultural purposes.
Having had two years of German at the university, I could speak some German but not enough to go into some debate with the very intellectual people that were there.

Nevertheless I spent one of the best holiday in my life.
Everybody was very open of course and we did a lot of communication using our body language
But what I remember with great pleasure about that time is the feeling I had to be completely free to say whatever I wanted to.
I was very much influenced by the environment and as a woman who had been brought up in Italy I enjoyed talking with foreigners who seemed so open-minded compared to my Italian friends.

That sense of freedom was very much dependant on using a language that was not my everyday language, therefore unusual to me. It was as if I could start something completely new.
I also perceived myself in a different way and I was kind of excited about what was going on!

By the way, all intermediate students should be aware that even if they are not fluent in the second language it's no big deal because one may get a lot more attention from the others trying to understand him or her. Then one has to do the same in return! Besides, not being a teacher of German I didn't care about making mistakes.

This is how it worked: one sentence in the 'interlanguage' we were speaking might have several meanings and, in order to be sure to get the right one, we spent a long time checking it accurately.
Although this required some effort and patience (we were supported by the strong motivation of being able to exchange our experiences and feelings) it resulted in establishing wonderful 'rapports' that made our friendship last for years and years.

In speaking a foreign language, as well as in reading it, I pay more attention to words and I avoid saying useless or stupid things. I really think about what I need to say in a very accurate way while in my mother-tongue words seem just to fly off my mouth, were they important and meaningful or not.
Even more than that, I sense that I enter a new world and leave my old one behind. That makes me feel free because I see more opportunities, new options, have other points of view and new ideas come to my mind. In one word I feel different and if it's not a change of identity, it comes close to it.

I noticed something related to this also watching other people. We all know that each language has its own intonation. Some days ago while I was listening to a Greek woman speaking in American English with a perfect intonation, I happened to think that she was adapting her thoughts to the new language with its different sounds and rhyme, quite distant from her own.

Language seems to me to be strictly connected not only to thoughts but also to behaviour.
I think that in speaking a foreign language people do translate their own ideas but also get some interference from the new language and not only in words, that is language itself, but also in thoughts and behaviours.

As far as English is concerned things change dramatically for me because I am a teacher. Like most teachers I feel the pressure of being supposed to know everything and this takes all the freedom and the fun away.
Still, remembering that I learnt more by taking actions and getting into contact with people than by doing class exercises, I'll try to make my students go along the same path. In my opinion two things are of the greatest importance in classroom work: a good 'rapport' with students and the practice of games and activities.

In my recent experience on the NLP course at Pilgrims I would only have liked to be more fluent especially because I was surrounded by educated people with pretty high level of English.
It has been hard work to keep up with them, and in addition to that NLP was interesting, but difficult. What I most enjoyed has been once more the ability to make contact with people coming from different places and cultures.

I let myself be fascinated by accents, intonation, body language, behaviour. I am thinking now of the Spanish people I met, the Turkish and the English, of course!

To go to some conclusions: I find all this exciting and also valuable in that it really enlarges my world.
To communicate with foreigners I use a language that shifts continually and I borrow something all the time.
Even if I believe that my identity is less changeable as I grow older, I always enjoy the adventure of experiencing the 'difference' and learning from it.