I register
that people have different reactions to my talking English. My husband speaks
English back to me unless he needs to really express himself, and then he goes over
to Norwegian. But we have mostly communicated through the years using a blend of Norwegian and English that I call Norglish. I find that most of my Norwegian colleagues, with one exception,
will speak to or answer me in Norwegian. Among my friends, it varies. Norwegian
friends will speak Norwegian with me; non-Norwegian friends will speak English
with me, even though we normally communicate in Norwegian. I find that using
English is freeing for me; there are parts of me that have been released. It is
as though I am allowed to be myself again. I don’t mean that I have not been
myself these past twenty years; just that English puts me in touch with the core part of myself, and as I get older,
that core part of myself wants to make itself better known. It’s not just about
being or feeling American; it’s mostly about reclaiming me and my identity as a
woman in 2012, living abroad, an expat, working in science, with one foot in
Europe and one in America. I’m guessing that it is the core part of me that is
trying to come to terms with all of these experiences—how to piece them all
together--and I’m guessing that it is the core part of me that will be having
much more to say as the years move on. I’m happy about that.
Showing posts with label language. Show all posts
Showing posts with label language. Show all posts
Sunday, September 16, 2012
Language and identity
After
living in Oslo and speaking Norwegian daily for over twenty years, I have finally
begun to speak English again. I try to do so as often as possible. Not that I
haven’t spoken English at times or when I struggled to find the Norwegian
words; I just didn’t use my mother tongue very much during these years. Now I
do. Why is this important to me now after so many years? One of the reasons was
that I felt I was losing my identity as an American, because English is my
mother tongue and when I speak Norwegian, I no longer feel American. I don’t feel Norwegian either when I speak Norwegian;
perhaps I just felt neutral, and for
many years, that was quite alright. Feeling American, identifying myself as
American—I was not conscious of these feelings when I first moved here. In
fact, it was fine to think and speak in Norwegian, even desirable, because
unless you learn the language of the country you live in, you can never fully
participate in its social or work life. I am fluent in Norwegian; I even write
poetry in Norwegian. In fact, I like to do that, because I feel like I am
another persona when I write in Norwegian, and as a writer, that’s both exhilarating
and adventurous. I’ve even written a poem about that aspect—about ‘hiding’
behind the safety of a language that is not your own. But the older I get and the longer I live here, the more I want to use my mother tongue; perhaps so I don’t forget it, but also
because I feel that I can state my thoughts and opinions more clearly in English
than I can in Norwegian. I felt the opposite to be true a decade ago. What
changed? I am not sure. Perhaps the experience of sometimes being ignored or not taken seriously in work and
social circles, despite my fluency in Norwegian, changed my mind about how to
approach specific experiences. Perhaps I thought, if I cannot make myself clear
or ‘known’ in Norwegian, there is no point in using this language as my main
language to communicate in this country. I can just as well use English, and at present, I feel it is necessary to do so, to communicate who I am at this point in time. The use of English guarantees that
people will listen to you and try to understand you.
Friday, February 3, 2012
The road out
I’m often asked how I dealt with leaving my birth
country for this one, especially since I did so as a young adult and not as a
child. I answer—it was difficult to do so, but my situation was quite different
than for many other foreigners here. I was not an immigrant or political refugee looking
for a new life in a better place or an opportunist seeking materialistic gains.
My decision to move was made carefully, but it was made in order to give a personal
relationship that was still a seed, a chance to grow. I knew that if I did not
give it that chance, that I would regret not doing so down the line. At the time
I chose to move to Norway, my life was ready for change—both professionally and
personally. There were a number of factors that came together in a type of
synergy at that time, that made moving here the right thing to do. And over
twenty years later, I can say that I don’t regret having moved from the USA to
Norway since that budding relationship and my life generally changed in ways
that have been mostly positive, challenging, and rewarding. But the past twenty
years have not been a bed of roses either. Nothing good is ever achieved without
struggle and frustration; that I’ve learned. I’ve also learned that nothing is
ever handed to you in this life. At least that has not been the case for my
life. It has rarely, if ever, happened that any road I’ve chosen has been an
easy one initially. We all choose our respective paths to follow. Mine happen
to be strewn with other types of challenges than if I had chosen to remain for
the rest of my life in the town of my birth. If I had done that, I am sure that
I would have faced other types of challenges. But that is not my life story. I had
no idea when I was starting out in the work world that I would end up working and
living in Europe.
The difficulties any foreigner faces when in a new country
have mostly to do with learning the language and trying to understand the new
culture that you find yourself in. Scandinavian culture is not very unlike
American culture in the sense that we enjoy the same things—a materialistic way
of life that does not lack for most things—food, clothing, shelter, vacations,
cars, and luxury items, political freedom, family interest (focus on the
nuclear family mostly), a mostly secular lifestyle, interest in books, movies,
and other media, and many other things. It does not feel foreign to live here as it might have felt had I moved to a poor
backward country or one that was a police state or totalitarian regime. When I go
out to the malls here to shop, I could be anywhere in America at a big shopping
mall. The only difference is the language spoken. So yes, that is a difficulty
and it takes several years to learn to speak a new language. For some it may go
faster; for me it did not. It is the subtleties in any culture—the unspoken
codes of conduct at work and even in social situations, that also make living
in a new country difficult. Some of those codes are impossible to crack, or if
cracked, impossible to understand. I have given up trying to understand some of
them here; I used about ten years doing so and after that I folded. I don’t
think like a Scandinavian from the start point. I would have had to have been
born here for that to have happened. So I believe in myself, in who I am as an
American, am proud of my heritage and my roots, and have truly reclaimed my
identity as an American living in a foreign country, despite all the problems
in America, the crazy politics and politicians, the contradictions, the
inequalities, the disparity between rich and poor, all those things.
Scandinavian societies do not have such disparity between the rich and the
poor, but there are other problems associated with most people having more or
less the same standard of living. It might sound utopian to those who do not
live here; it is not. It leads to an odd kind of social conformity, one that I am
not particularly comfortable with. It also leads to a kind of complacency that
is the result of knowing that the government will take care of most of your
needs.
The biggest difficulty for me in living abroad is not being
able to see my family and friends in the USA as much as I’d like. And even
though I know that I wouldn’t see them all that often if I lived in New York
now, it would be easier to do so because the physical distance between us would
not be large. It is the possibility
of doing so that I miss, perhaps the spontaneity
associated with socializing. My annual visit to New York each year is a well-planned
event; I start preparing for it many months ahead of time. I hope to spend more
time in my country again when I retire; retirement is still years away, but it
is not too soon to plan for it. And I am doing that, slowly but surely, so that
it will be possible to visit with friends and family for longer times.
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