This blog is not the only place where I write English, in fact in Mastodon I post in English and most of the time I participate in group chats talking in English. And it might seem unreasonable for someone whose mother tongue isn’t English.
It seems so difficult to write in second language.
Read in second language.
Think in second language.
And understand a second language.
Because it is; it’s hard and unproductive. For me, it takes much more time to develop an idea in English compared to my mother tongue, Kurdish. Especially when what I’m writing about is a complex subject by itself, it doubles up difficulties. And it’s a very challenging activity to explain concepts in the limited number of words I know and it drains my energy so fast. (takes a long break here)
I believe the first question comes to mind is what is this mental illness called, but I assure you I’m not mentally sick(I hope). So the second question might be why am I doing this? Because there must be a well thought reason for it; well yes, but no, I mean kind of. The truth is I hope to find out the answer of the second question myself by end of the article :)
So why?
To begin with a reason, to learn; what’s a better way to get better in a new language than pushing yourself to write in it? And also who doesn’t like being fluent in a second language?
Second reason is publishing in English simply connects me to most of the world and more audiences can use a post. But I’m not a content creator, I don’t gather cookies and couldn’t care less about the number of people following me online.
Till now none of them are so convenient, are they? Well the second part is simply 99% of the argument.
It’s easier to write in a second language. Well… Yes! I mean… Yes! That’s what I wanted to say. At least it’s true for me and probably for you too. We all censor ourselves in a level, like it or not. The more you understand meaning of a word or a phrase more consequences you can predict for what you’re saying, and it seems like a good thing, we don’t want to get hit in the face by second or third meaning of something we wrote months ago. However it also can prevent us from saying what we actually want to because there is always someone on the internet who has their own understanding of situations and as social beings it’s not the best solution to ignore people. Therefor we start making second thoughts and keep rephrasing everything over and over to prevent all these unwanted opinions in our text, or speech. It’s either frustrating, hard to say what you want or in my case make me prefer to don’t say anything at all. As silent as the breeze, as quite as a book. You can feel me, and I’m full of words, but the voice is lost.
We know internet is diffident, and you can be whoever you want. Like me being an avocado but pretending that I’m a human. Yes internet is diffident or maybe another dimension but the person controlling account is not. They are still the same person and personality breathing in real life. So these kinds of attitudes aren’t specific to internet but ported to web from real experiences in real life. It’s logical to expect saying I love you is much easier in a second language, and even easier in a more alien language.
How I know this?
Well I wrote this blog :)
I post everyday on Mastodon
Also I’m participating in an online meeting a few times a week with another person and speak in English (for learning purposes) and even though she is a very good listener, I’m very amazed how I can express myself and my ideas so freely. And say things that I haven’t so far in my life; even more importantly I don’t digest phrases I used afterward.
Final words
We are living in a harsh society, and it’s not people fault, it’s nature’s. This world feeds from our mistakes. Some mistakes are so dangerous can end up in falling from a cliff; or much minor like putting words in a wrong order in your personal blog. What is important is to reduce how much we censor ourselves. Expressing an unpopular idea isn’t necessarily bad and must happen time to time, but your brain can’t handle this. And for me writing in English was a way to control this to be able to say what I want free of myself.
Thanks for reading; please let me know what do you think. Good luck.