We all know how it feels to speak in English for the first time in front of new people. We are all starting with a blank page and are about to get to know each other. The first sentences are a bit too hard, we are all looking for the words and it feels like our thoughts are stuck in our throats.
Saying hello can be stressful, you are thinking “What should I say? Hi? Hello? Good morning?”. What will this say about me? What am I trying to paint myself as? This feeling is going to stay for a long time and as the conversations go on, more difficulties will appear. You know what you want to say but don’t have the words, or you start a sentence confidently, then you realise halfway through that you can’t find the expression that you were sure you had in the beginning.
The jokes don’t hit as hard, humour is one of the first things that gets lost and hard to find a way back to. You can say goodbye to wordplay, since it rarely survives in translation and sarcasm is more likely to be confusing than funny, awkward silences following the punchlines.
Expressing your feelings can be a challenge as well. When you speak your mother tongue you know the right words to say in certain situations without hurting one another, you know which words carry the right tone and you know what emotional appeal each expression has. In English you might sound simpler, stripped down and the meaning of your words does not match the original meaning behind it.
These little things that we are facing repeatedly every day can stuck in our heads and make us feel like we lost one part of our identity with the change of the language. We may feel that the English-version that others know is a different version of our personality and who we actually are.
But this is not true.
You just discovered another layer of yourself, and as time goes by, it will be just as complete as the person you are, when you speak your native language. With a couple of days, weeks and months the conversations become smoother, the words are coming to without thinking and you start to trust yourself again. You get used to the proverbs, find new ways to emphasize your feelings properly and the jokes are going to make themselves. Ultimately you will find that you haven’t become someone else, you discovered new aspect of your own personality. And now you have another tool to express it.
