Language And Identity

Or is it language and soul?

I read an article just now by a woman who moved to Portugal and learned the language. She is a writer and a journalist. Because of a global financial downturn, she had to leave and ended up in a long depression. A big part of her depression came from her inability to express parts of herself she could only access through Portuguese.

This is the way I experience French. I lived inside the French language for over thirty years, and when I was obliged to return to the States, I was disoriented and lost. I felt less myself and less functional than the person I know I can be. I miss that person because he’s more alive.

It comes down to the chemistry between a language and a your truest self, probably, but I wonder. There is a distinct place in me that makes its home in language even more than I do in a place. I realize that not everybody feels this way. Not everyone feels language, especially foreign languages, as a favored state of mind, something to be sought out.

I feel deprived when I can’t hear and practice a foreign language. Just the tone and rhythm of a language can suggest an energy or spirit that doesn’t exist in my native language. My psyche recognizes those energies as perhaps more native to me than the energies I grew up with, less limiting, more lively.