My 5 Personalities
Every language I speak is a new me
I’ve dedicated a significant portion of my waking time to languages. My native language is Russian, but growing up in the US, my primary language is English. I learned Ukrainian as a teenager traveling back to my parents’ home country. At university I learned French and Hebrew; the former interested me generally, and I was compelled to learn the other one because of my ethnic background. Additionally, I learned basic Spanish in the kitchens of restaurants I used to work at in New York.
Now that I live in Georgia, I can add Georgian to that list (although I’m not exactly fluent).
I generally identify as speaking five languages. This indirectly translates to having five personalities, nuances and all. Those of you who are polyglots may have noticed that whenever your language environment changes, so to does your behavior.
With every language comes a new tonality. Your body language changes too. You talk with your hands more, you take long pauses. Perhaps you even think before you open your mouth.
In this article, I’m going to summarize how I feel about each of my languages.
English
Admittedly , English is the language I’m most comfortable speaking. It’s the language of my societal upbringing and most of my education. It’s the language that comes most naturally to me.
I effortlessly understand the cultural nuances that come with English. I hadn’t put much thought into this until I showed a Russian friend of mine an episode of Larry David’s Curb Your Enthusiasm, a comedic show about a self-obsessed Jew, Larry David, living in LA. It immediately became apparent that without an understanding of American and Jewish culture, the show is extremely confusing, and most of the jokes are difficult to understand. Furthermore, viewers should also familiarize themselves with stereotypes about people in Los Angeles and what that city means in the context of American culture.
My English has definitely gotten worse since I left the United States as I’m no longer using it nearly one hundred percent of the time. It helps that I’ve met some Americans here and that I’m able to communicate using normal English vocabulary instead of a dumbed down version that I use with people who otherwise wouldn’t understand what I’m saying. This newsletter also helps as I’m forced to organize my thoughts through the medium of the English language for the first time in many years.
French
Learning French was when the personality theory was born in my mind (although it isn’t an original idea). I started learning French in high school where I was forced to chose between French, Spanish and Latin.
I had previously taken some Spanish in elementary school with little to show for it, and Latin is a dead language, so French was the obvious choice for me (I wasn’t particularly interested in Spanish or Latin-American culture at the time). It’s important to be interested in the culture of your target language, otherwise you’ll get bored quickly. At one point I had attempted to learn Chinese just because it’s a “difficult” language. That didn’t last very long as there was no other motivating factor.
My French learning accelerated as I traveled to Montreal for the first time when I was sixteen. I was disappointed to find that everyone could speak English fluently. Upon hearing how horrible my French was, everything remained in English.
I later studied at NYU and ended up with a French literature degree. Almost all of the coursework was in French, and I was able to learn the language primarily through reading books.
I went to France in 2018, first to Paris, then to Lyon and Grenoble, where I studied for a summer. It was there that I realized that I am much more animated when I speak French. I was quite shy growing up, and I was able to somewhat overcome that timidity in childhood through developing myself in that language.
I use my hands and have much more tonality in my voice when I speak French. This change in behavior creates a disconnect from my past “self,” allowing me to become more expressive.
Now at twenty-five years old, I no longer feel particularly shy in any language. Nonetheless, the French “me” could talk to any stranger before the English me could.
I once saw a car with French license plates stop in front of my office here in Tbilisi. The driver got out, and I asked him, in French, if he had driven all the way from France. Zurab, the driver, was Georgian. He had lived in France for many years.
We stood there and chatted for twenty minutes. He gave me his number and said to call him if I needed anything (very Georgian).
I don’t think English me would have done that. I’ve seen cars in Tbilisi with UK plates, but I’ve never once inquired regarding their journey.
Sometimes I out myself as an American early on in order to secure plausible deniability. Then, when I make a very strange mistake, there’s an excuse.
Russian
I have a difficult relationship with Russian. It’s my parents’ primary language, and before I started going to school, it was the only language I knew. Growing up in America meant that while my Russian vocabulary was rather developed, the cultural bits of speaking Russian were conveyed in a limited capacity.
I was not aware of this gap until I traveled to Moscow with my mom at the age of thirteen. It was quite difficult to understand what people were saying to me, and I couldn’t quite grasp what was going on. This experience left me quite nervous speaking.
This nervousness persists to this day. I’m afraid of making mistakes, and I’m petrified of not understanding a particular word which a native speaker would otherwise.
I speak with a slight or no accent (depends on who you ask), and as a result, when I have one of these lapses, it’s not obvious to the other person that I’m a foreigner. This has lead to some awkwardness in the past.
Sometimes I out myself as an American early on in order to secure plausible deniability. Then, when I make a very strange mistake, there’s an excuse.
Living in Georgia has helped me with my Russian. I met a lot of people my age from Russia, Belarus and Ukraine, and I’ve been able to speak more clearly.
Ukrainian
Ukrainian is fun. I understand almost everything people say to me (unless they’re from the border regions of Western Ukraine, in which case nobody can understand what they’re saying).
I went to Lviv, a city in Western Ukraine, for the first time when I was fourteen years old. At this stage I only knew a few words. I quickly discovered that if I spoke Russian in that city that nobody would help me and that English was much more effective even if many people couldn’t understand what I was saying.
The English situation in Lviv and in the rest of Ukraine has significantly improved since then, and so has my Ukrainian level. I feel more free speaking Ukrainian than Russian because it feels like a foreign language to me. I an express more emotion and feel less cringe when I make mistakes.
Hebrew
I decided to learn Hebrew in university because I’m Jewish. This was the first non-Indo-European language that I decided to learn.
I grew up with a poor connection to Jewish culture. In my secular post-Soviet family, religion was taboo. This was not simply speaking because of my parents’ ideology, but rather my parents’ and grandparents’ upbringing in a totalitarian, atheist state.
Israelis are not shy to tell you when you’re not speaking well. If I speak Hebrew for more than a few minutes, I am usually asked to speak English. This is not dissimilar to when I attempted to learn Chinese and my Taiwanese roommate told me I shouldn’t even try to speak if I’m going to pronounce words like that.
Despite the discouragement, I find myself drawn deeper into the language as world events unfold.
Georgian
As of this writing, Georgian is the latest addition to my languages. I moved to Georgia at the beginning of 2022, and I have an article that briefly explains how I ended up here. The only word I knew before I came here was გამარჯობა (gamarjoba; hello).
Learning Georgian has been more interesting than learning any other language as I haven’t had any formal instruction. First I learned how to read (the alphabet is mostly phonetic, it’s the easiest part of learning Georgian, trust me). Then I learned basic vocabulary primarily in taxis talking to the driver. Their GPS taught me the words for right, left, straight, traffic light and so on.
I attempted to take lessons a few times, but I wasn’t able to find a teacher that would work with me in my preferred format, which is discussing very complex things and me asking what words mean when I don’t understand.
As I speak Georgian daily, I feel like it’s my new “default” language. I associate the language with going through the motions of life.
More likely than not, I’m leaving Georgia for good sometime next year, so perhaps I’ll write an article about my sixth personality in the near future.