When I hear the phrase “I am my language,” It reminds me that one’s language is so much more than a tool of communication. Language is often tied directly with culture, nationality, and more. In Gloria Anzaldúa’s How to Tame a Wild tongue, she describes a negative upbringing in America regarding her mother tongue. She describes being ridiculed for speaking Spanish and having an accent. She even described that her mother was “mortified that I spoke English like a Mexican.” My experience as a first-generation American was quite the opposite. As a child, I was often encouraged to speak both Hebrew and Russian. I remember my grandparents telling me “говорить по русски” (speak in Russian.) My family knew that I would grow up around English speakers and that the language would come easy to me, but they saw the opportunity to give me the gift of being trilingual.
Languages, in general, are so important to understanding people’s backgrounds and cultures. Being able to understand three, has really given me an advantage in many situations. One phrase in Russian that I love is “ты слышишь этот запах?” (Can you hear that smell?) I find it a funny phrase because, in English, it makes absolutely no sense; You can’t hear a smell! In Russian, it just means “can you smell that?” I find it hard explaining this saying to non-Russian speakers and it often makes people think that the language is stupid, or makes no sense. This is just one thing about the language that I and my family get to laugh about all the time.
That is so cool that your grandparents told you to speak in Russian and you were encouraged to keep up with Hebrew! This seems common with immigrants. It goes either your way (active encouragement) or the other way of active discouragement. Never seems to be in the middle of just simply “let’s just speak our languages and not make a thing of it,” though maybe that is because we are less likely to hear about that. Both sets of my grandparents made it a big point not to speak Italian and both of my parents only know curse words in Italian lol, nothing else. There was also a big effort to anglicize names. So, going from Giancarlos to Josephs, that sort of thing.
I LOVE that translation of “Can you hear that smell?” I don’t think it means language is stupid at all! But it is funny like you say, and that example is just great. Just imagine how people are all sitting around for 1000s of years trying to use sounds to represent meanings of so many complex things happening in life. Tough work! In the English department and a few other departments at Baruch, there are some courses on translation for the field of translation studies, if this interests you, you should check those out!