So then…

the end might not be that near.

Due to the lack of time and motivation (both internal and external), I was about to close this blog. But why?

There may be a couple of reasons, but none of them is strong enough. Motivation to keep on is stronger, even when it’s not as strong as it should be.

You all see, English is not my native language. I sometimes feel like a baby writing stupid things to communicate, while I’d like to do more than that: communicating on a charming – or, at least, clever – style. I am able to do that in my first language.  But I can’t just write it and translate it afterwards. It’s not natural. Language affects our thoughts, and I’m sure that both my thoughts and my way of seeing the world are different in English. Not only because there are different words to be chosen, but because my story with these words is different. It’s a different story. Words were acquired on a different context and have different cognitive associations.

Actually, I feel lighter in English. I just hope that someday I will be able to write better. To write in a way that I can in fact translate this lightness into the right words and sentences in order to make it obvious and pleasant to the reader.

For the time being, all I can do is trust my heart and its ability to reach other hearts, no matter what language is used.

What language is this?

This is an interesting website: it identifies languages. And the one I mentioned in my last post… was Indonesian. Okay.

How bad can it be when you just don’t get it?

I can speak English (hi there!), French (salut, tout le monde !), Spanish (hola ¿qué tal?), Portuguese (oi, tudo bem?), some Italian (ciao, come stai?), some words in German (alles gut, nichts, nein, das ist kalt, wie heiß Du?) – and I used to think that was ok. No problems in France, Switzerland, Italy and Germany. Actually, Germany was the toughest one: they seemed to be willing to speak only German to me, and I DON’T UNDERSTAND GERMAN. I know how to pray in German (ich bin klein, mein Herz is rein…), I know how to sing in German (kommt ein Vogel geflogen…), I know how to ask “How are you?” (Wie geht’s?) and say that I drink milk in German (ich trinke Milch), but I DON’T SPEAK GERMAN. Well, at least I could always have an idea of what they were saying – providing they included one of the 50 German words in my internal German vocabulary, obviously.

This morning I came across a new comment on this blog. Actually, a linkback. A linkback to another blog, written in some mysterious language. It wasn’t as mysterious as Japanese or Chinese, what would make quiet and resilient: I would never understand Japanese or Chinese or any of its variants. It would be totally useless to even try. But this language… what could it be? Danish? Norwegian? Croatian? Hindi? As Google seems to present a solution for anything, I tried their Language Tools, inserting a couple of sentences extracted from this unknown blog. Most of the times, it would return no results. It could get to translate two or three words into some of the languages available. To mess with me, completely different translations.

I felt lost and non-existent on that weblog. The link back was there, “printedwords” was there, I was there. But it made no sense. I made no sense there. Then I thought of aphasia, the inability to speak or to understand language. I thought of depression, Ginger feeling that this world was not for her. I thought of autism. And, of course, it made a lot of sense. To play the game, you have to understand the rules. If you’re not able to get it by yourself or by Google, someone’s got to help you. Then I even thought of psychoanalysis, Lacan insisting on the importance of naming: the mother has to name the world to her son or daughter. She has to teach them the rules. What if, after knowing the rules, we just can’t play the game? Can it happen? Or, once we understand the rules, we can always play, some better and some worse, improving with practice? And what if we don’t want to play the game, the only game we have? Why would it be? Can it be changed?