“Writing”, wrote a professor of mine, in a spread sheet dedicated to writing essays, “entails a submission, an exposure”. This goes also for this first post in my brand new blog. For years I have submitted myself away from my best foreign language, English. I have been studying everything language possible, and writing a blog in Hebrew, which I intend to keep alive. Now I am submitting myself back. I have lost this imagined mutiny against our master language. Those of you who know my passion for languages would easily understand how hard a step it is for me to admit that.
It’s not that I hate English, not at all. However, I do hate to think of the unilingual world that English represents. But having recently written a paper glorifying the language reforms made in Japan in the last 150 years, which compromised an entrenched culture for better communication and practically for democracy, my thoughts changed a bit. And after seeing tiny Chinese kids being encouraged to sing for me “good morning to you” from their non-English speaking parents, something inside me broke. If the Chinese are willing to let it go, who am I to be the last man rushing from tower to tower along the Great Wall.
I still intend to use a few other languages in this blog. But that would mean consciously disregarding languages’ most important feature – communication. When I toilingly write something, I want to reach as many people and friends as I can. I guess 90% of the people I know can read English, which gives it about a 40% lead over Hebrew, and 60% over German, not to speak of Chinese and Japanese. These are huge differences, in front of which even a tenacious polyglot like me can’t remain silent. I am simply missing a whole bunch of beloved readership with every passing non-English word.
Just to be sure: I am not compromising for quality in exchange for quantity. English is actually my best foreign language, and there probably won’t be any foreign language in which I am better than in English, no matter how much Thomas Mann or Haruki Murakami I read.
One might see it as a sign for the end of my language rage, and maybe even as the end of my travels. I would rather see it as the beginning of a more mature attitude towards languages, and towards the world I am living in.
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