I have always wondered: do people have different personalities when they are speaking different languages? More intriguingly, do I? I remember seeing my English self as shyer, quieter and more introvert when I first came to CC. I often caught myself hesitant about reaching to people or exposing my thoughts and feelings. I stopped making silly puns, telling slightly offensive jokes (and then spending 10 minutes to politically correct myself), or bragging about the insane dreams I had last night. At moments, I paused and looked at myself, thinking that I stopped being me.

As a Poli Sci major, it especially sucked (pardon my idiotic English for now, guck noch mal diesen Titel) during an intense, discussion-centered politics class. I remember sitting in class, looking at the seniors, wishing that I could be them while I actually had to spend three times of the amount of time they needed to finish the readings. I remember sighing to myself: errrrr, only if this discussion was in Chinese.

Then I finally realized that, the problem is definitely not a different personality in another language, but the language ability not being enough to convey my personality completely. Two years later, the table has turned. I became that annoying Poli Sci major upperclassman taking an intro to IR class, babbling nonstop in discussion all time every time. I got to the point that I was describing my entire world view system to a new friend for hours in English as comfortable as in Chinese. After about two years, I found myself on the other side of the language barrier, being as weird and hyper as I should be. It feels like a PC user finally adapted to the Mac OS X system, and feeling fine scrolling up for the page going down— huh, quite smooth.

Ugh man, do I not miss that. I finally got to see Frankie this morning (it was in class actually). I was talking to him in English, and stuttered for three times on finding the proper word for “gleich” in English. Can you even imagine that… Then we both agreed to switch the conversation into German. Although I was still correcting myself all the time, using overly simple vocabularies and messing up the word orders, it actually (somehow) felt much smoother than speaking English. Don’t get me wrong, my German is not good enough, yet. (I tried, though, to take high level Quantum Mechanics theory in German yesterday… nope, total bloodshed. Dropped it after about 10 mins in class, right before I started to hate human race for inventing both physics and German.) My “German self” is quite as shy and quiet as my old “English self”, only speaking up when absolutely necessary. I can literally feel my personality trapped inside of my German, 蠢蠢欲动(Sorry this phrase has to be in Chinese lol)，anxiously seeking a way out.

I guess now you can see that, as hard as I tried not to, my problem of multi-linguality is showing. I guess the language learning process is always making new connections between the cognitive concepts and the linguistic sounds/signs/marks/Wortstellungen. And in order to do that, you have to ignore the connections you already made in other languages. Fire is not 火, Feuer ist auch nicht Fire. Feuer is but the glamorous, hot, red thingy. It looks like a visible red wind blowing from below, or a mysterious Geist, or ghost. You gotta look at it as if you are your illiterate ancestor, or a 牙牙学语的 baby. Wow, red, hot, always altering its shape, how amazing. And then link this impression, this concept to the word in certain language. You know nothing about fire, or 火. At this brief moment, you have but one and only one name that you feel perfekt for this thing: das Feuer.

So ja, I guess this is basically what we go through when we try to pick up a new language. You intentionally forget the former language systems you had, you break up the connections between sounds, signs and meanings, and you build a new Ordnung out of this chaotic mess of concepts. At the beginning you stutter, you switch code, you try to sort the new connections out while fighting the instinct of calling them other names, but after a while, trust me, you’ll be fine.

But at this moment, you can only be patient, take your time, pat yourself on the back and be sicher that: for learning a new language, first you gotta lose two.

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also, here’s some photos from my trip to Wien this weekend. Gotta say, being a Poli Sci student visiting Austria in the middle of the refugee crisis and the election was quite interesting….

No idea why these are tilted, but meet Egon Schiele, my fav artist. And go visit Leopold museum for his works some time if you happen to be in Wien.