Friday 12 January 2007

The languages we write with





I’ve always written. As a child, I wrote in Finnish, but when I grew up, I began to write in Swedish too. Writing in Swedish was a way to get nearer my mother, who spoke Swedish better than Finnish, a means to understand her and her thoughts and feelings better.

A girl wants to be like her mother.

I grew up to my height as a teen-ager, learned how to speak French and German, but it was impossible to write in these languages. I liked to speak French, I liked to listen to it, but to write French became a horror for me. Same happened with German.

English. It has always been easy for me to learn English, it sounded familiar from the beginning, thanks to the movies I had watched from the early childhood. Laurel and Hardy, John Wayne, Julie Andrews and Peter O’Toole taught me to understand English.

It still feels natural for me to write in English and it puzzles me a little. My thoughts are mostly in Finnish and if writing is a documentation of ones thoughts, desire, hopes and life, why don’t I write only in Finnish?

Or could it be, that writing has no language? Is it only a state of mind?

8 comments:

hpy said...

I believe that you have to think and write in the same language, but that doesn't mean that you can think and write in only one language.
If you don't, your writing doesn't reflect what you think, it's only a traduction of your thoughts. And as we all know, traductions are not as good as the original text.

SusuPetal said...

That's true, I realised it almost the same time I wrote this text -I just hadn't noticed that I had switched my thoughts into English.

Eero Leppänen said...

Hey I found my way here. intresting!
I too can think (and dream) in english. some.

SusuPetal said...

Hi, Medis. Yes, maybe interesting, but also a good means to practise English.
I won't put this blog on Blogilista, readers find here if it is to happen.

And it is allowed to comment in Finnish here too!

Salka said...

Okei, jos suomeks saa sannoo niin sit mä ilmottaudun! Jos ei kerta tartte osata. Mä en kyllä rupee laittelen mun vajaalla englanninkielentaidolla tänne mtn kommentteja.

Mutta tätä on mielenkiintoista lukea. Tulee esille ihan erilainen Susu teksteistä kun tähän asti suomenkielisesä plokissa;)

SusuPetal said...

Heh, suomeksi saa sannoo, Salka.

Joo, tämä on ehkä vähän pohdiskelevampi blogi kuin nuo suomen kieliset, vaikka mistä sen tietää, alussa vasta olen täällä.

hogrelius said...

Ja, då får vi väl skriva lite på din moders språk.Såg o läste din text över resan hem till din gamla stad men kunde inte lura ut vilken stad du kommer från?

SusuPetal said...

Ja, det ät väl ganska svårt att gissa utav texten.
Det är Åbo.