When I finally got to spend time and properly converse with my family after a long while, my mother made a comment that unsettled me. She said I was starting to sound like a child still struggling to grasp the nuances of a language. Of course, I knew that existing in English, learning Dutch, speaking Ukrainian, and occasionally reading in Russian would eventually take a toll on my fluency in each of the languages. But I hadn’t realized how easily the language level of an educated adult could fade away.
Without noticing, I had been slipping English words into conversations with family and friends back home—not out of pretension or an urge to sound cosmopolitan, but simply because I couldn’t recall the right word in my mother tongue without pushing my brain power to the max for five minutes. By butchering sentence structures, word endings, and stresses, I had become a linguistic Frankenstein, piecing together my own word monsters that entertained everyone I spoke to.
Two weeks of immersion into family and native language helped a little. I made fewer mistakes, giving my family fewer reasons to poke fun at me. But now my international friends had their turn as my English was slipping, too. A once-tamed language had become overgrown, sprouting quirky mistakes and a strange accent I didn’t normally have. ‘I dog with my walks’, ‘I am not abbable to call’, and ‘we all must stay table’.
A once-tamed language had become overgrown, sprouting quirky mistakes and a strange accent I didn’t normally have
Between reading an academic paper and trying to understand a word joke from my sister, the mush that used to be my brain started to panic. Was my CV’s proud claim of speaking four languages now a lie? Would I never again eavesdrop at multilingual parties? Had I gone from bilingual to ‘goodbye-lingual’? Maybe I closed some linguistic doors by trying to open too many.
When I shared a humanities student’s worst nightmare with a fellow international, she just laughed. ‘You’re definitely not alone.’ And suddenly, it dawned on me. Language isn’t static; it shifts and adapts with us.
A literal translation like ‘don’t hang your nose’ instead of ‘don’t give up yet’ might raise an eyebrow, or a nose. An accidental request to ‘slow drively’ might get a chuckle. A borrowed Dutch word like gezellig might be the only way to capture a feeling no other language quite does. Maybe adding, taking, and mixing weren’t mistakes, but proof of something richer: a mind learning to move between worlds.
If languages are fluid, it is an advantage to be able to surf between and through their multitudes, varieties, and depths. Proper multilingualism helps to develop this skill. As with any other skill, we must use it not to lose it. But once in a while, it is okay to fall off the linguistic surfboard and splash in the sea of words and metaphors like children do.
LIZA KOLOMIIETS