Multiple Identities

People born in a certain culture and language, which happens to be our mother tongue throughout each of our lives. Our way of thinking, expressing our opinions and even our behavior get influenced by our mother tongues. 

We, as people, happen to change locations to continue our lives in different countries for different purposes. Education, work, marriage and many other situations can be the reason for us to move to other countries from the countries, which we were born in. Of course, this leads people to learn different languages. As a person, whose life is almost all about languages, I can say, that learning a language means opening a door to a whole other world and life experience. 

Many people, who can speak in another language other than their mother tongue, tend to mention, that they feel like their personalities change when they start to speak in another language than their native language. This feeling even increases when the person starts to live full-time in a different country with a completely different language. 

Living in a different country, where you have to express your feelings in an entirely different language than your native language, is a complicated experience filled with several mood changes. As a person, who is originally from Turkey and currently lives in Germany, I can definitively say that despite knowing a foreign language almost to a native level, the obligation of having to express yourself in a foreign language can get a bit exhausting after a while. 

A person may know a language very well, but that doesn’t prevent that person from first thinking in their native language and translating what's in their mind to the foreign language automatically before expressing it verbally, or even in writing. From personal experience, I can really say that speaking in German, English or Spanish during the whole day and classes makes me feel like I have adopted different personalities for each language I speak. When I speak in Turkish, I automatically speak without filtering my personality or thinking about whether I use the correct grammatical structure or not. Even though I trust my capabilities in German and English, I unintentionally find myself double-checking my thoughts and the way I express them, especially before verbally sharing them in those languages. It definitely lessens with time, but I believe it's a process that many multilinguals are going through.

As I finish this article, I just want to mention that having difficulties during expressing ourselves in different languages and also during getting used to living in different countries are some of the most normal and common processes. There is no need to be hard on ourselves for not adapting to a new environment, a new culture, and a new language right away. Everything will happen and settle in the smoothest way as time passes. Just give yourself time and also dońt forget to be patient with yourself either.