Blended family: native, mother’s and adopted tongues

 

[love in many languages*]

Last week, I had a language awareness moment. I was making some phone calls to France to arrange details to attend a conference of the SFT, the French Translators Association, in August. As I finished my last conversation in French, I suddenly realized that it felt very natural to speak French. To explain, my native tongue is English, the language of the society in which I grew up in and the educational system that framed my communication. My mother’s native language is French, which we often spoke at home. I reinforced my French through formal studies in high school and a short stint in France as well as teaching credentials. However, for the last 34 years, I have resided and worked in Israel, functioning and working in Hebrew on a daily basis. I have rarely used French during that period. Consequently, I was surprised to notice that it felt more natural to speak French than Hebrew. French has remained more instinctive than Hebrew.

Clearly, a person’s native language remains dominant in the brain. It is the language of preferred speaking when one is tired and also of counting. In general, speaking a native language is a bit of a non-brainer in a certain sense of the word. However, it would seem logical that an adopted language used daily for an extended period would eventually become natural, especially as compared to a neglected childhood language, buried and rusty.

Alas, a few conversations were all that I needed to resurrect those brain connections and return French to the family fold. The words flowed instinctively, albeit not always accurately, even more than in my adopted language, regardless of how well I speak it. Apparently, blood is thicker than water, i.e., a person absorbs a language learned in one’s early years better than one learned as an adult. If you think about, there is no shame, to have a brain with a blended family. After all, there is enough love of languages for all types of children.

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