ADD UP A NEW IDENTITY TO YOU

Add Up a 

New Identity

To You

 
 

When I was in elementary school, 

my best friend moved to the United States 

because of his parents’ relocation for work. 

He told me that he could come back a few years later. 

 

I quite missed him because we were hanging out all the time.
 
Later, I found that he didn’t come back, 

and I heard from someone that he decided to stay in the United States. 

I think that was the beginning of my interests towards foreign cultures and languages.
 
He was a threshold to have made me think that there are lives outside of my hometown.

 

For me, my hometown was a country. 

Going to another town by bike was going to another country. 

 

Such a small world.
 

 
I have run into many bilingual people in my life.

I always want to be like that.

I don’t know why.

I guess I simply found them cool 

because I can’t find a good reason for it.

Or I see them as supermen.

How could a person speak two languages?

I did not understand what it really means.

How do their brains work?

 
I used to think only with my mother tongue.

My feelings and thoughts were composed of words derived from my mother tongue. 

I spoke to myself with my mother tongue. 

 

I dreamed with my mother tongue. 

 

I was shouting with only my mother tongue.

 

I expressed joy or sadness with my mother tongue.
 

We all have our mother tongue.

There are so many languages in the world.

We were born and raised to speak one language as a mother tongue among a few hundreds. 

I believe our mother tongue is a foundation for being ourselves. 

We speak to ourselves with our mother tongue. 

 

We direct our bodies with our mother tongue. 

 

We respond to what happens with our mother tongue. 

Our mother tongue also reflects our values 

 

and cultures rooted in the surroundings where we were raised.

Learning a new language, in other words, 

will add a new value and culture to us.

That is a big transformation 

 

because we need to direct our bodies 

 

with a different language from our mother tongue.

So If you do already speak a foreign language up to a point where you go without translating a word for a word, 

 

you may have a differentiated value and culture. 

Bilingual speakers are a good example for this. 

A language, a culture, and a value are indivisible. 

A language is not a tool but an identity in depth.

If you can speak another language, it is going to be new you for sure.

Do you want to be a superman that I pictured 

 

when I was a kid?

What will you be like 

 

when you can speak a foreign language smoothly 

 

perfectly like a native language speaker?

 

How does it feel?

 

 

 

Thanks for reading,

 

Hilano Aquihisa