Language Memoir- Second Language Becomes Home

Growing up in Colorado, I adapted to the American English language culture quickly. Although my family spoke only Finnish at home, I soon began to prefer English over my mother tongue. My English has always been stronger, as I have academically practiced this language my whole life. However; it does not feel natural to speak this language at home, even though my brother and I speak better English than Finnish. Even to speak this language with my brother alone would feel strange, as we’ve fell custom to speaking Finnish to one another. Since I can remember, I have always had an English voice inside my head. This said, I think things through in English then translate them into Finnish when speaking to my family.

            I have had to practice code-switching my whole life, as I have constantly had to switch between the two languages. In a sense, I do speak a form of ‘broken Finnish’, as I lack the ability to express emotions/ideas from English to Finnish. I mix the two languages around quite a lot, without noticing me doing so. As well, when speaking fluently, I forget some words and make grammatical errors. However, growing up, I never thought much about this in-ability to speak perfect Finnish, as my family was always forgiving about these language mistakes. I never had to use the language with anybody outside of my family, as we were residing in an English speaking area. Therefore, it never got practiced outside of the house or with anybody else. Even when we visited extended family in Finland during the summers, I never lost my confidence with my version of the language as they were all understanding of my Finnish abilities.

            It wasn’t until the summer of 2016 that I started to lose confidence with my language use. Even though we had spent countless summers in Finland, hearing countless numbers of people my age speaking the language better than I could, it never affected me personally as I was not associated to them. However, the summer of 2016 I joined a summer camp through which I gained a lot of friends, all living in Finland. Being an international and national camp, there were people my age of all Finnish language abilities. The people I began be-friending all had better language abilities than me, as they preferred Finnish. One girl that soon became my best friend had lived internationally but had moved back to Finland a few years ago. Even her speaking abilities surpassed mine, and was able to converse well with the other natives. During the camp, my friends would code-switch between English and Finnish, and even though I could understand everything that was spoken, I lacked the confidence to contribute in Finnish as their language levels exceeded mine.   

            I often felt embarrassed when speaking the language with my native friends next to me, as I knew I didn’t speak it to their level. Sometimes my friends and I would joke about my poor language abilities, but ultimately it took away my confidence that I once had speaking the language when I was younger.
           I noticed myself in more difficult situations when I began meeting more and more people through my friends in Finland. It was the first time I had felt excluded from a language that had always felt like home. From slang words that I couldn’t keep up with, national jokes, spelling and grammar, to text message abbreviations; it was a world that was swallowing my sureness. At a point, I completely stopped using the language, as I felt that everything that I said was incorrect. I began to invade my home country with a foreign language; the one I was sure about, English. The language that had felt wrong to be spoken at home was now my source of re-assurance in my home country.