Language choices
We do this implicitly, we are very sure in which language to use - right until our assumptions break.
I am a Belarus-born native speaker of Russian. I currently live in an international university in the USA and I speak English for the absolute most of time. I studied German for a few years and lived in Germany over one summer. I picked up Spanish over a year and read and cited a number of sources in Spanish for my academic papers. More so, I “speak Belarusian” in terms of ability rather than practice. Yet ironically, I live in a living group at MIT that is called French House while I know at most a dozen words of French. For the majority of my work, academic and personal, I produce it in a single language and don’t waste time for translations of myself. Occasionally I talk to multiple people about an issue that I have, explaining it over again in a different language.
With this essay I want to illuminate a number of implicit choices of language that I encounter in myself and others on a daily basis, and I try to reason out some conclusions for my identity. Before I do so, I want to draw your attention to some explicit choice that I made in writing this very piece - it is written in English, therefore I expect any reader who knows English to understand it, and at the same time I restrict my readership to the English-speakers.
1. Matters of science
I am a physicist. A few years ago it took me a few weeks to get completely plugged into the physics terminology in English. In fact, the world of physics, the one whose mission is the study of natural phenomena, something objective and often external to humans, has implicitly converged on the ways to describe it. The whole world community of physicists should talk about physics in “a single language” - a common shorthand for the statement “a single language that is English”.
Knowing Russian in doing physics is not indispensable but somewhat useful. This gives one access to the whole physics heritage of the Soviet Union, and as well to some of the modern research done in the Russian-speaking countries. At the same time, there exist a plentiful number of Russian scientists of different disciplines that have moved to the West looking for better life and opportunities. They work in multinational groups and publish in American and European journals in English. Many of them do not have prejudices towards or against people of any other nationalities if those people are instrumental in work.
I, however, happen to be in one of the very few biased positions from the point of view of those scientists. In the matters of my private and professional communication a breakdown of equality happens because seemingly several different rules of courtesy apply at the same time. As academic members of English-based institutions, we are expected to converse in English, which we do for the matter of any meetings involving more people. In private communication, however, the choice of language becomes clouded. I cannot think of a common rule to use for all of these situations.
Both the scientists and myself are emigrants, who by their choice live in a foreign country. For different people, this fact implies different relations with the home countries and institutions. Some would prefer to stick to English because that’s what our work, local colleagues, books and publications use. Some much rather use Russian, because “Who are we to use the bourgeois ways of talking as if we are not Russians”. Sometimes, when emails are addressed between the Russian speakers, I even face the opposition to the usage of the American common code of politeness. The most ironic cases are those where we extensively discuss a scientific problem in Russian yet write a shared publication in English, managing to correct each other’s language mistakes. This kind of a situation forces a constant rethinking of terminology and a back and forth translation between the two languages. Part of the physics vocabulary is shared because it is borrowed into the two languages from Greek or Latin. In some areas Russian physics uses English words, most rarely this happens the other way. A big part of terminologies uses completely different sets of roots.
Being constantly plugged into the English-speaking world of physics, being taught physics according to the American textbooks and lecture notes, I shift more and more to the America-centered view of the organizational structure of this science. Of course, there are many other factors - the universities that happen to have the top ratings; the social networks of the physicists; the origins of the majority of faculty members and students around me. However, given the sharp fixation on the usage of common vocabulary, we rigidly use only literature in English.
The choice of English in the common usage for everyday academic and scientific routines has deep pragmatic reasons to it. However, it is also important that this language is chosen implicitly, this choice is not advertised or discussed; thus, it establishes the silent and thus ever more powerful hegemony.
2. Matters of people
When I started university in Belarus, I started a blog. At first it was majorly used to broadcast the new issues of my webcomic “Andrew’s Weekly” that started about a year yet earlier. The comic was a rather clumsy satire of my immediate surroundings, my university, physics, random encounters in the streets. I was not completely fluent in English back then, but I chose to draw the comic in my English with plenty of mistakes in grammar and language usage. Back then I thought to be making the comic a bit more elitist, restricted-access to only those of my friends who were “smart enough” to read English. I also posted periodically my rambles in the blog, in Russian.
The pattern was modified when I came to MIT and moved over to Cambridge, MA. Stranded in unfamiliar atmosphere, hosed with classes, surrounded with the necessity of using English to communicate with everyone, on every question and topic, 24/7, I revamped the structure of my blogging. Suddenly, I was out there in the exotic land, but yet still very fresh off the plane from Belarus. I expected a lot of interest towards my life from the Belarusians, and to address that demand I started writing blog posts about my new everyday reality, in Russian. Andrew’s Weekly was quickly forgotten.
As I was talking to my new friends, Americans and internationals, for days on end, I was also Skyping with my parents and my old friends on the weekends, obviously in Russian. It was often a struggle to explain in Russian the American realities to people who have never been here, explain the events that happened to me while using English.
Throughout the first year at MIT I mostly posted piles of reflections, facts, observations without a lot structure. This was prompted by the novelty of the whole situation which was gradually wearing down. By the end of the first year I stopped writing altogether.
Later, however, my interest in writing rose again. I wanted to write some kind of editorials, more analyzed opinions that are still not designed to fit the academic paper standards. As I was studying more and more humanities, most of all anthropology, and as I was traveling to other countries and experiencing new cultures, I started to flesh out longer arguments. These became more structured and more informed by theories. I started to blog occasionally again.
Yet with this new start, with this new theoretical basis, I faced what seemed to be a brand new question - should I write my new opinions in Russian or rather in English? Thinking twice, the question is not new. I previously chose to write from America in Russian by inertia, reaching out to the audience that I have just left. But the “just left” was not true anymore.
Now, in all my personal writing, I keep facing this issue over and over - which language should I use? This correlates with what audience I want to reach, which concepts I want to refer to. From the observations, all of my personal notes, the internal documents and scribbles that I am the only person to see, use English almost exclusively. My romantic relationships, my friendly chats over drinks, my academic debates all use English - yet often I discuss the very same subjects that I would like to deliver to the Belarusians.
The younger generation is very likely to understand my writing in English. The older generation - most importantly, my parents and the extended family - are then at the risk of missing out.
3. Science of people
My decision to undertake an extensive study of anthropology is worth a separate essay that might be written one day. But one of the reasons I can cite briefly is the desire to come to grasps with the social world around me, to understand the origins and the languages of description of the different cultures that I am exposed to and hopefully will continue being exposed to.
To do that, I picked up anthropology as an academic discipline, studying it through a range of classes. Being in an American university, I have my studies in English and my professors, for the most part, American. I read American ethnographic accounts and social theory. I read a number of French theorists, such as Durkheim, Mauss, Foucault and Bourdieu, in English translations. I conducted a bit of anthropological research and wrote a lot of papers in English. I even conducted a little anthropological case study of Peruvian newest political history and presidential elections, citing a lot of sources originally in Spanish.
You might have picked up on a trend here - not a single of these studies, readings, writings or discussions is in Russian. In a few cases I encountered publications discussing the Russian-speaking regions, written by Western authors or Russian emigrants, but those were but examples. Turns out, I have an overwhelming exposure to social theory in English, but translating it into Russian is very nontrivial.
More so, even when I can find the appropriate words to express my observations and generalizations in Russian, the concepts, ways of reasoning and argument structures turn out to be completely alien to some of my older social circles. My parents really think I’m really boring when I talk about social science. I don’t blame them, I probably sound so.
So isn’t it worth cutting the effort by switching to English for social science purposes altogether and not even mentioning it in Russian? This choice, as much as the choice of Russian, is a direct exclusion of a good part of my potential readership. But in making this choice, I still disregard some other option, another language that I am relatively proficient in but do not use.
4. Language and identity
Every so often I get asked by people from different countries where am I from. I say “Belarus, that one, between Russia and Poland“ - that is a canned, ready-made, prepackaged answer. They ask then, “What do they speak there in Belarus?” or, sometimes, “What is your native language?” or “What languages do you speak?” I use the second prepackaged answer - “Russian and Belarusian. Russian is more popular though and Belarusian is kinda oppressed”. I think this is as accurate a description as you can fit in two short sentences - at a party conversation nobody gives you more. Oh, I do go into an elaboration if asked, I start talking about history and significant events, turns and policies on Belarusian territory.
But that discussion is taking the focus away from me and onto some abstract entity of “my country”. I am actually Belarusian, not Russian. I grew up in Belarus and spent rather little time in Russia. Those are two different countries, as many Russians don’t give a big account of. We both were parts of the Soviet Union, we share a lot of cultural heritage, and we share some of the policies and ideologies and everyday trivialities. Some, not all.
I grew up in a country that is not Russia, and we happen to have a language that is not Russian. I can’t speak to the statistical, sociological or anthropological studies of Belarus. I can speak to the personal experience. Belarusian language and literature were taught to me all throughout school and a bit of university. I took those classes half-heartedly, as if accepting the government-approved dogmatic programs. In those people that I saw using Belarusian out of their own volition in a predominantly Russian-speaking environment, it was always signifying some sort of protest, opposition or separation.
All Belarusian-speakers clearly understand Russian even if they can’t or don’t want to respond in kind. The reverse is not true. A Russian ear can be attuned to Belarusian, but not instantly. I say that “I speak Belarusian”, but it means my capacity or ability, rather than ever practice. This ability is for the most time held deep in the strategic reserve, growing with rust, only used in rare cases such as a casual chat with a girl waiting for the train at the Vilnius train station. You got it: Vilnius is not even in Belarus.
I still use Belarusian music in my recreation. Modern Belarusian rock is often in Belarusian, as opposed to the popular, government-approved, apolitical music in Russian. This is similar to a hug, a little condition-free positive affirmation of my identity. This is the music that literally nobody physically around me can understand; this is something that connects me all the way with the country where I come from. Note, this is different from “the country I call home”.
What is the place that I call home now? What are the factors defining my identity now? These are the questions chasing me in the back of my mind, and my answers are both reinforced and challenged by my everyday more or less conscious choices.
I live in US, I go to MIT, and this fast-paced academic struggle forces me to use English. I use Russian to connect to people of both my own and the close Russian or Russian expat culture. I use Belarusian to connect, most privately and indirectly, to the culture that I might be calling my own, which though doesn’t use it by itself at any major scale. I occasionally use Spanish to connect to another culture, of which many members have been displaced and have similar emigrant feelings.
I claim on the paper Belarusian permanent residence, I hold Belarusian citizenship and address registration and faithfully spend there some three weeks out of a year. I need to constantly explain where my country is and why it is called such. I live in US, nominally temporarily, but I plan to stay here in the nearest future. I want to pick up a few more languages and see many more cultures of the world. I expect to explain and maybe excuse my country and my identity for another thousand times.
I am a Belarus-born native speaker of Russian. I currently live in an international university in the USA and I speak English for the absolute most of time. I studied German for a few years and lived in Germany over one summer. I picked up Spanish over a year and read and cited a number of sources in Spanish for my academic papers. More so, I “speak Belarusian” in terms of ability rather than practice. Yet ironically, I live in a living group at MIT that is called French House while I know at most a dozen words of French. For the majority of my work, academic and personal, I produce it in a single language and don’t waste time for translations of myself. Occasionally I talk to multiple people about an issue that I have, explaining it over again in a different language.
With this essay I want to illuminate a number of implicit choices of language that I encounter in myself and others on a daily basis, and I try to reason out some conclusions for my identity. Before I do so, I want to draw your attention to some explicit choice that I made in writing this very piece - it is written in English, therefore I expect any reader who knows English to understand it, and at the same time I restrict my readership to the English-speakers.
1. Matters of science
I am a physicist. A few years ago it took me a few weeks to get completely plugged into the physics terminology in English. In fact, the world of physics, the one whose mission is the study of natural phenomena, something objective and often external to humans, has implicitly converged on the ways to describe it. The whole world community of physicists should talk about physics in “a single language” - a common shorthand for the statement “a single language that is English”.
Knowing Russian in doing physics is not indispensable but somewhat useful. This gives one access to the whole physics heritage of the Soviet Union, and as well to some of the modern research done in the Russian-speaking countries. At the same time, there exist a plentiful number of Russian scientists of different disciplines that have moved to the West looking for better life and opportunities. They work in multinational groups and publish in American and European journals in English. Many of them do not have prejudices towards or against people of any other nationalities if those people are instrumental in work.
I, however, happen to be in one of the very few biased positions from the point of view of those scientists. In the matters of my private and professional communication a breakdown of equality happens because seemingly several different rules of courtesy apply at the same time. As academic members of English-based institutions, we are expected to converse in English, which we do for the matter of any meetings involving more people. In private communication, however, the choice of language becomes clouded. I cannot think of a common rule to use for all of these situations.
Both the scientists and myself are emigrants, who by their choice live in a foreign country. For different people, this fact implies different relations with the home countries and institutions. Some would prefer to stick to English because that’s what our work, local colleagues, books and publications use. Some much rather use Russian, because “Who are we to use the bourgeois ways of talking as if we are not Russians”. Sometimes, when emails are addressed between the Russian speakers, I even face the opposition to the usage of the American common code of politeness. The most ironic cases are those where we extensively discuss a scientific problem in Russian yet write a shared publication in English, managing to correct each other’s language mistakes. This kind of a situation forces a constant rethinking of terminology and a back and forth translation between the two languages. Part of the physics vocabulary is shared because it is borrowed into the two languages from Greek or Latin. In some areas Russian physics uses English words, most rarely this happens the other way. A big part of terminologies uses completely different sets of roots.
Being constantly plugged into the English-speaking world of physics, being taught physics according to the American textbooks and lecture notes, I shift more and more to the America-centered view of the organizational structure of this science. Of course, there are many other factors - the universities that happen to have the top ratings; the social networks of the physicists; the origins of the majority of faculty members and students around me. However, given the sharp fixation on the usage of common vocabulary, we rigidly use only literature in English.
The choice of English in the common usage for everyday academic and scientific routines has deep pragmatic reasons to it. However, it is also important that this language is chosen implicitly, this choice is not advertised or discussed; thus, it establishes the silent and thus ever more powerful hegemony.
2. Matters of people
When I started university in Belarus, I started a blog. At first it was majorly used to broadcast the new issues of my webcomic “Andrew’s Weekly” that started about a year yet earlier. The comic was a rather clumsy satire of my immediate surroundings, my university, physics, random encounters in the streets. I was not completely fluent in English back then, but I chose to draw the comic in my English with plenty of mistakes in grammar and language usage. Back then I thought to be making the comic a bit more elitist, restricted-access to only those of my friends who were “smart enough” to read English. I also posted periodically my rambles in the blog, in Russian.
The pattern was modified when I came to MIT and moved over to Cambridge, MA. Stranded in unfamiliar atmosphere, hosed with classes, surrounded with the necessity of using English to communicate with everyone, on every question and topic, 24/7, I revamped the structure of my blogging. Suddenly, I was out there in the exotic land, but yet still very fresh off the plane from Belarus. I expected a lot of interest towards my life from the Belarusians, and to address that demand I started writing blog posts about my new everyday reality, in Russian. Andrew’s Weekly was quickly forgotten.
As I was talking to my new friends, Americans and internationals, for days on end, I was also Skyping with my parents and my old friends on the weekends, obviously in Russian. It was often a struggle to explain in Russian the American realities to people who have never been here, explain the events that happened to me while using English.
Throughout the first year at MIT I mostly posted piles of reflections, facts, observations without a lot structure. This was prompted by the novelty of the whole situation which was gradually wearing down. By the end of the first year I stopped writing altogether.
Later, however, my interest in writing rose again. I wanted to write some kind of editorials, more analyzed opinions that are still not designed to fit the academic paper standards. As I was studying more and more humanities, most of all anthropology, and as I was traveling to other countries and experiencing new cultures, I started to flesh out longer arguments. These became more structured and more informed by theories. I started to blog occasionally again.
Yet with this new start, with this new theoretical basis, I faced what seemed to be a brand new question - should I write my new opinions in Russian or rather in English? Thinking twice, the question is not new. I previously chose to write from America in Russian by inertia, reaching out to the audience that I have just left. But the “just left” was not true anymore.
Now, in all my personal writing, I keep facing this issue over and over - which language should I use? This correlates with what audience I want to reach, which concepts I want to refer to. From the observations, all of my personal notes, the internal documents and scribbles that I am the only person to see, use English almost exclusively. My romantic relationships, my friendly chats over drinks, my academic debates all use English - yet often I discuss the very same subjects that I would like to deliver to the Belarusians.
The younger generation is very likely to understand my writing in English. The older generation - most importantly, my parents and the extended family - are then at the risk of missing out.
3. Science of people
My decision to undertake an extensive study of anthropology is worth a separate essay that might be written one day. But one of the reasons I can cite briefly is the desire to come to grasps with the social world around me, to understand the origins and the languages of description of the different cultures that I am exposed to and hopefully will continue being exposed to.
To do that, I picked up anthropology as an academic discipline, studying it through a range of classes. Being in an American university, I have my studies in English and my professors, for the most part, American. I read American ethnographic accounts and social theory. I read a number of French theorists, such as Durkheim, Mauss, Foucault and Bourdieu, in English translations. I conducted a bit of anthropological research and wrote a lot of papers in English. I even conducted a little anthropological case study of Peruvian newest political history and presidential elections, citing a lot of sources originally in Spanish.
You might have picked up on a trend here - not a single of these studies, readings, writings or discussions is in Russian. In a few cases I encountered publications discussing the Russian-speaking regions, written by Western authors or Russian emigrants, but those were but examples. Turns out, I have an overwhelming exposure to social theory in English, but translating it into Russian is very nontrivial.
More so, even when I can find the appropriate words to express my observations and generalizations in Russian, the concepts, ways of reasoning and argument structures turn out to be completely alien to some of my older social circles. My parents really think I’m really boring when I talk about social science. I don’t blame them, I probably sound so.
So isn’t it worth cutting the effort by switching to English for social science purposes altogether and not even mentioning it in Russian? This choice, as much as the choice of Russian, is a direct exclusion of a good part of my potential readership. But in making this choice, I still disregard some other option, another language that I am relatively proficient in but do not use.
4. Language and identity
Every so often I get asked by people from different countries where am I from. I say “Belarus, that one, between Russia and Poland“ - that is a canned, ready-made, prepackaged answer. They ask then, “What do they speak there in Belarus?” or, sometimes, “What is your native language?” or “What languages do you speak?” I use the second prepackaged answer - “Russian and Belarusian. Russian is more popular though and Belarusian is kinda oppressed”. I think this is as accurate a description as you can fit in two short sentences - at a party conversation nobody gives you more. Oh, I do go into an elaboration if asked, I start talking about history and significant events, turns and policies on Belarusian territory.
But that discussion is taking the focus away from me and onto some abstract entity of “my country”. I am actually Belarusian, not Russian. I grew up in Belarus and spent rather little time in Russia. Those are two different countries, as many Russians don’t give a big account of. We both were parts of the Soviet Union, we share a lot of cultural heritage, and we share some of the policies and ideologies and everyday trivialities. Some, not all.
I grew up in a country that is not Russia, and we happen to have a language that is not Russian. I can’t speak to the statistical, sociological or anthropological studies of Belarus. I can speak to the personal experience. Belarusian language and literature were taught to me all throughout school and a bit of university. I took those classes half-heartedly, as if accepting the government-approved dogmatic programs. In those people that I saw using Belarusian out of their own volition in a predominantly Russian-speaking environment, it was always signifying some sort of protest, opposition or separation.
All Belarusian-speakers clearly understand Russian even if they can’t or don’t want to respond in kind. The reverse is not true. A Russian ear can be attuned to Belarusian, but not instantly. I say that “I speak Belarusian”, but it means my capacity or ability, rather than ever practice. This ability is for the most time held deep in the strategic reserve, growing with rust, only used in rare cases such as a casual chat with a girl waiting for the train at the Vilnius train station. You got it: Vilnius is not even in Belarus.
I still use Belarusian music in my recreation. Modern Belarusian rock is often in Belarusian, as opposed to the popular, government-approved, apolitical music in Russian. This is similar to a hug, a little condition-free positive affirmation of my identity. This is the music that literally nobody physically around me can understand; this is something that connects me all the way with the country where I come from. Note, this is different from “the country I call home”.
What is the place that I call home now? What are the factors defining my identity now? These are the questions chasing me in the back of my mind, and my answers are both reinforced and challenged by my everyday more or less conscious choices.
I live in US, I go to MIT, and this fast-paced academic struggle forces me to use English. I use Russian to connect to people of both my own and the close Russian or Russian expat culture. I use Belarusian to connect, most privately and indirectly, to the culture that I might be calling my own, which though doesn’t use it by itself at any major scale. I occasionally use Spanish to connect to another culture, of which many members have been displaced and have similar emigrant feelings.
I claim on the paper Belarusian permanent residence, I hold Belarusian citizenship and address registration and faithfully spend there some three weeks out of a year. I need to constantly explain where my country is and why it is called such. I live in US, nominally temporarily, but I plan to stay here in the nearest future. I want to pick up a few more languages and see many more cultures of the world. I expect to explain and maybe excuse my country and my identity for another thousand times.