YES!!

[arch_schatten]

From Joey Comeau I am other people, Helen DeWitt:

Part of the attraction of a different language, though, is that the mind, immersed in this new medium, finds the possibility of a different self. When people do ugly things they don't use a separate language for them - so the words we use every day, 'if', 'and', 'the', 'but', 'you', bring back

Comments

[dm_wyatt]

Yep, I'm two different people, sometimes three, sometimes four.

I close off parts of myself from the other parts, my life is pretty compartmentalized. I'm different at work than I am at home and I even have two different lives I live online.

I've got this part of me that uses LJ and writes smut.

Then I've got the other part of me that's trying to be a more serious writer and still learn and grow.

[arch_schatten]

I am so compartmentalized with the different facets of flesh and fandom life that I'm always surprised when someone isn't! I'm definitely a different person depending on what I have to do -work, friends, family, fandom... what I had never realized was how language allowed me a complete division between compartments. Changing language for me is like making a new persona every time I learn a new one, just because that language has no history to me, and I am allowed to make a new history for it.

I hope the serious writing that leads to learning and growing also includes some smut :) And that the plain smut will also help you in your journey for growth! I think both can benefit when we let our personas use one another for support.

[dm_wyatt]

I hope the serious writing that leads to learning and growing also includes some smut :) And that the plain smut will also help you in your journey for growth! I think both can benefit when we let our personas use one another for support.

Yeah, I think it will. In fact, the reason I started to write fanfic was I felt that needed to improve my sex scene writing skills. It was hard for me to take the script to that next level of sexiness.

I think I got the sex scene writing down and it's not scary anymore, so writing fanfic did what I needed it to do: improve my confidence in my own writing.

[mithen]

Awesome quote! This is part of what we try to do reaching English in japan--English is a chance to make a new you, and the differences in the languages make it pretty simple to construct a you that sees the world differently and values different things. The Japanese me is...well, not more polite (because I'm pretty polite) but less abashed about being polite. I remember reading someone (who, darn it?) who said she tended to slip into different languages for different situations. Polish was for swearing, English for explaining and self-expression, and Japanese for...apologizing. Lol, I knew just what she meant--no matter where I bump into someone on the street now, my first impulse is "sumimasen.". Japanese is for being uncertain and contingent and open to other readings for me. The japanese me is also in a Tokyo airport missing you! :)

[arch_schatten]

Yes! We have talked a bit about this, and yet I never realized how it was also true for us... the chance to make a new us is deeply entangled with how language is only a facet of culture, like, a point of entry, and it's not like I made an 'American Mina' persona with the language, but in some ways it is, because you have to try and fit in the different structures the culture has that the language reflects... the same is true for all languages! Japanese Jen is polite and understated! I am so curious about those alter-us, that people that is the same people we love but that contortion into different cultural configurations. I am always so tickled by you commenting on my spanish facebook spamming or Dan's incursions into Spanish, I didn't know why, beyond that I felt it was a very friendly gesture, but.. put into this terms, of course I feel tickled! trying to bend to fit into another language pattern is a compromise of the native-self... I've read somewhere that people who speak more than their native language are more likely to

[arch_schatten]

Malay! awesome! I think your written English is fantastic! :D Lol, my spoken English is also.. in dire need of improving. I don't use it much, so my accent is pretty notorious, I think, and I can write it okay, but the pronunciation is completely alien, sometimes, so in the times I've had to use it for a long time, even my mouth starts to feel weird, tired. Not used to making those sounds, I guess?