Riggers · the 905, Toronto
I have done this in two languages and they are not the same activity
Pinned as not_a_first_language
- Wants
- somebody curious about what a relationship gains and loses in translation
- Rope so far
- Twelve years, seven of them in another country and another language.
- Around
- the 905, Toronto
My English is borrowed and slightly formal. The vocabulary I have for all of this in my other language is worn smooth, full of words I could not translate for you without sounding very strange, and I did not realise until I moved here how much of what I understood had been carried in those words rather than in anything I had done.
Thirty six, out in the 905, twelve years in. The practical effect is that in English I am a more careful and much less funny person, and it took two partnerships for me to work out that this is what people here actually meet. Both women eventually told me I seemed reserved. I am not reserved. I am translating.
This city is unusually good about that, which is the other half of why I am writing. Nobody here has ever been surprised that I have another language. It is the most ordinary fact about a person in half the households on my street. But there is a difference between somebody not being surprised and somebody being interested.
So I am after a partner who is curious rather than merely tolerant. Somebody who will ask what a word means to me and sit through an answer that takes four minutes. If we happened to share the second language that would be a small miracle and I am not counting on it. If we do not, I would like the gap to be a subject between us rather than something we politely work around.