One of the things I find interesting about living abroad and learning a new language is the way my relationship with my native tongue has changed. Working in an environment like this, you come across people from all over who may be less than used to speaking English, and I find myself learning patience when people take a bit longer to express themselves, or learning to guess meanings when what they intend to say is unclear. Doing so helps me grow and try to be a better listener. When I speak, too, I have to be careful about how fast I speak or how my accent is coming across, and it forces me to think twice about using American colloquialisms. As my brain has gotten used to being filled with multiple languages, I’ve noticed it takes me a lot longer than it used to for me to remember the wording of certain idioms or figures of speech. It’s far more common for an English synonym I’m searching for to be just out of reach on the tip of my tongue.
Foreigners are few in this country these days, which means my native tongue is also very much a commodity. So many people are dying to learn English here, or to practice it at every chance they get. I can’t tell you how many times someone has yelled “what’s your name” or “how are you” at me in the street, either from roaming packs of teenagers that want to show off what they know to their friends, or from people who generally want to start a conversation. I’ve had to tell many people that I wish I could help them with their English, but my time is already taken up with learning Arabic and with other relationships.
After learning Arabic for almost a year and a half now, English is still very much my home base and my comfortable language, but it’s funny to see how in some instances, certain things just come out much more naturally in Arabic. Part of the beauty of learning another language is learning to express yourself in ways that aren’t culturally (or verbally!) possible in your own language. It’s a cool journey to be on, and Arabic is a broad sea of a language to dive into. It’s good to know, though, that I can always return to English as the shore, even if the shoreline changes with time.