Grammar mistakes in Spanish. On the phone with my family, I tend to lack Dutch vocabulary. And my English is turning into ¨Spanglish¨: ¨I think we are casi there¨ or ¨Could you pass me my mochilla? ¨.
The fact that most Dutch learn English, French, German and sometimes Spanish impresses my Ecuadorian classmates. It is indeed a privilege to speak and understand different languages. Not just because you´re able to communicate with the people from that country. If you really speak a foreign language well, its expressions and sayings open up a door to a different mode of thinking. For example, in English, you’d say you've broken a glass. The emphasis is on the person and the fault he made. That doesn’t matter in Spanish. You’d say that the glass broke, even though you smashed it on the ground yourself.
The downsides are the complications that come together with mastering a new language. Let alone what I said before about not being able to speak any language fluently. I often feel my personality is changing when I swop to a different language. At the moment, my Spanish is too simple to make jokes, tell my friends about youth-traumas or diplomatically explain why I can’t attend somebody´s birthday. Even after four years of speaking English, I still make the mistake of being too direct. Product of my Dutch roots; no means no, you don’t have to apologise twenty times. Similarly in Dutch, I've started translating expression from English into Dutch.
According to my own experiences, the people that say that your mother tongue reflects great part of your culture are right. In addition, it reveals your personality in a different way. So when you learn a new language, can you become part of new culture too? Or can you acquire multiple personalities? I don’t know. And if I knew, I couldn’t find the words to explain it. Right now, I feel I have lost more than I have gained. Including myself and the ability to talk.