During my entire life I have been confronted with many languages. I always lived a kind of double life. At home I always used to speak Dutch with my parents. I can still remember my parents asking me to not speak Italian when at dinner, which was kind of frustrating when I was young. I always spoke Italian with my brothers, with my friends and of course at school. I really couldn’t figure out why my mother always pushed for speaking Dutch at home. Now I can only be thankful for that! Continue reading My Personal Experience
My name is Johan and I am a Swedish student at Maastricht University, more specifically at UCM were I study History. I am a native speaker in Swedish but also fluent in English. The multitude of official languages in Europe is an interesting feature of the ongoing construction of a European identity, it is therefore necessary to obtain greater knowledge of languages in general and language policies in relation to education and international media.
It will be interesting to learn how to write a blog in an academic sense. This is something new for me that hopefully will come handy for future work or study related tasks.
For the ones who want to know more about the blog related to this course please visit the official After Babel course website.
this is Mülheim, the city I am coming from
Hello my dear fellows,
my name is Pia and I am a German girl studying at Maastricht University in the Netherlands. The program European Studies, which I am doing is taught in English.The reason I choose Maastricht University was mainly found on the fact that I wanted to study in English to have more opportunities in the future. Furthermore, I wanted to improve my English as I only used in school and I did not want to lose the ability to speak it by not practicing it anymore. Until now I do not regret this decision and I am still very satisfied with the program. However, our first blog entry should tell something about us.
Mhmm.. what can I tell you about me ?
Generally, I am a very happy person, who is smiling everyday. It is quite easy to make me happy and I am very loyal to all of my friends. However, currently life is getting a bit tougher, as the intended bachelor is coming closer and closer and also the fear about what to do afterwards. I am really bad at wondering about my future when I am currently in a chapter of my life which is not finished already. This is making me recently a bit anxious about the future. But I am sure that some of you know the feeling. Sometimes it is very paralyzing and you are lying there like a sheep that did a stupid move and rolled down a dike. I don’t know if you can imagine how this looks but it once happend to me when I was on holidays with my dad in the Netherlands. And believe me this is looking very desperate 
But this is a different story…
it was basically looking like that:
The languages I speak
Our course book is saying that I should also tell you what languages I am speaking and why. Always these guidelines. Well, I am speaking four languages, namely English (most fluently), French, Spanish and Dutch. I am speaking these languages because I had to learn the first three in school, whereby I always liked English more than the others. If I am remembering it right I also started learning it very early, I think it was due to a book which was about the Sesam Street and some basics were explained in English. Guess I got it from my aunt who was an English teacher at this time. Aside from that I started studying French for three years, but as I never actually practiced the language, I am not very good in speaking it. However, I would probably find the way back if I will get lost for some reason in France. After studying French I continued with Spanish and I really have to say that I liked it at the beginning. But after teachers changed I truly started hating it, as the new teacher gave me the feeling that I was forced to learn it. Spanish was probably not one of my best language discourses. This year I started learning Dutch.. I know a bit late if you take into account that I am living in the Netherlands for four years now. A bit embarrassing to tell. However, now I am learning Dutch and actually it is working out quite well. I really like the classes and yesterday I recognized that I also can write in Dutch as I was corresponding with my tutor via Email. That makes me a bit proud. However, it would make me probably more proud to speak more languages fluently. I really want to start studying Italian for instance, because I love the language as it is filled with so many emotions. Taking into account this fact, I would really say that languages differently shape your identity in many ways. Your pronunciation for instance represents your social class and also from which region you are coming. Therefore, I definitely would say that the Sapir-Whorf-Hypothesis holds true, which states that “the social environment can be related in language and it often also have an effect on the structure of the vocabulary.” (Trudgill, 2000).
Finally, by taking into account the After Babel course, due to which I started writing a own blog, I have to say that I am really looking forward to this course and I like the idea of blog writing a lot.
best,
Pia
Trudgill, P. (2000). Sociolinguistics: An Introduction to Language and Society, 4th Ed., London: Penguin Books. Chapter 1 p.15
Hello everyone! Buon giorno, bon jour y buenos dias; I can’t go much further than that….
My name is Elia, and I am much more of an exception here than in my home country.In fact, being a student in Maastricht means that you daily meet and know people with a vary interesting mixture of nationalities. Which in most cases implies a rich variety of multilingual skills. It’s not rare to meet fellow students with two mother tongues. But I ain’t anything like that, in fact my only hometowns movements until 20 have only been within the Italian territory, with my Italian family. I’ve been therefore raised strictly mono linguistic. I studied at school 8 years of English and 3 years of French. I never mastered the languages until I went to live to Brussels for an internship, where I improved my English and a tinny bit of French. Improvement that continued once I started the University in Maastricht, where English is the teaching language.
Apart of this I can only add a basic knowledge of Spanish, which I started to study one months ago. My Spanish skills are due to my 3 weeks trip to Cuba, where the only spoken language was Spanish, and effort on my side was required to make myself understood. And of course the similarity with Italian help a lot. But I never studied how to write in Spanish. For these reasons it’s most likely that the languages I will use in my blog will be English and Italian.
A presto!
Welcome to this blog! Its aim is to reflect on my language identity. My name is Arthur and I grew up in Brussels, Belgium. My parents have Flemish family names and were raised in Flanders. However, they were both educated in French and like me, only master the Flemish langue partially. One might ask, how come? And where do Flemish family names come from? My ancestors probably shifted to French as their primary language for its prestige and thus, the Flemish language was progressively lost. This is worth mentioning, as this switch from Flemish to French is an integrant part of Brussels’ identity. The French language was imposed on Flemish speaking city-dwellers and as a result, an interesting dialect emerged, namely, ‘t Brusseleer. It is the topic of a coming post.
Back to my linguistic identity, my first language is French, but as you might have noticed, I am expressing myself in English. I study at Maastricht University in the Netherlands, a highly international institution, where all courses are taught in English. I arrived here almost three years ago with only a basic level of English. Thus, the question arises, “how was the immersion into an English speaking university?” This is the topic for an upcoming post B-)
Currently, I am almost fluent in English. Furthermore, ten years ago, I studied for a year in a Flemish school, which gave me strong basics in Dutch too. I only kept practicing it in a certain context and form. The context is mainly when I spend time with my bilingual Flemish and French-speaking friends from Brussels, in an interesting mix of Dutch and French, a kind of new sort of Brusseleer. Funnily, now that I live in Holland, this form of Dutch (Flemish being a form of Dutch) does not really help me in conversing with the native Dutch people. I do not really understand the native Dutch speakers.
So what it is like to be bilingual, understand and have an advanced, but not full proficiency in a third language? Well this what this blog post aims to uncover. To answer it shortly, these three languages reflect three different parts of my single identity.
While conversing in French, being what the French would call “un amoureux de la langue Française”, I naturally use the most accurate words and enjoy using all the vocabulary I know in order to nuance my point the best I can. I also enjoy having a good (some would say “posh”) accent and thus, I underline the “overt prestige” of that language that I like so much. This being something typically French rather than Belgian, I often face teasing from my Belgian friends.
A linguist, Aneta Pavalenko, made a study demonstrating that a vast majority of bilinguals have the feeling of identity “change” while switching languages. This definitely applies to me, especially to my sense of humor. While speaking French, I make more jokes than I do in English. I am capable of communication in English in a working environment; however, I am faster in French, especially in this field.
How do I feel about speaking different languages? I think it is great to have my identity differently reflected in these languages. I do not feel that my education lacking from different things or skills. I have been entirely educated in French, and I keep reading and speaking French the most of my time. This is my reference language, I enjoy speaking the other languages and their own mindset, humor, advantages and flaws thgey offer to me.
From this course, I expect to understand the link between a language and the influence it has on the personality better. I am curious about the relative costs and gains of monolingualism and multilingualism, on a personal as well as on an organization level. Finally, I am curious to understand how the less powerful languages will survive in the ongoing process of globalization.
Dear visitor, Geachte bezoeker, Lieber Besucher, Cher visiteur,……
My name is Damian Benedikt Plien and I am a 3rd year European Studies bachelor student at Maastricht University in the Netherlands. I was born on January 29th 1993 in Cologne, Germany or how the locals call it “Kölle”. Even though I don´t remember, I was born early enough to enjoy “Fastelovend” and get acquainted with the first and most obvious feature that makes my home unique. Many travels with my parents and my brother to France in the following years gave my upbringing a special twist again. While my “normal” German counterparts increased their language skills in the language of Goethe and Schiller, I went to la boulangerie with my parents and ordered des pains au chocolat et une banette and occasionally going to la plage playing in the sable. As you can guess by the picture, I am an explorer of the world in the making and languages have already opened many doors for me to explore new realms. Continue reading Who am I and what languages do I speak- my language identity
My name is Deniz. I am from Turkey. I am 21 years old. I am an Erasmus student at Maastricht University. I came from Boğaziçi University. I can speak Turkish, English, and a little bit of Italian.
I had always found it difficult to speak in another language. It was like a barrier for me. Maybe because of the environment in which I grew up or because of our education system, I was reluctant to learn other languages. We have started to learn English in primary school as 7 years old children. It was primarily based on grammar. And there was no place for speaking practices. From these years hitherto I feel always diffident when I speak English.
I went abroad first time when I was eleven. It was travel to Italy by one of EU projects. It affected my world view. I became interested in other cultures and willing to travel different parts of the world. I actualized my wish partly so far but I couldn’t socialize as I had dreamed. Unfortunately, I am a little bit of perfectionist person which makes me afraid of doing a mistake when I speak English.
My story about learning Italian is more interesting. As I already said, Italy was the first country I travelled. It was fascinating for me. And I felt familiar and comfortable in Italy. In my first year in university, I watched the movie, Cesare da Morire (Cesar Must Die). That was the great film as a whole but the most impressive thing in the movie was its language. Throughout the film, I have been fascinated just by listening voices. Then I decided to learn Italian.
My mother tongue has always been a nest for me. As a person who tries to join the global world, Turkish language has remained an essential part of my identity. When I become angry or surprised, I always react in my mother tongue. This reflex reveals its dominant role in my identity. I feel myself in somewhere between local and global. Like the feeling of being in purgatory, it is difficult to handle. I sometimes feel like little Eva as Pavlenko illustrates in Bilingual Selves.
Foucault states the difficulty of living abroad and highlights the importance of mother tongue in his book Le Beau Danger. I had read its Turkish translation. And I couldn’t find English or French version of citation. Here you’re welcome to Turkish:
“Yazma zevkini keşfedebilmem için yurtdışına çıkmam gerekti. İsveç’e gitmiştim ve iki seçenek vardı önümde: Ya İsveççe konuşacaktım ki çok az biliyordum, ya da İngilizce ki onu da konuşmakta çok zorlanıyordum. Bu dilleri iyi bilmemem haftalarca, aylarca, hatta yıllarca asıl söylemek istediğimi söylemekten alıkoydu beni. Söylemek istediklerimin ağzımdan çıkar çıkmaz gözümün önünde kılık değiştirdiğini, basitleştiğini, adeta küçük, komik kuklalara dönüştüğünü görüyordum.
Kendi dilimi kullanma imkânsızlığı içinde bulunurken, dilimin bir yoğunluğu, bir kıvamı olduğunu, soluduğumuz hava gibi olmadığını, duyumsanamaz bir saydamlık falan olmadığını, aksine kendi yasaları, kendi kestirme yolları, dehlizleri, çizgileri, yokuşları, yamaçları, girinti çıkıntıları, kısacası bir fizyonomisi olduğunu, bir peyzaj oluşturduğunu ve bu peyzajda kelimelerle cümleler etrafında dolaşılabileceğini, özetle önceden göremediğim bakış açıları olduğunu fark ettim. Bana yabancı olan bir dili konuşmak zorunda olduğum İsveç’te, o birden dikkatimi çeken fizyonomisiyle kendi dilimin, yabancı ülke veya gurbet dediğimiz yer’siz yerde kalırken mesken tutabileceğim en gizli ama en emin yer olduğunu anladım. Sonuçta tek gerçek vatan, insanın ayağını basabileceği tek toprak, başını sokabileceği, sığınabileceği tek ev çocukluğundan itibaren öğrendiği dildir.”
Foucault says that the only home in which a person can refuge is the language he/she has learned from childhood.
I am excited about After Babel course because I saw it as a chance to break down the language barrier. And I want to actualize my wish to meet other cultures and their languages. As a person who come from Turkey I learned the strong link between language and identity from Kurdish minority of Turkey. And it makes me willing to examine the relationship between language and identity.
Welcome to the blog for After Babel. In this course we will make use of an online content-management system called WordPress. Within this system you will write, develop and organise your own blogs.
