Thirty years later, I find myself just as unable to converse with Americans, and, more broadly speaking, all English-speakers, as I was back then, fresh off the boat. It is as if, over the last thirty years of my life, I have learned nothing: nothing, that is, that I could talk to them about. Of course, in these thirty years, I did learn a great deal; and much of it through the medium of the English language; but when it comes to conversations with English speakers, I have made no progress. I am still stuck in 1979.
The result is a paradox: here I am writing in my second-best language, one which I have come to love for its succinctness and clarity, whose rhythm has become my second nature; but all I can say in it are things disagreeable to my most likely readers – its native speakers. Really, when I do write in English it seems that all I can do is to try to explain to Anglo-Saxons how differently the rest of the world thinks and feels; and why.
Or rather – and this amounts to nearly the same thing – why I cannot be like them.
They of course do not care. They don't care about me -- and why should they: what I say is neither agreeable nor useful; but, more importantly, they do not care about the rest of the world. As far as they are concerned, it seems it is much easier to make the rest of the world think and feel the American way: American clothes, American food, American feelings. Americans have no interest in the outside world. And why not? It appears to be working: the world is happy to adopt the American ways, or at least pretend it does. And thus my subject matter -- the un-American part of the world -- may well cease to be one day.
Thus, in the end, the only target of all my writing is – myself. Now, I do not mean that it cannot be read with interest. It can be: I once ran a relatively successful English-language blog with lots of readers and extensive comments. Many were disappointed when I stopped writing it, but certainly none was as disappointed as I was while I still ran it: my readers’ comments regularly left me with two impressions: that many did not understand what I wrote, even though I tried to write clearly and simply; it was as if my writing washed over them, leaving no trace on their minds; and that others, those who did seem to understand the argument, had absolutely nothing interesting to add.
A question, then: were I to write in a different language, would I be more likely to find someone -- anyone -- able of commenting intelligently upon my writing? Of disagreeing with me, correcting my analyses, pointing out my errors? Would I find a relevant interlocutor; in short: more than a mere reader? Would I find a conversation partner? And interlocutor?
I wonder: if things had gone differently, if my parents had chosen an European asylum and my second language had been destined to be either German or French, would I have fared better? Would I have been able to adapt better to the country and its language? Would it be easier for me to find relevant interlocutors? And if so, would I have stayed in my new country? Would I have missed out on all my discoveries in Asia? (And given all that Asia has taught me, would I be as a result a more shallow person?)
This is one reason why it is so gratifying to note that I am making progress in French: there is a vague hope that I might learn an answer to the above question; perhaps I will feel better in French? Perhaps, once I learn to converse in French, I will find better conversations?
Yet, because of my age, it seems unlikely that I will ever learn French well enough to have intelligent, in-depth conversations in it; or write good, interesting, well-written essays in it; or even to keep this blog.
Or perhaps I could?
Should I?
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