I am feeling homesick

[work_and_play]

This doesn't happen to me a lot. I don't get homesick. Never have. I miss my family, my friends, but I generally don't miss my country, the smell of my city, the sound of my language. But lately I have. Perhaps it is because I have never lived abroad for this long before. And perhaps it is because I am seriously contemplating the likelihood of me

Comments

[h_loves_c]

This is going to reveal what a horribly ignorant American I am, but this statement:

I just really, really miss speaking my language...

fascinates me. Since my mother tongue is pretty much spoken everywhere, I can't imagine what it's like to never hear the words that first defined the world for you.

Oh, and for what it's worth - I think Dutch IS a beautiful language. I have a cousin who's half-Dutch, and I love listening to his father speak.

[work_and_play]

Yeah, it's strange how you don't realize how emotionally attached you are to your language, and how dependent our personalities are on language. I am a different person in English, I really am. I express myself differently in English, and that has a noticeable (to me) effect on how I present and represent myself. It's mildly schizophrenic, but also really fascinating.

[chabas]

Wandered onto your lj through the schools thingy - seems we went to the same highschool and university :)

I definitely recognize what you're saying about being a different person. I had to run workshops during my internship, and while they were usually in Dutch, I gave it in English once because there was a foreign participant. My English is fluent, so that's no problem, but it was a completely different experience, because it played so many tricks on how I act and present myself.