Confessions Of A Polyglot: A Language For Every Mood

So I’m a polyglot. I dabble in 12 languages. I used to be a bit better at them, but these days I’m too busy with my writing career in English to keep up with all of them. The exception would be in my dreams, in which case I speak a pidgin of tongues, and then I shout “Help! Help!” in English.

I’m joking. But really, I have had dreams in pretty much all of the languages I speak. I have gotten lost with headless bus drivers who speak only Bahasa Indonesia. I have had chats at family gatherings in Kannada, English, and Spanish that go horribly wrong. When I dream, any language can assault me, and cause the worst of things to occur in my mind.

This is the beauty of the subconscious. It’s a full unravelling of the brain. There’s no one except yourself to observe you. So why not take the time to either be as free as free can be or switch to speaking a language and be brutally honest with yourself?

Here are some other languages I have a special relationship with, based on context, situation, etc.

A language in which I want to get into a fight

Portuguese or Port-too-gehs, as pronounced by locals. I would have said Russian if I were more fluent in it, but after a few words in that language, I’d have no idea what to say. Portuguese has that angry slurring sound like Russian. I could probably scare someone away in that language, even if they had no idea what I was saying. It is also deeply musical. There’s a reason why some of the most beautiful music known to man is sung in it. From the elegant melancholy of the Fado to the finger-snapping sounds of Samba or Bossa Nova, Portuguese feels like someone licking your ear to make you laugh. Maybe then, I should not yell at someone in Portuguese. But it’s a language I know well, and I think it makes me sound intimidating. So, I’d want to take a shot at being mean in it.

A language I want to eat up for a meal

Mandarin. Such an enticing language! The codes of the language in Mandarin are not dictated by syllables or letters, but by characters. Each character has a sound and a meaning, encrypted not only in the pronunciation, but also in the physical writing of the character.  (Huā), for example, means flower. The character looks like jagged lines in the middle of a blossom. One can look at a chrysanthemum, then at the character , and see both at once.

Mandarin is composed of over 5,000 characters, each one combining with the other to create new meanings. or càihuā, for example, is the word for ‘cauliflower.’ If you know the word or cài (vegetable), and you know the word  or huā (flower), then cauliflower makes sense as càihuā. A cauliflower is a vegetable that blooms like a flower.

Mandarin is a way of thinking. It will mess with your mind. The number of ways in which these characters can be stitched, unstitched and restitched together seems infinite. That infinitude is an equal infinitude of stories. You think about all these concepts you took for granted and start to imagine them in entirely new ways. Studying Mandarin is never satisfying. There are so many characters waiting to be learnt. Even the usage varies heavily. But learning Mandarin makes me ravenous. I want to eat up the language precisely because it is so deep and nuanced. To devour Mandarin would not only fill my body but also satiate the deepest realms of my brain.

A language I want to drink

I want to sip up Arabic. I wish it was something that I could put into a cup and drink. It is such a useful global language. Arabic is spoken in wide swathes of the world that don’t rely on English, and is a lingua franca for those regions. But the grammar is nauseatingly difficult. Do I go with subject-verb-object, verb-subject-object, or object-subject-verb? Or what if I can’t do any of that? Maybe it’s best I just shout out the words I don’t know how to conjugate and hope someone gets what I am trying to say? The pronunciation is as hard on the throat as it can be on the ears. You have that soft ‘h’ in (hajar or stone) versus that strangling-myself ‘hhhh’ sound in  (khas or special). Each dialect is like another language entirely. Just because you learned some  (misery) from Egypt doesn’t mean you can go to Saudi Arabia or Lebanon and be understood. Which is why I wish someone would just invent a tonic that we could guzzle down to make a language learnt. Arabic is such a useful language, such a beautiful language. But why can’t it be easier on the foreigner?

A language I want to make love in

Lovemaking is contextual. If I’m in the middle of provincial Okinawa, most likely I will have to use Japanese, just like in Honduras or Chile I would speak Spanish, because there would be no other option. If I’m in an urban space and the person prefers to speak in English, we might use that.

But I want to make love to someone in Kannada. I often fear that it will be the last language I will ever be spoken to in bed. Kannada is my mother tongue. It often slips out of my tongue when I am making love or expressing joy. I really do like shouting  (English for “you got me?”) at people!

However, I don’t know Kannada like a native. I have the trademarks of someone who is com­ing from somewhere else when I speak it. I am afraid that if I speak Kannada to a stranger they will just switch to English. That will hurt my feelings. I suppose that’s the case for any of us who speak multiple tongues, to want to connect with someone of a different back­ground, no matter where they come from.

So, I make love to Kannadigas speaking in Kannada, even if they will speak back to me in English, and break my heart.

(This appeared in the print edition as "A Language for Every Mood")

(Views expressed are personal)

Kiran Bhat is an Indian-American author, traveller, and polyglot based in Mumbai