Some time ago, my mom said I should start writing the blog in Swedish again. Not that she has any kind of emotional relationship to Swedish, if anything, she should tell me to write in Finnish. But, I think what she meant was, I should return to the language I know best. Where the shades and shifts in a word are already there, on the tips of my fingers.
I started writing in English right before going to Canada. There was a plan behind it, I thought I needed to practice my English so why not do it in every possible way, both through speaking and writing.
For some reason, I continued half a year later, when I was back home again. I felt comfortable with it. There is a roughness, a kind of unkempt clarity to writing in a language that isn’t etched on your heart. A freedom that Swedish doesn’t give me. With Swedish, I feel everything, and it becomes hard to write anything at all. It becomes so clear, my unpolished and pretentious way of expressing myself. In English, I can at least pretend to be oblivious to the imperfections. Hide behind the fact that English is, after all, only my third language.
It’s started to feel weird lately, though. This constant Englishness. In school, we speak English all the time. Everything academic I write and read is in English. During my free time, I hang out a lot with my classmates too, and when not with them, Lina’s classmates from Germany or Italy or the Switzerland come over for dinner. All the TV shows I watch are in English.
It’s almost as if the only continuous Swedish I encounter during an ordinary day is the one I hear on the radio – and that is just fed to me, without me having to process it.
I almost feel like, if someone asked me to write something nice in Swedish, I wouldn’t know how.
Once, Swedish used to be my favorite thing in the world.
Maybe I should listen to my mom. The problem is, though, that the only people I know for sure will read this wouldn’t understand it if it was Swedish. And somewhere, in my secret author heart, I still want to be read. So, I’ll have to do some serious thinking.
Veronica Maggio released an album some while ago. The last song has a very simple drum machine beat and she sings, with that very desperate voice of hers:
Jag blev säkert kär i dig för det nånannan sa. /…/
För om inte du ska ta över världen, kan väl jag få göra det. Ja, om inte du ska förgöra världen kan väl jag få göra det.
And I will not translate. It’s way too banal, but oh, so simply head-on-the-nail.
Katja Malmborg 