I wanted to write about something that has come up and is a bigger part of my life here than I was expecting: establishing a language. It's something that I never thought about in the U.S. because everyone speaks English, and if their native language is not English it's very rare that I would speak Spanish/French better than they spoke English. There are a lot of people who speak English in Belgium. Many who speak it perfectly, and many who just know enough to get by, so if I decided that I didn't really want to learn French, living based on people's knowledge of English wouldn't be extremely difficult (except for in my host family of course).
I've found here that once you establish a language with someone (choose the language that you're going to speak with each other) it's strange -awkward even- to speak another language with them. For example: I have a friend at school who speaks English very well. Her mother speaks English well, and she takes classes at school, and her accent is great. Even though she speaks English as well or better than I speak French, because the language that we met each other in and that we communicated the most in at the very beginning of our friendship was French, it's honestly too strange and a little difficult to speak English with her. I've realized that sometimes it doesn't matter what language one person speaks better than the other, but what language the relationship started in. Of course this doesn't mean that my friends at school don't have fun and say "How are you Savannah?" and then giggle, or that they don't ask me about English words or expressions, this happens all the time. But our real language- the language that our friendship is in- is French.
Of course there are some exceptions to this "rule" which come up with other exchange students. There are a couple of exchange students who speak French and English equally as well- but since they are here learning French sometimes it is a bit hard to switch into English. I'm thinking of one girl in particular, an exchange student from Ecuador who goes to my school. When we talking just the two of us or with kids from our school we speak French, but if we are around other Americans we speak English together.
I just wanted to do a post on this because it is something that I never really expected would be part of my life here. I always thought it would be obvious knowing what language to speak in, but now I know that it's not! :)
I've found here that once you establish a language with someone (choose the language that you're going to speak with each other) it's strange -awkward even- to speak another language with them. For example: I have a friend at school who speaks English very well. Her mother speaks English well, and she takes classes at school, and her accent is great. Even though she speaks English as well or better than I speak French, because the language that we met each other in and that we communicated the most in at the very beginning of our friendship was French, it's honestly too strange and a little difficult to speak English with her. I've realized that sometimes it doesn't matter what language one person speaks better than the other, but what language the relationship started in. Of course this doesn't mean that my friends at school don't have fun and say "How are you Savannah?" and then giggle, or that they don't ask me about English words or expressions, this happens all the time. But our real language- the language that our friendship is in- is French.
Of course there are some exceptions to this "rule" which come up with other exchange students. There are a couple of exchange students who speak French and English equally as well- but since they are here learning French sometimes it is a bit hard to switch into English. I'm thinking of one girl in particular, an exchange student from Ecuador who goes to my school. When we talking just the two of us or with kids from our school we speak French, but if we are around other Americans we speak English together.
I just wanted to do a post on this because it is something that I never really expected would be part of my life here. I always thought it would be obvious knowing what language to speak in, but now I know that it's not! :)