I found myself writing an email to a Norwegian recipient the other day. I wrote in English, despite Danish and Norwegian bokmål being >95% the same.
It waters out our native languages when we do this, and it is, as you say, in favour of bad English. I find even the most English proficient Danish teens lacking in their vocabulary. Pronunciation is good, but they can express themselves.
I’ve given it a fair bit of thought. I think that the kids choose English, because it’s emotionally distancing. Saying something in English doesn’t carry the same weight, as using their mother’s tongue. Simply because they don’t feel the words the same. Occasionally I will catch myself using English for my internal dialogue, especially when I’m thinking about something that causes me emotional distress.
I don’t think that any language is generally worse for emotions than others.
Ruling something out though, without having anything but your own opinions to justify it, seems like scientific misconduct.
But in writing that, I had to search my vocabulary for 15 seconds for “opinion”, and I spend considerably longer to translate “scientific misconduct” without being satisfied.
So I will maintain my hypothesis that speaking a second language, adds an emotional shield by distancing the speaker.
Lol no, at least not compared to Scandinavian languages. OTOH plenty of us might only be experienced in emotions expressed in older poems and songs, not a natural style to copy for most (you know, this whole Scandinavians being introverted bit)
I found myself writing an email to a Norwegian recipient the other day. I wrote in English, despite Danish and Norwegian bokmål being >95% the same.
It waters out our native languages when we do this, and it is, as you say, in favour of bad English. I find even the most English proficient Danish teens lacking in their vocabulary. Pronunciation is good, but they can express themselves.
I’ve given it a fair bit of thought. I think that the kids choose English, because it’s emotionally distancing. Saying something in English doesn’t carry the same weight, as using their mother’s tongue. Simply because they don’t feel the words the same. Occasionally I will catch myself using English for my internal dialogue, especially when I’m thinking about something that causes me emotional distress.
Or is English better at expressing emotions?
I don’t think that any language is generally worse for emotions than others.
Ruling something out though, without having anything but your own opinions to justify it, seems like scientific misconduct.
But in writing that, I had to search my vocabulary for 15 seconds for “opinion”, and I spend considerably longer to translate “scientific misconduct” without being satisfied.
So I will maintain my hypothesis that speaking a second language, adds an emotional shield by distancing the speaker.
Lol no, at least not compared to Scandinavian languages. OTOH plenty of us might only be experienced in emotions expressed in older poems and songs, not a natural style to copy for most (you know, this whole Scandinavians being introverted bit)