“Be Mysterious: Writers in Masks” Features Dorothee Lang

My Mask
 
My mask is invisible.

I wear it almost every day, usually without thinking of it. It is: English.
 
I started to learn English in school, in the fifth grade, as most German pupils do. About the same time, my father bought a computer. He didn’t use it much, and so I adopted it. That was long before Windows, when you needed to learn a computer language to communicate with the processor. So I learned Basic. Learned it faster than I learned English in school. Started to write some simple programs, then moved to the next level. And at some point, asked my father to buy computer magazines. Some of the computer magazines were in English. I can’t remember the exact timeline, but I guess it was a two-way process: the English in school helped to get me into Basic, and the computer zines were like extra lessons in English.

In seventh grade, the French lessons started, but I never really got the hang of this language of accents and apostrophes: “Qu’est-ce que c’est ?”- “Cest ça, la vie.”
 
Altogether, I didn’t think much about the nature of language itself back then. Words, as I understood it, were strings of meanings, and could be changed from one language to the other with the help of a dictionary. I knew there were programmers who were busy programming language modules for computers. Not long, experts said, and the computers would start to talk, and would be able to translate texts.
 
In school, the English lessons continued, and we started to read books. That’s when I ventured into the “foreign” rooms of the library. Sometimes I was lucky, and they had a book in both editions, German and English. Then I would borrow both, and have the German as back-up for difficult passages. Reading a book in the original version and in the translation also opened my eyes for the fact that a translated texts is a transformed texts. I still have vivid memories of reading Toni Morrison’s book Sula in German, and then in English. It was a different book.
 
Back then, I only wrote in German. Then I started to travel. And English became part of my everyday life. While abroad, I talked in English, and back home, I mailed in English, browsed English webpages. At one point, I started to write in English. Every now and then, I take one of my own texts, and translate it. It always reminds me of the pitfalls of translations.

Here’s an example, a nano story I wrote this year:

“He sat to watch the world go by. He waited for insights. Instead he found himself, thinking more and more about less and less.”
 
It took several approaches to turn it into German, starting from a literal translation and then moving to one that had a smooth flow of sentence and thoughts.

„Er saß da, beobachtete den Lauf der Zeit. Er hoffte auf große Eingebungen. Stattdessen dachte er immer weiter über immer weniger nach.”
 
Looking at both lines now make me think again that every language has its own tune and melody. The question is: to which degree does this melody also influence the writer and the speaker? I sound different when I talk English. I put things different when I write German. Both stems from the language itself – which, like the computer language Basic, is an interface of communication. Only that this interface isn’t passive. Every language has a specific structure, vocabulary and tone. Maybe it’s no coincidence that there is “face” in interface. The languages we speak, to some degrees, are masks we wear:

Ich bin.

I am.

Je suis.

Someone slightly different.

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4 Comments on ““Be Mysterious: Writers in Masks” Features Dorothee Lang”

  1. I have never used language to conceal anything. Nope. Not once. Never.

    I’m lying.

    Languange is fun and dangerous that way. Worse when more than one is in the mix. Great post, good lady!

  2. Dorothee, amazing post. I used to be bilingual. Now I can only read some in my second language. My tongue is too thick to pronounce the words correctly. I know what you mean about using language as a mask. I have been there. I still am.

    Thank you for your beautiful prose. It is a gift on a weary Friday evening.

    Ciao, Ardee-ann

  3. Great take on the subject. A thought I have had on the subject is that we sort of think in languages, at least in part. This made me realize how much language alters, or even forms, our intellectual sensibilities, world view and even approach to situations.

    A while ago I was reading up on the effects of multi-language households on childhood development. When I was a kid, the prevailing thought was that it was not good to raise a kid multi-tongued, as it impedes development. Now (or at least when I read about it) research has shown that yes, for the first year or maybe two it might hinder development, but thereafter the advantages of a second language become clear. I believe it is because the person is not tied into one way of approaching learning.

    Thanks for the morning insight!!! Got me thinking . . . (in English)

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