Becoming Another Person

 Learning another language is like becoming another person.

     Haruki Murakami

I came across this quote the other day tucked somewhere into my daily scrollings and I found it interesting, for while Murakami has exaggerated somewhat (in my humble opinion), there is an essential truth to the statement. One must not only learn the mechanics of the unfamiliar language but employ them comfortably despite the rebellion in his mind. This is not the way we speak, the mind objects. The words you have employed here are a mere shadow, a suggestion, a hint of what was intended.

When we speak of the world in a foreign tongue, the world itself is altered. We struggle to communicate in the foreign tongue while suppressing our sureness of the way things are supposed to be said. We struggle not only with the plain words but with the plainly absurd manner with which these words are spoken. We put on an accent because we have to, because otherwise the words will not be recognizable to the foreign (or rather the native) ear. And so we become someone else, or at least a playactor for the time being, playing someone we are not. 

And if the language is Indonesian, as it is with my struggle, we are leaving out articles, verb tenses, even the verbs themselves! 

A simple example: I am going to the library, in English, becomes Saya ke perpustakaan in Indonesian--literally, I to library.

I object! says the mind. Why you dolt, you have left out the two verbs and an article!

The brevity of Indonesian, the vagueness, the--what's the word?--clunkiness offends. There are far too few words on my tongue! What happened to the verb, To be (I am)? What happened to the verb used to express movement, I am going?  And when, by the way, did this trip to the library take place? Is it something you've already done (I went to the library), or something you are currently doing (I am going to the library), or something you only intend to do (I will go to the library? We are not told. We are told only I to library.

Now, in general Indonesian relies on context and on assumption. You see a person walking back toward home with a little stack of books beneath his arm, and therefore presume that Saya ke perpustakaan means I went to the library (past tense). Where specificity is required, the language employs a prefix: Saya sudah ke perpustakaan (I went to library already, Saya sedang ke perpustakaan (I am going right now to the library), Saya akan ke perpustakaan (I will go to the library sometime in the future). 

Ah, but do you want more work for your tongue? Take the word for emergency--darurat. Try that on for size. The English tongue does not make this word, right? 

How about this one: ketidaksempurnaan. Imperfection. (It's imperfect, all right). Here, Indonesian has employed a prefix (ke), a negation (tidak), and a suffix (an) to make the base word perfect into the noun imperfection. This is at least similar to the English adjustments made to a base word, but it still seems clunky, somehow artificial. Of course, it is not at all artificial to the person you must become, only to the person you are.

Having (not at all) mastered all this, one is then confronted with that language which common Indonesian people commonly employ, known as bahasa gaul, or nonformal Indonesian. And you will never hear the word ketidaksempurnaan again. We never say that, one will be told, with an added chuckle. We don't talk like that in everyday life  

Hmm. All righty then. Time to become yet another person altogether!