Not quite bilingual ... not quite monolingual

I've been thinking about myself as a bilingual for the past couple of days. Many people would not consider me to be bilingual -- in fact, I myself do not -- but by the most liberal definitions of bilingualism, I actually qualify.

I've lived in Finland now on a permanent basis for six+ years. All things considered, I rarely speak Finnish, as I work in an English-speaking environment at a university, and I speak English at home with my family. I would venture, then, that Finnish constitutes no more than 5-10 percent of my total linguistic output. In other words, I probably speak English 90-95 percent of the time. My spoken Finnish is limited to encounters with people in customer service positions and a few people who don't speak any English, such as my mother-in-law.*

So here I am, a native speaker of English in a relatively small country like Finland. This is interesting for a lot of reasons. First, my mother tongue is the most learned foreign language in the world. Current figures put the total number of English speakers in the world at something like 750 million, and the vast majority of them are not native speakers.** My second language is Finnish, which, it's safe to say, is not very commonly learned as a foreign language. This creates quite a juxtaposition, wouldn't you say?

As native speakers of English, especially for those of us who work in education or have traveled a lot or lived abroad, it's perfectly normal to hear nonnative speakers of English using English (or "abusing" it, as some of the less tolerant would say). We are used to hearing people speak English with foreign accents. And furthermore, many people are so successful at using English that their status as a nonnative speaker is a non issue.

The same points are not true for Finnish, or at least not for the most part. Just yesterday, I was reading in a Finnish teachers' magazine about how Finns don't have the "ear" for hearing foreigners speak Finnish. More often than not, people working at stores and whatnot treat me with an amused or even resigned politeness when I speak Finnish to them. Sometimes, they simply switch to English, which I am sure they think is helpful. In other situations, for example with monolingual Finns, and, it seems, especially older monolingual Finns like my mother-in-law, there are real challenges in communicating what I want to express.

Many Americans are monolingual, so it perhaps difficult to relate to the challenges of expressing oneself in a foreign language. Can you imagine being constrained in what you want to say by not knowing the right grammatical constructions or the right words--at all? Our intelligence, personality, humor -- pretty much every aspect of our identity is best expressed through language, and if that tool is taken away, what are you left with?

Having personally experienced this type of frustration many times makes me sympathetic towards other foreigners, nonnative speakers of English, and, strangely enough, even the hearing impaired: I, too, know what it's like to sit through dinner parties and other gatherings, straining to keep up with conversation, trying to figure out how to contribute, only to find out that the topic has long since moved on ...

Unfortunately, it seems to be human nature to judge people not on what they say, but the way they say it. For example, a student of mine recently conducted a test in which she asked people to listen to recordings of members of the European Union Parliament speaking English. She found that -- surprise -- those speakers who were native speakers of English were judged as being more competent politicians, as well as more intelligent. This is only one example of many in what is best described "linguistic profiling."

Facing these challenges myself is no doubt why it is so important for me that my daughter feels like an insider here in my adopted country -- both linguistically and otherwise. Lucky for her if she doesn't have to struggle to express her intelligence, humor, or everyday desires. As for me, it's an uphill battle, but I am sure it will, someday, get easier. In the meantime, I, like other foreigners, am forced to retain my humility, self-deprecation, sense of humor, and wits.


*I have to admit that these thoughts that have been going through my head are largely inspired by a rather frustrating exchange with my mother-in-law. We can all relate -- right? In my case, added to this already traditionally fraught relationship is the language barrier. Recently, after a rather long and difficult phone conversation with her (any foreigner knows that phones are the worst mode of communication for us, right?), she called my husband to clarify the details, saying that she couldn't understand what I had been trying to explain over the phone. I pretty much went through the ceiling when I heard that ...
***This figure is arguable, having mostly to do with what it means to "speak" English. In addition, the term "native speaker" is hard to define. But I'll leave those points aside for now.