Which now I thinking about it… I guess this is why Gen Z / Gen Alpha are using “brain rot” slang, they want to create a world where they feel in control, where they are the masters of.
Just like I do. I sometimes just yell English phrases as my like to create a sense of seriousness… like know how parents call your full name? My mom use Taishanese (their home village language) to call my full name instead of Cantonese (the language of the city I was born in) when she’s mad at me, and I feel like that make her feel so “in control”. So for me, I reverse it in the other direction, I just use English like “leave me alone” lol, I don’t care if my mom understood it. I feel so empowered by it lol.
You don’t get the opportunity to use the word “shibboleth” often, but this is one.
I think there is also another thing where the fence you erect by choosing another variety is not necessarily between you and someone else, but between you and yourself. This is something I notice in myself and my sister. We are both introverted and uncomfortable sharing personal feelings and emotions - her especially. And she has a strong tendency to express emotions in English and not her native language. I think the added abstraction acts as something of a shield, making the sharing feel less personal and thus less scary.
I used to write poetry and I experienced the same thing there. I had a hard time writing poetry in my native tongue as it felt too personal, so I only ever wrote in English and French.
I did remember the word shibboleth but explaining it was a bother, so I skipped it.
The “fence” being potentially internal is a great point.
Interesting. For me it’s kind the opposite: I’m fine writing it in my native language or in Italian, but writing poetry in English feels… yucky, for some reason.
I feel like writing poetry in Chinese felt a lot “poem-y” like its one syllable per word, I can make each line the same length, looks more “symmetrical”, and in Chinese, I can shorten typical 2 character words into 1 character in a poem, and that’ll still get meaning across.
But I can’t write it by hand, I have to type via Pinyin on a computer/phone.
Sometimes I wanna mix languages to represent different identities.
Cantonese = Home Life and relationship with parents and as a Cantonese person
Mandarin = Mainland China and it’s associated politics
English = United States and it’s associated politics, and the problems I faced in schools, and the racism and xenophobia, and life in general when I’m outside of home
Well English can be a yucky language in many ways, so I don’t blame you!