In my flat’s living room, there’s a book in Greek, my native language, with a miserable bookmark on page 45. It’s called “Argo”, by George Theotokas. I’ve enjoyed reading those forty pages. But the effort it took me to get through them means I haven’t touched it in months.
It’s surrounded by piles of books in English. Once I started reading in English, I stopped reading anything else. The media I enjoy is in English, and so are my studies; it was much easier this way. Greek has become so hard: I struggle with words, stammer through sentences, and never seem to be gripped by the story, thrown aback by unknown turns of phrase. I suddenly understand people who say they don’t like reading.
Reading in one’s native tongue can mean different things. It can mean reading in the language you’re most adept at, an easy book to fall back on after a long day. It can be nostalgic, feeding a general feeling of bittersweet homesickness. But for many, it can be frustrating, struggling with a language you can feel yourself losing your grip on. So why keep going?
Because, every time you go home, you might feel a little bit more distant. You can still understand your family, but you realise you can’t read or write as well. Eventually, over the years, you might experience what is called first language attrition: your native tongue has been eroded and replaced by the one you use most. Reading helps fend that off.
More than keeping you in practice, it keeps you connected. Reading a book written by someone you share a culture with is a distinct experience: you are the target audience. You know the references without having had to learn them, you recognise characters, towns, archetypes.
The jokes are so much funnier too. I don’t know how to explain it, but jokes in your native tongue are funnier than in any other language you know, no matter how fluent you become. And sure, you can read them translated, but nothing comes close to the experience of reading the book in the language the author wrote it in. Especially if you’re a fast reader, being forced to slow down means experiencing stories differently. You feel a bond with your culture, with your home, and at the end of the day, no matter how hard it is, that feeling makes it worthwhile.
“Reading alone, as the downtown train arrives” by Ed Yourdon is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0