My Heart Language

We are still reading the book on five love languages in our C20s Women group. I have been really enjoying this series. Today the chapter was about discovering our primary love language, and one of the paragraphs in the introduction grabbed my attention. It talked about one’s primary language:

“However, the language you learned to speak first, usually the language of your parents, will be your primary or native language. It has sometimes been called the ‘heart language’. Your native language is the one you understand best and communicates to you most clearly. You may speak very fluently a second language or even a third, but you will always be partial to your native language. "

On the way back from the group, I was having a discussion about this passage with Bethany (she is fluent in German). Then I realized something about my writing habit. When I write about my spirituality or something that matters very much to me, I hardly ever use Japanese. My native language is undoubtedly Japanese, but because I don't use it to express the innermost thoughts and feelings of my heart, it seemed a little odd to call it my "heart language".

This blog has been highly personal and intimate for me, and it felt quite comfortable to do it in English. I now keep online journal in Japanese too, but that one is much more superficial and never too serious. It's partly because most online journals / blogs my Japanese friends keep are relatively short (I presume it's because they often blog from their cell phones in Japan), and it would seem out of norm for me to keep an overly solem and lengthy entries. But I think the primary reason for my light writing in Japanese is that I feel too self-concious to spill my guts in Japanese. It feels too personal, and I feel too tender inside to dig around, analyze, and disect it in the language that I "understand best and communicate to me most clearly". Writing in English for me is in a way like putting on a persona, since it is not my native language. So I guess in that sense Japanese is my "heart language", after all.

I acquired most of my English skills after my pubity. I heard in my child and developmental psychology classes that there is a fundamental difference in language skills that are developed before and after one's pubity. There seems to be some kind of chemical that sets in after pubity and keeps us from learning languages like we used to be able to when we were little. So more than likely, the proficiency level of my pronounciation and other areas of my English skill will never reach that of the native speaker. I think I'm ok with that, especially now that I have realized English is providing me an unique outlet for self expression for the very reason. Because it was not present in my early years of development, English does not touch the core of my being in the threatening way Japanese does to me. The Japanese language must be closely tied to a bunch of fears that are under the surface of my conciousness.

I had never thought about it this way until tonight. Hmmm. I wonder if there will ever be the day I can express myself fearlessly in Japanese. If not, that's ok, too. I kind of enjoy writing in English. I'd be interested to find out what it's like for other people, though. I have newly developed respect for those brave people who pour out their heart in their "heart languages".