Why Speaking a Second Language Feel Like A Superpower
As an international student living in the US for four years, I have accumulated plenty of funny stories involving languages. Anytime I overhear a conversation that’s in a language I can understand, I feel like a spy, playfully eavesdropping. It’s very easy to get used to talking like no one around can understand you, and oftentimes they do, and then it gets very awkward.
The first time I realized that I was speaking a language that was not my own, it felt like magic. I was on the subway, half asleep, when two tourists started talking. The sounds blended together at first, then suddenly I caught a phrase, then a whole sentence. My mind took off. I was not just eavesdropping; I was stepping into another world. That’s the thing about learning a second language: it doesn’t just give you new words. It gives you superpowers.
It is so interesting to change from one language to another—what happens to my brain when I do? It makes me feel like I know more than I actually do. It lets you see the world from multiple perspectives and even understand yourself better. I’ve noticed that I sound different in different languages. In my native language I am more expressive; sometimes to a foreign eye it even sounds aggressive. It is easier to describe my emotions. In English, I am more calm; it’s easier to describe things. Whenever I am nervous or tired, I switch to my native language without noticing, which my friends sometimes tease me for. It’s also harder to forget a language than it seems.
When you learn another language, you gain a new perspective on things, a new way to describe how you are feeling, and a new way to make connections with people. I noticed that my personality slightly changed depending on the language I was speaking. I’ve been told that I sound more formal in English than in my first language and much more expressive in my first language than in English. Speaking another language feels undeniably like a superpower. It’s subtle, quiet, and seems to reveal itself not in giant steps but in those moments you realize suddenly that you can exist twice. You can think, express, feel, and even be in more than one world at the same time.
Moreover, your identity changes and expands. You grow as a person. Something changes in the brain the moment you stop translating and start thinking in the second language. Suddenly, the world expands. The same sentence spoken in two languages does not feel like the same sentence; it carries different emotion and shape. For example, “nostalgia” doesn’t feel the same as “toska” or “sehnsucht”. Each word opens a different room in the heart. So when you speak a second language, you’re not just saying different words. You’re accessing different ways of understanding the world.
It’s interesting how translation works because, for example, movies can be called very different things in different languages. I realized that when I moved to the US and would mention movies, no one would have an idea what I was talking about, but then I would look it up and learn that in English it had a completely different name. The same with some of the sayings I tried to translate literally and ended up confusing a bunch of people. For example, a common one I liked to use as a sarcastic person was “Wow, you opened America to me,” which in my country is a sarcastic way of saying, “You told me something I already knew.”
While a second language won’t make you fly or invincible, it will let you think differently, connect with a larger group of people and on a deeper level, and see the world from different perspectives. In our world, there is so much misunderstanding, and connections are one of your main assets in life, which makes speaking a second language feel like a superpower.