#bilinguality

IN ANY CASE SORRY I am not worthy Queen. If you don't want to answer this It's Fine just ignore me.

No, he does speak French, but in that scene it's not relevant. They're trying to communicate to one another, and the language they have in common is English, which is Shane's primary native language and is Ilya's acquired language. I didn't mention Shane's secondary acquired language that Ilya doesn't speak, because I didn't think it was relevant to the conversation?

Ilya's feeling bad enough about himself in that moment that he doesn't bring up that ok also Shane could express himself in an entirely different language Ilya doesn't speak too, great, this would not help him. And Shane is well aware that Ilya's feeling like shit, so I can't see him bringing it up either.

tbh Ilya fetishizing Shane's bilinguality is one of those things that in canon was mild and then in fanon goes kind of overboard. and I thought, genuinely, I do not think Shane is that fluently conversational. He can give interviews about sports and can translate PR announcements. i don't think it's a language he speaks to his family or lovers and tbh except for a few teammates, not his friends either. So I decided he wasn't about to bring it up because he wouldn't be able to discuss his deepest-held emotions in it even as well as Ilya can in English. Ilya's English is better than Shane's French by approximately 2013, I think, and I get the canon scene of Ilya being annoyed about Shane's fluency (though has anyone noticed, in the TV show, the interview Ilya's sulkily watching and commenting on is Shane getting racially-microaggressed in French?) but I just feel like by much later than that it's going to have passed out of genuine resentment and into a kind of joke between them.

So I just decided not to mention it there, because 1) as it's not a language they have in common, it isn't relevant there, and 2) both of them know Shane has never wooed anyone in French nor has he tried to live his entire life in French without having anyone around him who can lapse back into English with him if he's having trouble. He learned it in school and has practiced it diligently, and uses it now mostly for interviews and to keep up with the swearing of those of his teammates who use it. Sure he has emotional conversations in French with JJ in the books, but these are not generally about his emotions, and if he can't express something, JJ is completely fluent in English as well.

TV-verse Shane's French is word-perfect but notably, I have read (I don't speak french! i took spanish and am currently traveling in mexico and discovering that my lack of practice means i got nothing here, how humbling), does not have a Quebec accent. So TV-verse Shane even more explicitly learned French in school and just practiced a lot. He is not a native local speaker, he does not live his life in this language, or he would have the local accent.

It's not the same and it's just one of those things like Thor and pop-tarts where I don't disagree it does exist in canon, I don't think it needs to be a cornerstone facet of the relationship at all times. I just didn't think it was necessary for Shane to explicitly state that he wouldn't be able to conduct his entire life in French any more fluently and without struggle than Ilya.

And it just didn't feel to me like either character would bring it up in that moment, so I didn't bother.

I have another WIP where Shane's command of French is important, but I'm still working on fitting it into the structure of this continuity (I composed everything in freestanding fragmentary tabs in a giant google doc, and I've already rewritten that bit twice), so it'll come up. I just didn't really think it needed to be a part of this bit of the story. I try to write realistic-ish dialogue and in real life people don't always bring up every relevant bit of themselves for every exchange.

Like, I can speak the second language. I understand it. I relate to it, it’s part of my identity. But then again, when I am reading a book, I understand 99 % of what’s happening, but there’s always a word or two that I do not recognize so I am like “she has chocolate brown hair that is messy and unevenly cut and she has thin something in it. 

Hello, everyone, who may see it.

Little background story. When I started this tumblr thing, I promised to write 5 posts in total until deciding, what to do with this blog next. It isn’t hard to count that, for now, I have written 3 posts. Which means that I have to keep my promise and write 2 more posts. So, here it goes – first of at least two planned posts about the writing process, for your evaluation.

I had some interesting experience during the last two months. In December, I worked on the Final project that was mentioned in previous posts, which is written and will be finished until the end firstly in English language. In this month, January, I worked and will continue to work on another creation, an unfinished work from, mainly, 2015, which is written and will be finished firstly in the Lithuanian language. I think, these are two potential novels; I hope reasonable time length of completion for both of them. Both works are at similar stages, still having a lot of work to do, but their plots are already ‘set’, some action have already been developed, so, they can’t be called just undeveloped ideas and even now have some worth in themselves. What I want to do now is to give you some thoughts about this bilingual situation, what kind of differences, advantages and disadvantages I was able to observe while writing in my mother tongue and in my first foreign language.

Probably first important thing that comes to my mind is the particularity of the text. It is one of the things that I really like to do in my works – to give the reader a considerable amount of details, because, as I think, it’s important thing to do in writing. Sometimes it’s a slim thing – you may give too much attention for details, and, in that case, your text may become tough to read, or action may be really slow. Text has to have dynamic aspect in it, for reader to not become bored while reading it. One side of the coin is that in Lithuanian, I can master the art of details much easier, comparing to writing in English. I can describe things easily and with a rich language. But, as I said, that creates a danger of getting in the details for too much and really forgetting to develop dynamic and inclusive action. And this how I get to the other side of the coin – in English, natural limitation of smaller vocabulary forces you to develop action quicker (I sometimes use dictionary, but you can’t use dictionary for checking every fifth or tenth written word). Although I think, that, so far, I was able to balance particularity pretty well in both creations (of course, only readers will be able to evaluate this statement impartially), I can visibly notice that the action in the Final project, which is written in English, has already gone further, than in the Lithuanian (potential) novel. I will continue to observe this situation while I’ll be working on both creations and make conclusions out of it.

Another thing that I noticed is that language isn’t an obstacle that you can’t overcome when you try to keep you characteristic voice in your works. Of course, good writer is like a chameleon, he is able to change the voice in his works, only if he wishes (and, I think, it is valuable for every writer to try to do this at least once in a while, for further self-improvement). But for me, as a young and aspiring writer, developing my own characteristic voice or natural ‘style’, as you can describe it, is of more importance at these early stages of my writing journey. And I noticed that I was able (so far, of course) to keep my own voice in both languages. Maybe I am more poetical in Lithuanian and more concrete in English, but it may be connected more to the themes of each work than to my voice. Can I grow into a writer, who can qualitatively write in at least two languages? I don’t want to make any premature statements now, but it’s clear, that this kind of universality would be great advantage in today’s global world.