mother tongues

[arimle.livejournal.com]

I was reading some of the posts on the last thread and it made me think about Slávka, who I mentioned in my last post. She was the first person I became aware of, because I was already somewhat aware of somebody else inside of me who spoke Czech.

There isn't anything toastery (this is another term I like very much) about this, it isn't as if suddenly I, who had no Czech connections whatsoever, rose up one morning and started gibbering in Czech. I understand just as much Czech as Sláva. I can translate probably better than she can, in fact. But only she can generate it. If she's not around, I have a very hard time speaking it at all -- even though I know the words and I know how to pronounce them.

She and I were born at the same time, I a little before her, (I've begun to think of us as sisters) in the same place, the library. I was born from the history books we read, and she was born from our Czech textbook. (Actually, I think that an amalgam of Sláva and me was around for a little bit when we were very young, but was gone by the time we started grade school -- it's a sort of in-system reincarnation, or something, I guess.) If there hadn't been a Slávka-seed somewhere inside, then we'd only have learnt Czech because we're language nerds, and we'd have gotten bored with it long ago; but the egg was fertilized and she was born.

So anyway, the whole point of this post is not just sort out my thoughts about mine and Slávka's genesis, but mostly to ask you how language affects your system.