2020-07-03

Linguistic (Dis)comfort and Cultural (Dis)comfort in Oral Communication

Until I got divorded from my ex-wife (and decided to get "divorced" from academia, too) about two years ago, I used to use five languages orally - Hebrew, English, Yiddish, Esperanto and Russian - in my private life. Since then I only live in two languages - Hebrew and English.

I guess most of those who continue to live in the same country feel most comfortably in the language and culture they were born into. Even if you immigrate to another country, your most comfortable language and culture must remain your native ones in most cases.

When I immigrated to Israel about 16 years ago, I also considered myself a kind of cultural refugee. I never felt comfortable in Japanese society. My discomfort there intensified after spending five years in Israel - 11 years before my immigration - though in the end I got used to the fact that I might never get used to it. I've never felt comfortable in Japanese, which is a highly context-dependent language, that is, is highly influenced by Japanese culture and its overt and covert rules.

When I immigrated here, I was full of hope. It didn't take me long to start feeling uncomfortable in Israel society. Though this is not a result of my conscious choice, I've come to find myself speaking less and less Hebrew in my private life. I speak more English than Hebrew, at least in meaningful conversations as I feel far more comfortable culturally with English-speaking Jewish immigrants from North America etc. than with Hebrew-speaking native Israelis though my Hebrew is much better than my English.

In other words, cultural comfort seemed far more important for me than linguistic comfort in oral communication. But recently I discovered one context of oral communication in which I can't express myself comfortably except in Hebrew, and not in English or even Japanese. This social context is AA meetings. I started attending several in English on Zoom when I started receiving AA sponsoring a couple of months ago. I've never felt comfortable to express my innermost experiences and emotions in English in public. When attended my first AA meeting in Hebrew this week, I felt so comfortable in Hebrew that I spoke up of my own will even several times.