On the issues that come with being a bilingual speaker in a foreign country

Have you ever forgotten a word mid-sentence while everyone is waiting for you to continue? Have you felt the awkward silence setting in and finally the inevitable feeling of embarrassment following? Now imagine that happening to you more than usually. Well, this is what happens to bilingual speakers like myself.

I was born in Bulgaria, I lived there for most of my life until my parents, my brother and I decided to move to the UK and build a life here. This happened four years ago and since then I believe my English has definitely improved. Thankfully however, my English skills were not too bad when I first arrived in Britain as I had been learning the language quite intensely in a ‘High School of Languages’ in Bulgaria prior to moving to the UK. I was able to pick up some French on the way there, too (although it should have been more than ‘some’ considering I had around 8 hours of French a week… oh well).

I have to admit, if it wasn’t for the high school I went to, I definitely would have found living in Britain much harder, considering I had to join a completely new school, learn new material, and last but not least make new friends and as you can probably already guess, you need a pretty good level of English for all of those. 

Now that I live here, I have inevitably learned slang words and phrases which I was not aware of at first, due to the formal route schools normally take when they teach you a second language. So, when I first moved to the UK, most of my friends in secondary school described my language as ‘formal’ as I was only aware of the ‘official’ or ‘standard’ English language.

Similarly, most of my Bulgarian friends still do not understand a number of words that have become part of my own idiolect (or my own language use) over the years. Because of this I regularly find myself explaining English idioms to them, as well as slang words and phrases, which they didn’t learn in formal education, cannot be translated literally or generally do not make much sense to them e.g. ‘I’m on cloud nine’ or ‘cheeky’, ‘woke’, ‘ship’ and so forth.

My brother on the other hand, has indeed picked these up over the years of living here, but he seems to have forgotten some Bulgarian words and phrases…and I must admit, I have too. Learning a different language was always something of interest to me, but little did I know that in the process of leaning a second language I would start to lose my own. 

For instance, while speaking to our parents my brother and I sometimes seem to have ‘gaps’ in our utterances. For example, recently I was trying to explain to my mum why spring is the best season but while describing what I love about it, I suddenly found myself unable to say what I wanted to:

“Обичам пролетта, можеш да се наслаждаваш на слънцето, топлината и всички красиви… цъфтят.”

(I love spring, you get to enjoy the sun, the warmth and all the beautiful … bloom.)

The ellipsis there was supposed to be filled with the word “tulips” (or ‘лалета’) but I had forgotten the Bulgarian term for it, which meant that I had to describe the flower, its shape and size so that my mum can then fill the ‘gap’ in my speech. 

Similarly, when speaking English, I sometimes find myself unable to think of the English equivalent of the Bulgarian word I have in mind. For example, I was speaking to a friend recently and tried to explain that my dad and I had a debate about science and religion and that even though I didn’t agree with his argument he had made a logical () . The word I was looking for there was ‘deduction’ but it took me a while to get there, which is, of course, irritating when you’re trying to make a point and discuss whatever you and your friends might be talking about.

However, as seen from my examples, I only seem to experience these issues primarily with low frequency words, which are those that you do not necessarily use on a daily basis. So, I believe it is safe to say I have not (yet) lost either one of my languages. As such, I cannot complain about it too much as the benefits of bilingualism do seem to outweigh the negatives (even though it can sometimes lead to the awkward silence mentioned above, ouch!).

Nevertheless, I do recognise that being bilingual is the main reason I am able to have both British and Bulgarian friends, and communicate with speakers from all over the world and last but not least feel super cultured when explaining to my Bulgarian friends what English idioms and slang varieties mean. So… long live bilingualism!

Written by Dimitrina Dyakova