Writing fic in my native language.

[noracharles]

I wouldn't write a fic about an English language canon in Danish. I used to read a lot of books in translation before it was possible to buy books online, and the stilted Danish of the translations never gave me the same intimate feeling as reading a book in its original language can.

I think the biggest advantage for me to writing in Danish would be the registers I have in that language. I speak English in very specific circumstances: At home I speak about family stuff with my family, but we code switch and mix and match a lot, and our private language would be difficult to understand for others as well as completely out of character for any canon character I can think of.

And then I write more or less formal academic English for school, and a weird mixture of more or less formal academic English and fandom dialect on LJ/DW, and again, I don't think that suits any of the canon characters I would like to write about. I do work hard not to write fic in fandom dialect, because it grates on me when I read it, but it's the only English casual dialect I'm fluent in :-|

I once made up a long story in my head about characters from a Danish movie, but I didn't bother writing it down. I couldn't imagine who would read it. The movie was Lille Soldat, a fantastic movie which I highly recommend.

It was not the point of the movie, but one of the things I particularly appreciated was the code switching: the main characters are Kimmie from Nigeria, who only speaks very little Danish and does not like to talk about emotional or important things in Danish, and Lotte who has English as a foreign language/working language. She's used to using English for important subjects that you have to get right, being an Iraq vet, and also has a broad knowledge of colloquial English from popular culture, but her English is stilted and dry compared to the emotional complexity she can express in Danish.

And as I was making up the story about those characters, it felt so good to be able to use that entire range that combining English and Danish gives me, and the control over nuance that code switching gives me, and the power to use dialog for characterization, which I normally suck at.

But then I remembered bringing friends to my parents' house, and the look they get on their face when we suddenly switch to English, and the way they also switch to English and it sounds so weird and kind of grating to me. They don't sound like themselves at all, because they're suddenly using a much more formal register and they have less nuance and humor in what they're saying.

And I thought to myself, no one could read that fic. No one in fandom understands my native language. (Except possibly aquaeri?)

Comments

[verasteine]

I get this completely. Not having English as your first language can make fandom a whole different world, but in turn, I learned my writing in English, and so writing in my native Dutch never expresses wholly what I want to say (unless the characters are Dutch.) English is like this writing language to me, this other option in my head. I can't really write well in Dutch at all, at least not fiction. It wouldn't flow.

[noracharles]

I think that you probably could write in Dutch, but you'd have to work at it harder, because you've never developed your creative writing in that language, and maybe you're like me and don't even like reading Dutch?

Not that I don't like reading Dutch, because actually I think it's an incredibly charming language; I mean, I strongly dislike literary Danish unless it's an exceptional author. I read it so rarely that when I do it looks fake to me, and I particularly hate mediocre translations that are too colored by the original language, and how that weird style influences the works of writers who write in Danish.

Sometimes I toy with the thought of writing some YA fiction in Danish and trying to get it published, and then I wonder if my rejection of all anglicisms and stilted language would be a plus or would be too weird for the conservative book market here. Hopefully I'll find out some day :-)

[verasteine]

I'm not fond of reading Dutch; I'm also not fond of what passes for good literature here. I had to read lots of it in high school, and mostly despised it. I prefer reading in English because those stories are different.

And hang on, you read Dutch? How did you wind up knowing Dutch, Danish, and English?

I think it's awesome you wanna be published; I don't have that courage (yet). And you know, you can always try. You never know what might happen!

[noracharles]

Ugh, I know what you mean about "what passes for good literature". That's what it's like to live in a country where only a few million people speak the language. The bar is set so much lower for the few professional authors there are.

Haha, I read Dutch but I don't understand Dutch. It's just that Dutch is so interesting and beautiful, and I think it's fun to try to decipher. I'd love to learn it some day.

I don't have the courage to try to write original fic and send it in yet either, but I figure I'll soon have time on my hands, so why not go for it :-)

[verasteine]

I have to ask, how do you read Dutch without understanding it? I suppose it's sort of like how I read French; I understand one word in a hundred :). I had no idea Dutch was so interesting... They tell me it's a hard language to learn, but if you know Danish, it might not be so difficult!

I wholly encourage you to write and send in fiction! I think it'd be awesome.

[noracharles]

I don't go to the library and try to read a whole book in Dutch, if that's what you're imagining :-D

But when I come across Dutch on my reading list or on the labels of stuff I look at in stores or wherever I happen to see it, I enjoy reading it. If I'm watching tv and come across a show in Dutch I also sometimes watch it just for the pleasure of listening to the language, even if I don't care what the show is about.

Dutch is similar to the other Germanic languages, so a lot of the words are the same. I'm sure I misunderstand quite a bit, because I have to fill in the gaps using my imagination, and words with the same root can have developed rather different meanings in the different languages. But it's fun :-)

Have you seen the clip of Eddie Izzard buying a brown cow in Friesland?