“I never forgot Spanish so
thoroughly, in other words, as to move outside the range of its nostalgic pull.
I have been bilingual for all my
life, but ever since I moved to the U.S. when I was 5, I slowly started to feel
like I was losing my connection to the Japanese culture. Since culture is a
defining characteristic of whom you are and how you act, it is important to
embrace it, but when it isn’t represented in your vicinity, you begin to feel
like you are losing a part of yourself.
Every 2 or 3 years I visit Japan
with my mother, and each time I go back, I’m reminded of the culture that I am
a part of; it’s a culture that I have lost a majority of, though. I wasn’t able
to read Japanese at all, and I spoke like a kid fresh out of Kindergarten. But
every day in the states, I would often speak to my mom in Japanese to help
embrace that culture. Now that I am studying Japanese as a foreign language
here at FSU, I feel like I am regaining a part of myself that I’ve lost for a
long time.
It’s the feeling of nostalgia of
the Japanese culture from my childhood that helps me justify the person that I
am today. For example, whenever we lived in Japan, I was always referred to as
Koji instead of my real first name Sean, and it just sort of stuck with me.
Something as little as a name is a defining characteristic of someone, and it
is what helps me embrace my Japanese culture, since I clearly do not see myself
as a “Sean.” My life will always be in the range of the “nostalgic pull” of my
culture, because that is simply who I am.
I agree, the more you are immersed in one culture the more you are pulled away from another. I think the key is to create a healthy balance between the two cultures. A solution would to only speak a certain language with your friends and speak the other language that you know to your family. This way dabbling in both languages will most likely prevent you from losing one or the other.
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