Cross-linguistic preference-difference
I keep another blog in my native tongue. Despite being well and truly bilingual, to the point that I cannot say with confidence which language I statistically prefer to think in, I have found that there is an unmistakable distinction between expressing myself in my native language versus English.
Yes, there is the difference in sentence structure – affecting the shape of the thought. Where is the verb? Is the meaning of the sentence determined by word order or by word conjugations? There is also the difference in vocabulary. What one language can express, the other may lack the words for. But these are differences you could point out between any two languages. Although they, too, affect how I write in each, there is a factor specific to the fact that one of these languages is my native one.
The distinction I'm talking about is one of emotionality. Words, even when directly translatable between the two languages, often feel different to say or to hear, to write or to read. This is most obvious with words related to emotions and with topics related to personal feelings and revealing thoughts. A simple example: it feels remarkably different to say "I love you" in a language I've spoken since I was a toddler versus a language I learned in adolescence.
This has been studied quite extensively in psycholinguistics (here's an interesting article!). Different researchers use differing criteria in considering whether a word is an emotion word, positive and negative emotions seem to be processed differently, and so on, but the simplest takeaway seems to be that, for bilinguals, use of the non-native language allows more distance from the feelings they are expressing.
It would be a stretch to say that emotionality accounts for all or perhaps even most of the cross-linguistic preference-difference in what I choose to write about and how I do so. But it's one factor, and it's a fun one if you're a psycholinguistics nerd. Perhaps on some level I do feel "freer" writing in English. I brought up the study because, although the research is specific to emotions, in a sense all topics are emotional, are they not? And thus this "safe" distance may be present regardless of subject?
Eh, inconclusive, I don't know. (there comes a time in my writing, about a paragraph or two from the end, when I tend to either generalize, or backtrack, or both) Anyway—
Whether it's an article, a poem, or a song, my language-based creative output changes in texture and taste, depending on the language used. And it isn't just qualitative, it's also the choice of topic itself and which direction I approach it from. So welcome! Here, I write like this.