Except, how do you know which ones? They say that you revert to your native language when you count, which was a myth I believed in for a long time until I realized that – with my stronger languages at least – I’d just count in the language I was speaking in. And in a world that was forever asking to identify myself with one native language / nationality, it was a question that weighed heavily. 

Because as a teenager I was still seeking guidance from those around me. Obviously. We look to those of us who are wiser (and therefore tend to be older at least in wisdom if not in actual years), so hearing from that demographic (who also ticked the box of being ato least bilingual) that I was supposed to count in my native language was akin to a kick in the guts. Because I remember my Italian teacher in Germany proudly exclaiming, “aha!!! So German is your native language” when I started counting in German. It shocked me, because it felt like she’d set a trap, intent on catching me out in a lie because she’d never heard me speak English, so couldn’t gauge my level, even though (by her own admission) she barely spoke it herself.

I came across that a lot as a child and growing up, and it always bugged me. Back then I did not consider German to be my native language, though technically it was (a fact I figured out much later), so people denying me that agency because we were in Germany and I did speak and sound like a native (inflection, body language and tone), something about that did not sit right. There had to be another way to determine (and prove) what my true native language was. 

But living in a small town in Germany back in the early 1990s there wasn’t exactly much information on how to bring that about. My friends had either decided that in the battle for strongest language German had taken the lead over their home languages of Italian or Turkish. Or else there were the kids of German origin who’d grown up in Poland or various territories of Eastern Europe and the USSR, who seemed to have lost any and all knowledge of the language they were educated in and had spoken outside the house and spoke a German that was accented (as I called it) and dated. Something I realized when a girl in my class told me she was a little under the weather but used “erkuehlt” instead of “erkaelted.”

Until I read something in a book by Sidney Sheldon, so long ago that I cannot, for the life of me, remember the title as I am writing this. The gist of it was that the lady pretended to speak French but then really expressed her pain in the language she had spoken at home growing up. Which was how the doctor was really sure that birth was imminent after hours of labor. If memory serves, the order was, English (which showed that she was using a language she was now accustomed to speaking on the daily), French (to show off how cultured she was) and finally the language she’d spoken in her youth, which was meant to show her true self.

At home my mother cursed less than my father, though he would have had his fill of languages, which may or may not explain how or why I saw swear words in French. I’d use them liberally in conversation, but the juiciest ones were reserved for Hungarian,a language I started learning when I was 21 to connect with my roots and learned to swear in one afternoon while waiting for a friend in a bar. As it turned out my plan to get there a bit early and catch up on some writing while I waited for him was fruitful in more ways than one as his friends were playing cards at a nearby table, voicing their like or dislike of whatever hand they’d been dealt every time it was their turn. Doing my exam in Hungarian when I went back to classes proved interesting to say the least, as I had to think at the speed of light while talking to determine if this was an acceptable word to say in front of the 60-year-old professor, who was nice but still old school enough to not accept authentic Hungarian slang. To this day it remains one of my favorite languages in which to express myself, because of the richness in some expressions and words. 

Later, when I started paying more attention, a pattern emerged. It started with my father, since we shared a decent amount of languages, though not because he’d taught me. English had always been my go to, but for a German to speak it to me permission had to be granted by myself, and that permission was hard to come by. To this day I do not remember a single childhood friend I spoke English with if we’d started out speaking German. It was too weird, because Germans were Germans and the language was something I only spoke when it was absolutely necessary. 

With my father that translated into German when we were speaking in general, French when I felt particularly close to him (which very rarely happened), and Hungarian if I felt a super close bond (which happened rarer than the occurrence of a blue moon). 

And still, Hungarian became a language I swore in for shits and giggles,because it was fun and even when I translated the words to those around me who did not understand, we could still get a good laugh out of it. Later on I’d use a mixture of what I remembered in Spanish and Italian with some friends, because – again – there was a richness to the words that it was impossible to recreate in other languages. I love the word pathetic, but de madre still has a much different (and slightly better) ring to it in most situations.  

So when I swear in Italian, Spanish or even French my friends and those close to me know that everything is ok. When I do it in German it’s a sure sign that I was just speaking the language and when I do it in Hungarian, I’m just voicing minor annoyance. But when I do it in Polish, all bets really are off and it’s (nearly) impossible to talk me off that ledge.