[Viva America]

I think the chapter title is very obvious.

Have any of you ever written in an other language different than your native tongue?
If so, what were the biggest struggles, and did it help you into understanding the language better?
Did it improve your writing quality when you went back into writing in your own language?

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My native tongue is West-Frisian, even though it is not an official language, it is sometimes very different from 'Normally accepted Dutch'. However, everyone in my country has to use Dutch as the standard writing grammar and spelling. Unless you live in Fryslân, they have their own language there.

I have written many short stories in Dutch, which clearly helped me improve my use of the language, and I found that it helps me developing the characters' finer nuances in the aspects of personality matters.

I once wrote lyrics for a love song in German, and I think that the German language has the most difficult grammar rules, from all the languages that I speak or have studied at school. I would be happy to share them with you, but I lost all the stories because I stepped on my precious USB-stick.

I only recently started writing in English, on these forums, to be exact. I always thought that I spoke English fluently, but I discovered that I don't. I have some minor grammar issues, mostly with possesive adjectives. They confuse me.

I am going to start with my short stories (in Dutch) after the summer, and I will see what writing in English has done to it.
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Leave your thoughts realm this thread.

[garfield]

I think writing in another language would be more beneficial in terms of learning the language itself, rather than improving your writing style, and I think that, unless you study another language or are fluent in another language, it probably wouldn't cross your mind.

I've always been fluent in Greek and English, so I've written in both, although English has sort of taken the lead in terms of the big stories I plan - probably because of the fact that now I'm living in an English-speaking country. =P I tend to write more short stories than actual big plots or whatever in Greek. I studied Irish in school as a compulsory subject (but I loved it so I didn't mind =P) and part of our exam was writing a short story in Irish, so I've written in that, too, but that was for exam purposes and I haven't since...

I'm learning two other languages, and again, part of our work is writing essays/passages in them, but writing a proper story in them wouldn't cross my mind unless it was an exercise to improve said languages.

I think, basically, people wouldn't really think of writing seriously in a language that isn't their native tongue, simply because why would they when you can get your point across more easily your native language? And even if they did, I don't think their style would change because of the language the story is written in. Language is just a medium for thoughts, anyway, and if your thoughts are the same, so will the style. The only difference would be in the different grammar and sentence structures - or insofar as things that you say in English wouldn't sound well in Italian - that type of thing.

Having said that, I think there tends to be a different tone to translated books from the original, so I wonder if that's because of the language or the fact that it's been changed (even slightly) by someone who wasn't the author? I think translating helps your actual writing more than writing in another language would.

This post has been edited by garfield: 13 July 2009 - 09:22 AM

[Fusaichi Pegasus]

I've had to write in Irish (which I'm fluent in) for school, and the main problem I've had with it is that spoken Irish is much different than written (standard) Irish. Also my English vocabulary is much greater than my Irish vocabulary and there are some things that I'd love to say in an Irish essay that I just can't seem to say as ''nicely''. It's a pain really

[Viva America]

there are some things that I'd love to say in an Irish essay that I just can't seem to say as ''nicely''. It's a pain really

I have the same, when I write in English. Sometimes I just can't translate a word, so I have to be descriptionate and all about it... or I just have to delete the whole thing and make up something new.

[Tejab]

I had to write a lot in German, English and French for school, but if want to write something just because I feel like it, then I always do it in my native language, Portuguese, otherwise I have to keep translating inside my head, which gets complicated. I have had the opposite happen too, spending so much time reading and writing in a foreign language (like English) that I couldn't remember words in my own language.
Writing and reading in other languages does make you more fluent in using them, but sometimes if you invest too much on one language you start to lose the others a bit.
Jesper, I know what you mean with German, I used to be in a German school and their grammar is a headache, although it is a nice language once you get th hang of it. The only thing grammatically more complicated than german that I have ever learnt is Latin, but I'd have to be crazy to write anything in that.

[Wikkid X]

I've never really considered it - I learn French and German but I don't think I know either of them well enough to write in them - in classwork I end up having to look up practically every other word in a dictionary. I am currently reading 'Harry Potter à l'École des Sorciers' (Philosopher's Stone in French), though, and I'm finding that surprisingly understandable, though I think that says more about how well I know the book in English than the standard of my French.

[Sirhai]

My native language is German but I have written quite a bit in English, both in school and in private. And although I like to think that my English is quite good, it's always a relief to switch to German, even if written German sounds a little... forced a lot of the time. Whenever I read a forum post or something like that in German I can't help but shudder. It's hard to explain but something about colloquial German written down just sounds fundamentally wrong, which is why I'm mostly found on English message boards

Anyway, writing in English helps me get better in English but does nothing for my writing style. Reading it however strangely enough gives me a better feeling for language and sentence structure in general.

And although I'm quite capable in Italian, seeing how I'm part Italian and used to spent my holidays there, I'd never even think of writing in that language. It just doesn't fit with my writing.

And I really don't agree with German being hard . English is just too easy to learn . What I find really hard to grasp is French grammar. It might be really close to Italian but I just can't seem to learn it. I think I'm not capable of holding two similar languages in my head...

Anyway, in my opinion writing in a different language only makes sense if you have a reason to do so, like wanting to show your writing to people that only speak that language or something like that, or if you live in a country were that language is spoken. The argument that "I'm just way better with English than with German." even if you live in Germany (for example) just doesn't hold up, at least in my experience. The few people I do know who've tried to convince me of that wrote horrid English and just wanted to seem cool or something, ugh.

[Tejab]

German isn't hard for you becuase it's your native language!
Our own languages are always a lot easier for us. To a foreigner German is quite a bit difficult with all the Kasus stuff, although I do hear people say that my language is even worse, but I don't consider it so because I grew up with it.

[Elsetör]

My native lauguage is Chinese. I've written some stories and poems (though not very good) in English, and all the spelling and small grammar mistakes are killing me! I once heard a scholar said the while many Western lauguages(such as Enlisgh many other lauguages in Europe) care a lot about the logic and grammar of a sentence, Chinese cares more about the feeling. But writing in another lauguage really helps you to manage it better.

[Pixel]

I found that while learning the details of the grammar of another language, you often compare it to the one you are most fluent in, and it makes you think more about it. So my thinking about my own language and how I use it when I write has changed a bit actually after learning a few others.

[Rinion]

The most I've done is write a poem in the ancient language of Inheritance,and the biggest difficulty with that was finding words that rhymed out of the limited AL vocabulary. The only things I've written in my second language were essays for school. The biggest challenge was vocabulary; I could get by on standard adjectives and verbs, but it irked me that I had to use, for example, "big" and "ugly", and didn't know how to the equivalents for "great" and "enormous", "hideous" and "disgusting". I'm sure my limited vocabulary made for very boring reading.

In a slightly different vein, I often enjoy reading stories written by people in a language that isn't their native tongue. They often use delightful expressions, translated from their first languages, that I haven't encountered in English. An example that comes to mind is "he had an accent so thick, you could spread it on toast", from a book translated to English from Spanish (its name escapes me).

[Old Rosebud]

I'm planning on writing a story in my native language which is Ilonggo and then carefully translate it in English. I can do a lot with my language, transferring it into English is pretty hard. People here that have English as their native language is relieved of not to think so much about correct grammar or ideas. *sigh*

[DragonFire501]

I've been learning French for eight years, and a couple years ago, I began to write short stories in French. I'm not fluent, and I speak very slowly compared to people who are fluent in French. But I can understand a little bit and write stories. When I write the stories, I understand and remember the language better, and I can recognize the words when they are spoken slowly. Writing in another language is very, very helpful to learn the language.

[lilgreekchick69]

Since i'm 100% Greek i learned how to read and write in Greek. I think the grammar was pretty hard in the beggining but it got easier since i was so fluent in speaking greek. The most confusing things about the Greek alphabet are that alot of letters sound the same and when you want to write a word you're not sure which letter to use.

[witch168]

I write my diary in Chinese but I've never actually considered writing a story in chinese. I think I'll try it, though, since so many people on this thread recommended it.
The problem is that you can't use the same flow (or grammar, as some people say) in two different languages.