Dialectless

I realised I can only speak one language: Polish.

Which sounds (reads) ridiculous, since it's written in English. If you heard me say that, though, you would hear that: I can only speak one language, my first and only Polish. To make things worse, it is a standard television Polish, a boring, "I come from nowhere" kind of Polish, a language that originates in my strict linguistic upbringing (two linguists at home) and leads to nowhere.

I am so jealous of dialects. In Sweden, everyone's language is from somewhere, it reveals where you come from in the first sentence you say. You are from Gotland, Stockholm, Goteborg and Malmo and EVERYBORDY knows. Think what amazing kind of sense of belonging it creates if it sounds in every word you say. Inevitable business cards you give away with your first hellos: the way you pronounce certain consonents, how your grammar varies, how you vowels sing or lie flat because they are made of wood. I love that.

I am jealous of people who can do dialects. I am jealous of L and his Gotlandic, I am jealous of how proud he is to speak the dialect considered the prettiest (hmmm...).

I am jealous of L who can do any English dialect he likes, not to mention the certain actor whose Scottish is equally sexy as it is annoying when Billy Connolly speaks it, but most importantly, tells everyone where he comes from.

I would like that for myself. Instead, I speak Polish from nowhere, English from Poland with ambition to sound like Rachel Green from Friends, and a particular hybrid of Swedish, resulting from the two languages mentioned above. It makes me feel very unparticular, mellow and avrage. And who wants to feel like that?