It’s been almost a decade since I moved from Poland to the UK. Although I learned English as a foreign language, at this point, I consider myself fully bilingual. I completed my undergraduate and postgraduate studies at British universities and for the last four years I have worked as a researcher, writer and editor, writing in English. I have also set up my own content writing business and published a book. This is all in English, rather than in Polish.

When I first moved to the UK to start a degree in English literature and French, a new world opened up in front of me. It wasn’t just the world of getting to know new people and a new culture, or having a go at being an adult. It was a world of knowledge and academic disciplines that I had never been exposed to before.

Sailing towards adventure | Image: photolibrarian

When you go to university in your own country, you begin to acquire specialist knowledge about subjects that the general population doesn’t necessarily have any detailed understanding of. You may study linguistics and learn about functionalism, behaviourism and pragmatics. You may study engineering and learn about modular design, fault reporting and tolerance intervals. Or you may study history and learn about anthropology, epigraphy and stratigraphy.

I started university with literary theory and criticism

I read extensively about signifiers and signifieds, about orientalism and mimesis. Theories so obscure that even native English speakers had to read them several times before they even got the gist of what they were reading.

And then I went back home during my first ‘reading week’ and tried to explain to my family and friends what I’d been up to, what I’d been learning about. And I couldn’t! I didn’t know how to!

Photo: Po243

I knew how to talk about my studies in English – but not in Polish

My friends thought I was being arrogant when I couldn’t find a Polish equivalent for ‘transcendental’ or ‘praxis’ when talking about the last book I’d read. They probably thought ‘She’s lived abroad for a couple of months and now she’s acting all cool and cosmopolitan, and she’s pretending she can’t even speak Polish any more. Let’s wait a couple of months and she’ll come back with a foreign accent!’

They didn’t understand what was happening. They didn’t realise I was learning about concepts that I was too young to learn about when I was still living in Poland. I was learning new stuff. I was also learning new ways of using language – any language – to talk about those concepts. My friends were doing the same but in Polish – I never learned how to talk about literary theory in my native language.

I felt, and still sometimes feel, a bit stupid. Like I don’t know how to articulate certain complex thoughts or arguments in Polish. Like I’ve lost my fluency. The truth is, I’m 28 years old but in Polish I’m only 18. That’s where my language development stopped and I’ve now got to the point when I need to get it back.

The trickiest part is spoken language that I use to discuss complex ideas. I like talking about ideas, about philosophy and art. It’s something that I do in English a lot. It’s not something that I do in Polish very much – and it’s probably my own fault. I avoid these topics because I don’t feel confident using Polish to talk about them.

A large part of my life is still in Poland

All of my family and some of my friends live there. I travel there every other month or so. I want to remain as Polish as I can be whilst living wherever I’m living (which at the moment is not Poland). When I have children, I want to bring them up bilingual and provide some of the intellectual inspiration that my parents provided me with when I was growing up.

The Tatra Mountains | Photo: Remigiusz Agatowski

So, when I realised losing fluency in my native language was really happening (this was only recently), I decided to take some steps and here’s what I did:

1. I set up a blog in Polish (it’s not related to language learning but more to what I do in my day job).
2. I started reading Polish novels (at least one every two months).
3. I started translating (articles of all sorts – especially comment pieces, websites, literary texts).
4. I started making a conscious effort to bring up and engage with discussions about topics I really enjoy in English, including those more complex ones where I didn’t feel confident in the past.

I haven’t been doing these things long enough to update you on my progress but I will do in the near future. In the meantime, I’d love to hear your experiences of your own relationship with your native tongue. Do you think that by focusing on foreign languages a lot puts you at risk of losing fluency in your native language? Let me know in the comments below!

Do you need more motivation?

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No goal is too big so make sure you keep going!

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Agnieszka