English ruined my life
Why I’m never going to learn another language
Bonjour Hi,
English Ruined My Life
Not Literally.
Not Directly.
But every time I want to do something, I have to think about English (I usually speak/write in French).
When I go on Google, I sometimes have to ask in English because the answer doesn’t exist in French.
It can change the angle of the answer.
English changes my points of view, all my examples are from the United States.
But hey, it can be ok…
The real problem comes when I want to create.
When I want to write, when I want to make a game, or even when I want to make music!
Did you know that in English “Ti” (or B) is “Si” in french?
Another translation I could have lived without…
The first websites I made, first articles, first games… I made them all bilingual.
I spent half the time (if not more) making sure that it would be accessible in French AND English.
Yes, I worked on the English version of several applications that no one used. Of several websites that no one saw. Of several articles that no one read.
I could have spent the time to make better content, on marketing, or to make the application better…
But no.
I wrote a novel too, but in each chapter, in each paragraph, I thought about it in English.
I wrote pieces in English before translating them into French…
Sometimes, I wish I didn’t know English. It would have been easier.
These days, I think about starting to write more seriously.
Every day, or at least every week.
And EVERY TIME I think about it, I wonder if I should do it in English, in French, or both. So I abandon the project COMPLETELY.
I started a YouTube channel (not too seriously, but still), and for every video, I want to translate it, instead of making another video.
Most of the time, just the idea that I’m going to do it in two languages exhausts me, so I don’t do it. I abandon the project COMPLETELY.
But no, you shouldn’t.
If you are bilingual, or trilingual, don’t even think about it.
Take your pencil (or your keyboard), and write.
Take a piano score, and learn it in the language of this score.
Turn on your camera and record in the language you want.
Don’t think about the potential of another language.
Go for it.
It’s better to have 2 people read your text in Dutch, rather than zero in English, since the text will not be done if you wait for the perfect moment to write it in all languages.
I hope I will succeed in doing the same thing for this text…
P.S. I didn’t: https://typeshare.co/martingamsby/posts/langlais-a-ruine-ma-vie