The Polyglot's Division - Further Notes

My friend Jane posted this comment on -this post- a few days ago:

I'm actually surprised you think in english more than chinese. I would've thought it was the other way around, but I guess after hearing your little brothers talk (when they were little :p) I should've realized it would at least be split evenly between the two.

I have thought a little about this. Here's what I think may be the case, at least partially.

I have an immensely good grasp of Shanghainese (the Chinese dialect that we speak at home, and the one Jane is referring to). But as often as we speak it, and as much as I love it, it is essentially the home-language. It's my family-language. I mean that not just in the sense of heritage, but specifically within my household of six people.

Everyone has their own family-language, used with close family and virtually no one else. The only big difference here is that your family-language and the language that you speak with others in your day to day life might be the same worldly language (say, English for most Americans, for example), whereas mine happen to be different.

I predict the reason I don't formulate many of my thoughts in Shanghainese is because the majority of my personal thoughts are things that I wouldn't share with my family. It's not that they are bad, taboo or secretive. It's that there are certain themes and topics that would fall on deaf ears if I ever brought them up at the dinner table. My parents have always adapted well but never related well to overall current American culture, or at least the modern culture that my brothers and I are growing up in. My brothers are too young to understand most of the theories and principles I would discuss (the oldest isn't even out of middle school). And if both my parents and brothers fall into this category of not being able to understand philisophical or creative ideas that run through my mind, you can imagine how much hope my grandmother has. (You're fabulous, Grandma, but the answer is none.)

In part, I might simply lack the vocabulary for these thoughts, because they are never brought up at home. In a greater part, my mind matches up every language to its corresponding culture without (and indeed, often ignoring) conscious effort, and when one culture has the wrong influence or none at all on another one, the languages consequently don't overlap or mix.

But don't worry, Shanghainese. English ain't got nothin' on a hella lot of what you can express.