Why I Write in a Foreign Language

My native language is Croatian. I started learning English at elementary school like more than 95% of schoolchildren in Croatia, which is one of the top EU countries when it comes to foreign language learning. Apart from English, I also learnt Italian at a late age.

Foreign languages became a part of my daily life, even more than before when I started blogging shortly after joining beBee. At that time, there were almost none active users from Croatia (still the same).

I have been previously on LinkedIn for several years and still am, but I never felt the urge for trying my hand at writing on the Linkedin publishing platform in any language.

It is still a mystery to me what prompted me to start writing, and even in English after I joined beBee. I have never blogged before.

It just happened. I have begun to write blog posts, not in my native language but English.

My first ever blog post The writer in me just woke up!, was my victory over the fear of writing for the public, but also of writing in a foreign language and how it will be accepted by an English-speaking audience.

Although I was studying English throughout my entire schooling and read a lot, my English vocabulary is still much narrower than of my native language. Not to mention the grammar and word-order of my native language that is much different. For that reason, my writing style seems too simple. It is not easy to express the same social reality by literally translating it into another language. My thoughts in Croatian are more complex than what they look like transformed into English words.

Perhaps it is not bad at all. There is no 'fuzziness' in my words that could be understood as 'deep' thinking. My writing in English is more simplified and free of unnecessary words and expressions.

I might say that beBee is the reason why I started writing. The collaborative, friendly and everybody-knows-your-name kind of environment surely helped that the writer in me woke up.

But why I write only in English?

Almost every day I read and write in both languages, Croatian and English. Most of the literature I read is in English, from technical articles and papers, blogs on social media to pages like Goodreads. I comment mostly in English. So when the time has come to awaken the writer in me, it seemed so natural to start writing in English despite doubts and insecurities I had to overcome. My audience on social media mainly consists of native English speakers. Besides, I love the English language. I like how it sounds. I like its clarity. And above all, I wanted to improve my written English. 

Blogging is a great way for practising the writing skills if you are not afraid of making errors, which I am not anymore. Blogging in a foreign language is also about challenging yourself. I challenge myself every time I try new things.

Using both languages on a daily bases sometimes get them mixed up, usually after several hours of reading and writing in English when the open-close mechanism of the language "brain drawer" does not shift properly. Sometimes before I fall asleep, thoughts in both languages start to pop up in my mind alternately continuing to process what I have previously read or written. It is like a bilingual internal monologue. A very strange experience indeed. 

I am glad I found such an inspiring community, the best readership for my blogging escapades, where I can write so unburdened and without any feeling of discomfort because my English is not perfect.

I never thought much about why things happen the way they do, but I am prone to believe that everything in life happens for a reason.

So is with my blogging on beBee. I started when I was ready to get my thoughts across in English.

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Title Image Explained: A 2014 Northwestern University study found that people who speak more than one language boost their brainpower and may also be building strong defences against dementia. Bilingualism is a form of brain training - a mental "work out" that fine-tunes the mind. It is never too late to learn a second language.

Author's Note: This post was published on my beBee blog three years ago.