Expectations

Languages are a complicated thing. It's like they are sufficient each one in itself but than...once you've learned and used another one you find them inssuficient. You can express everything in one language but once you've taken the leap into a second or third you find some things can't be quite put in the right wording.
And you long to have someone who's taken the same leap as you have. Who can connect and understand your references who can see what meaning is lacking in a word.

Unfortunately even though you may make the transition together your feeling of another language will never be the same as someone else's. Because, and I think this is important, languages are like seeing. Like seeing color for instance. The depth (intensity) of the color is individual. Green is what I see. My green is not necessarily yours. My words are not necessarily the ones you'd use.
Anyhow taking the leap into another language means the old references in the "old" language shift also. And the problem reiterates itself once again.

I remember the fuss we made once about the word awkward. We were three of us in the famous expository writing course. We were gladly using, and abusing, the word until one of us half-jokingly asked: " what does awkward really mean?" and we were lost. There was not one "good" translation in our other tongue. And we started laughing like morones because somehow we knew. We were aware of the meaning and we had taken the same leap but my awkward was not the same as my friends. Awkward moment nonetheless :)

Now to the point. Why ramble about languages today. Because I promised myself I'd keep this blog a live this autumn. I kinda need to. As a breathing hole. As a point of reference in a shaky hopefully productive but whichever way you cut it extremely intense season. An autumn full of expectations for which in at least one of the languages I know there's not a proper word. Not one that covers my depth of meaning for it anyhows.