The following checklist will determine once and for all whether deep within you are a real bi/multilingual person, whose life consists of 50% monolingual life, 20% translation, 20% searching for words in the right language and 10% identity crisis.
- People constantly ask you to »say something« in a foreign language
- Overthinking your whole sense of identity after hearing remarks, such as »What language do you think in?« or »In which language are your dreams?«
- The constant, annoying presence of the »tip of the tongue« experience during conversations: when you know that word in all languages that you do not need at the moment, except, of course, the conversing language
- People saying you have an accent in all your languages
- Hearing the myth over and over again about multilinguals not being proficient in any of their languages
- People not understanding that a person can have more than one mother tongue and still asking “but which is your real mother tongue?”
- Always being confronted with the dilemma in which language to write a text that is intended to all members of a multilingual family or group of friends
- Serving as a private translator to friends or family members who do not speak a certain language
- Remembering words that were unsuccessfully searched for in conversations long after the latter have been concluded
- Unwillingly creating new words and morphs from other languages and being convinced about their existence in the real world until the news is broken to you
- Occasionally laughing at certain words that give you associations in another language