I’m being interviewed for a Ukrainian magazine about my book. The interviewer sent a list of questions and I’m trying to answer them. And God, it’s hard. I’ve lucked out with an interviewer who is a writer published in two dozen languages and a very profound person. She read the book carefully and probably twice, judging by the depth of the understanding of what I say in it. So the questions aren’t the problem. I am.
I discovered that I don’t have a voice in Ukrainian. I developed as a person and an intellectual in English-speaking countries. When I try to answer questions in Ukrainian, I revert to who I was at 22 when I left. And I wasn’t anything special back then. I was very immature and not deeply interesting. In the book, I mostly managed to avoid sounding like a kid, especially in the parts about the nation-state and neoliberalism. But when I talk to an actual person, even in writing, I revert to childishness, and it feels weird.
I’ll probably also have another interview in person, and I need to figure this out before I scare people off with this personal drama.
Clarissa's Blog 
” need to figure this out before I scare people off ”
You’re an educator so maybe working up some mini-lectures on the main topics would help. Pretend you’re teaching to a Ukrainian speaking group and work out how you would do 5 or 10 minutes on the nation state, 5 or ten minutes on neoliberalism or wokeness….
Pretend you’re arguing with a fellow scholar who doesn’t belief neoliberalism exists, what would you say?
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Can you write your answers in English and translate once done?
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“Can you write your answers in English and translate ”
That could work maybe for some people…. but there’s a ‘translated from English’ register in lots of European languages that sounds…. awful. I can detect it in Polish and Spanish and German and it’s an immediate turn off……
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I can do that, of course, but this interview isn’t my end goal. If I want to be a public intellectual in Ukraine, I need to be able to speak like the serious person that I am.
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Or you could just lean into being a product of a diaspora and do your interviews in multiple languages …
You’re probably far from being alone in this regard.
So … my first language was Dutch, my second was Turkish … and I’d started to forget what bits I knew starting at age 5.
English has a funny way of crowding out other languages.
When I’m in the Netherlands or Turkey, I know what many of the signs say, I even pick up on bits of conversation, but to actually speak?
At least I won’t wind up in the wrong set of toilets. :-)
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I think my Dad had Turkish as his 2nd and Dutch 5th– I wonder how common that combo is?
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“Turkish … and Dutch I wonder how common that combo is?”
There are hundreds of thousands of Turks in both the Netherlands and Belgium, so…. not that weird.
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Ah, so not uncommon– Dad just approached things in his usual sideways fashion. Learned Turkish in Istanbul and Dutch in Vietnam 😉
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Ask the interviewer what she suggests to improve your Ukrainian intellectual voice…..
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