Language of My Soul



Nathaniel Worthman
Professor. Dadak
Writing 101

Today I want to talk about the language of my soul. As you may imagine…. It’s Latvian. So, what do I mean by language of my “soul language?” Well, when my roommate and I talked about this once I described it as the language that not only understand but that understands me. For me, this didn’t happen until I lived in Latvia. For almost 17 years I had convinced myself that because I was adopted from Guatemala the language of my soul had to be Spanish. Due to my love of Guatemala and the Spanish language for a while I was perfectly content not knowing any better. I learned Spanish fluently and then translated all of my adoption documents to English to learn more about my family history. While yes, it made me feel connected to my cultural roots, the Spanish language never spoke to me. This followed a long list of languages that were studied both formally and informally (Spanish, Italian, French, Portuguese, Chinese, Korean, Thai, and others) until my senior year of high school when I finally got the opportunity to Latvia.
While the program I was on was to study Russian in the European Union, I knew that before I got there, I would want to learn some Latvian in order to be fully immersed in the Latvian culture. In the beginning, it was so strange for me to be learning an Indo-European language especially because I was so used to learning Romance and Asian languages. But nonetheless, I was extremely excited and surprisingly confident in my ability to speak Latvian right away! After living in Latvia, I was the only American in the program that left with conversational skills in Latvian! This for me was the greatest accomplishment. Not only does it make me happy when I speak Latvian it makes me feel whole. The Latvian languages uses words that I find better help me understand what I’m feeling and what I want to say. Additionally, because of the Latvian language I have made so many relationships with people who have changed me in such positive ways. Because of this, I truly feel like the language of my soul is Latvian, and I hope that one day everyone finds the language of their soul because when you do you truly know what it means to be able to express yourself the way you feel like you express yourself in your mind.                  

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