In our modern age, we say so much but mean so little. Long sentences and passages that use big words and concepts appear on every corner of the internet but a quick glance reveals the hollowness of such texts. Posts on Crushes and Confessions tell a similar story: each post seems desperate in its attempt to to justify its existence. Posts feel far too clunky for a page supposedly featuring the raw unfiltered anonymous voices of this school. It is as if we sacrifice genuinity for conformity with a system of grammar that is unfit for our circumstance. Instead, I propose that we liberate ourselves from such shackles, that we double down and choose to use words that have true meaning, even if they might not be in perfect English.

This is not to say I am in the clear. The other day I was told that my English is too “academic”, something which I had never realized. I feel that this might be the case for many of us at NYU Abu Dhabi given the fact that English is our second language in many cases. Even though we may be able to write academic papers or reports, I feel that this second language of ours is insufficient to properly capture our true emotions. I do not necessarily think that the English language lacks the words needed to express raw feelings. I think however that the nature of a “second language” implies a sort of “inauthenticity”.

To illustrate this, I have a funny story to tell. One of the greatest Japanese novelists Natsume Soseki famously once translated the English words “I love you” into “The Moon is beautiful, isn’t it?” This translation seems to make absolutely no sense. It is not like the words have a special meaning in Japanese or that there is any special context which gives these words extra meaning. However, Soseki believed that a direct translation of the words “I love you” would not capture the feelings of love in a Japanese context, and so he translated it into these famous words which are ripe with subtleness and poetic character, defining features of the Japanese language. The moral of this story is that you can not directly translate emotions into another language because each language and its associated culture has a different expectation and outlook of words and the feelings they attempt to capture.

In a multilingual world, the Shakespearean principle of “By any other name would smell as sweet” does not hold. What I mean is that everything, and especially the words we pick, are specific and even though we may talk of the same thing, a slight difference in word choice creates a whole different meaning. A translation into any other word would NOT sound as sweet and that scares me. Will I be able to effectively convey my raw feelings to my new classmates and friends when I must communicate with them in a second language?

I do not want to compromise my feelings, I do not want to compromise my objectives and I do not want to compromise the essence of my words. I am not going to propose that we all speak to each other in our mother tongue because whilst that would be interesting it would surely be chaotic to hear people speak in dozens of different languages. However, I do want to suggest that maybe we allow ourselves to be a tad-bit mischievous, that in important moments of communication we ignore the rules of grammar and the cultural guidelines that we had to learn (for those who English is not their first language) and allow ourselves to say what we truly want to say. I think it is quite a universal experience for us — that we crammed grammar, we crammed logic, we crammed unnatural habits for those extra points on the SAT or TOEFL or whatever.

Yet, we are finally at university; English no longer is just a tool to achieve our ambitions and goals. For many of us, it will be the first time in our lives that we would primarily use English as a mode of communication and social interaction. At such an important time, I do not want my true feelings, and my messages to be bogged down by the formalistic training I had to endure. Rather, I hope my words are able to reflect the person I am inside.

This is my first worry about going to campus. Will my words still remain authentic in this new environment with this new language? Only time will tell, but the moon is surely beautiful tonight.