All I can think abt is that one quote that basically just describes that you can’t be your true self in your native language bc there’s too much emotional attachment, but that second languages allow speakers to be truly free with their words
“Some things could only be written in a foreign language; they are not lost in translation, but conceived by it. Foreign verbs of motion could be the only ways of transporting the ashes of familial memory. After all, a foreign language is like art—an alternative reality, a potential world. »
- Svetlana Boym, “Estrangement as a Lifestyle: Shklovsky and Brodsky”
“Bilinguals overwhelmingly report that they feel like different people in different languages. It is often assumed that the mother tongue is the language of the true self. (…) But, it first languages are reservoirs of emotion, second languages can be rivers undammed, freeing their speakers to ride different currents.”
- Love in Translation by Lauren Collins from the New Yorker, August 8 & 15, 2016
