Those who know George Mikes’s How to Be an Alien will spot a paraphrase of one of the book’s chapters. If Naturalised draws on the experience of a new British citizen who was born and bred in Continental Europe (Hungary, that is). Although I am very similar to Mikes in this respect, having been born in Russia, it’s been a few years since I was naturalised in the UK. Now I came to spend some time in my country of origin, so it is no longer a question of “if”, but a question of “when”: how does one feel WHEN they are the nationals of two countries.
I also continue living in a bilingual environment, in fact even more so now than when I was in the UK. So, here are some “preliminary findings” of the process of moving back and forth between the country of origin and the second native country.
1. Russians and non-Russians alike ask me how I “adapt” to Moscow. I have no idea if Americans returning to America from France, or Japanese returning to Japan from England are being asked the same question. At any event, this is a peculiar question: how do I adapt to my native city? I wonder if this indicates our usual attitude to our place of birth: that, one, we take it for granted, and two, that we have to eventually find it unsettling, unfitting, uncomfortable, and thus to move to the pastures new where the grass is greener.
Taking the fact that our life is what we make of it as a premise, I suppose that I don’t want to adapt to Moscow. There are certain things that I have taken up, while in the UK, that I have no intention to drop now that I’m in Moscow. Say, waving “thank you” and smiling to a driver who stopped to give me way; or smiling. By doing so, I want Moscow to adapt to me. There can only be two outcomes. Either I eliminate negative people and hang out with those who share the same views, or I make a difference to the lives of Muscovites, and little by little they pick up certain good things from me.
2. Someone I have been working with recently has made a point about my strong British accent. I was quite thrilled. One, this means there is no trace of Russian accent in my English. Two, this means that I have spotted, exercised, and made a habit of using the “original” version of the English language.
The upside is obvious. The downside recently demonstrated itself in my dealing with one Moscow translation agency who used a “native speaker” to check the translation. The target language was English. Imagine my state when I found out that the speaker corrected the spelling of “honour” and “manoeuvrability” from British English to American English, and actually marked those as errors!!! This happened at the test stage of a prospective project, so I chose to withdraw from it, purely due to the lack of clarity. For other projects I will now be asking, which version of the English language they wish to use, American or British. However, the general feeling is that of a complete lack of understanding the difference. Language-wise, the attitude to the English language seems to be “it’s English, anyway”. Strictly speaking, a lot of foreigners make no difference between Russian and Ukrainian – an insult to both Ukrainians and Russians.
3. Just like there is a percentage of people who live in the UK and hate it but absolutely don’t plan to leave the country, so there are Russians who, it seems, choose to daily curse the Fate for dropping them “in the middle of nowhere” (in Russia, that is), who see “no way out”, and who nonetheless plan neither to move, nor to try and make a difference.
And I suppose this is the biggest problem I have to deal with. I understand that it has more to do with people’s culture, than a particular country. There is indeed a group of people who have such a negative frame of mind that they manage to find something bad in just about everything they come across. They are never happy, but they can never suggest another way of doing things that would make them happy.
My advice (to myself, too): run away from those people – FAST!