This is a poem I wrote in Vienna in 2018 about our relationship with languages from the perspective of a migrant coming from the so-called periphery of geography. At the same time, it is a celebration of the four languages I speak daily: English, French, German, and Romanian.
As part of the Vienna-based literary group kollektiv sprachwechsel. literature in the second language, the poem was included in a Zine that gathered individual and collective literary texts (prose, poetry, essays and fragments from a theatre play) that were produced by its members throughout 2018. The poem was read by members of the kollective sprachwechsel during several literary events in Vienna in 2018 and 2019, and took the meaning of a manifesto for our group.
kaum Akzent. Work in progress
Laura M. Pana, Vienna 2018
At the smallest mistake you’re sweating
embarassé
it didn’t come out perfectly
mouth couldn’t perform that movement
the R is too French
mind has a blackout
what’s wrong with you? You speak three languages already.
“This is not how we speak here.”
Embarassé
your head falls in your chest.
mouth is mumbling mein Deutsch ist nicht so gut.
Who decides that an immigrant can’t play with languages?
kaum Akzent is work in progress
the non-ending poem of our lives
that will continue for as long as you and I will cross certain borders.
I’m in the Austrian countryside socializing inside an 11th century castle.
An English native speaker is trying to convince me that my German is as good as my English.
I tell him it’s not.
For ten years I keep telling myself and others in all the languages I speak that my German is not good enough.
And right there in the Mirror Room among portraits of someone’s centuries-long ancestors who looked as inflexible on the matter as many locals nowadays I’m thinking good enough for whom? Who decides when you speak a language good enough? And what kind of scale can measure our efforts with words?
kaum Akzent is when a native German speaker
compliments you about how well you speak the language
or show themselves superior towards those from the periphery of the geography, who are relentlessly trying to fit in. Trying to be good enough.
Bear with me Leute
Je suis à la recherche de ma propre façon de parler la langue allemande.
Între timp I declare that kaum Akzent should be work in progress for everyone
towards the acceptance that movements and influences inside a language should be as free as crossing borders.