English is the language that I studied in at university, that I work in, that I now write my thoughts and memories in.

Although it’s the language that I seem most familiar and comfortable with, there have been times in my life that other languages had centre stage in my life. I learned Brazilian Portuguese when I was 10 and I was living with my parents in Brazil. I absorbed Spanish in a few months, just a couple of years after that, when we moved to Colombia and I slowly digested French, while in primary school, high school and university.

By not using some of them, either orally or in writing, I have lost confidence… my written French is probably a disaster, strangely enough, as I moved the first time to France in 2007. But getting employed in Strasbourg meant working for an international organisation and working in English. And that’s how I started losing my ease with it. Portuguese was replaced by Spanish. Even if I understand it, my more recent Spanish experience means that my brain understands when being addressed in Portuguese but will reply in Spanish.

And then there’s Romanian. My native language. Which somehow has managed to survive all these years but to which I add new words and expressions translated from other languages, without even realising.

Why I actually wanted to write this post on languages… a language is much more than a way to facilitate communication between us. It says a lot about the culture of a country, the way people think, and maybe even how they FEEL.

The concept I am interested in, and seems particularly relevant today, is ‘missing someone’. We miss our family and friends and partner but how do we express that?

The French would say: ‘tu me manques’ which literally means you are missing from me. How beautiful is that! You are missing from me… because you are a part of me and your presence is essential… I love that.

On the other hand the Portuguese use one word to express how they feel: ‘saudade’.

Saudade is a feeling that expresses a complex feeling of mixed melancholia, nostalgia and hope. In one word, Portuguese expresses so much, which forgive me (even if English is still my number one) ‘I miss you’ doesn’t seem to be able to cover.

The same concept as in Portuguese exists in Romanian – with the word ‘dor’. We would say ‘mi-e dor de tine’. There is this longing, an expression of feeling the absence of someone, of wanting to belong, that ‘dor’ encompasses. And it’s so poetic.  Many poems have been written about this feeling in Romanian.

I love languages and I can’t imagine living in a country and not speaking the local language. It gives us access to the soul of a nation, to its history…

Regardless what language you speak, I hope you tell your loved ones that you miss them every day.