Why I only read English books and why I blog in English

ENGLISH!

That’s the language I speak daily. It’s the language I read books in and the language I write my blog post. However, I’m Swiss and my mother tongue is German.

I grew up learning German, Italian from my Nonna, then French at school and I only started English, when I was 13 years old. It soon became my favourite language and I learned it quickly and easily. I heard my mum speak English to her theatre group colleagues every day and after a while I started reading and watching movies in English.

At secondary school and high school we had to write a lot of essays in German, interpret a lot and at high school I never achieved good grades. No matter what I did, I was never very good. My motivation went down and I focused on English. I chose it as my main subject and enjoyed very much. My grades were very high and my essays were better than my German ones. Logically I also enjoyed reading English books more.

The same with movies and series, I hate watching them in German. They are just not authentic anymore.

I have lots of friends all over the world and naturally speaking English is normal. By joining an English Theatre Group and really getting into musical theatre, English was the main language as well.

For all these reasons and many more, I just prefer English and started focusing a lot more on the language. I have no problem expressing myself in English and I actually think that some expression in English don’t even exist in German. You have to use several ways around the whole think and in English you can just say it. It feels like mother tongue to me and I just feel comfortable with the language.

Of course, my English is not perfect, but it doesn’t have to be. I obviously use my German daily too at school and with my family and friends. I also watch German TV. However, I never even thought about blogging in German. It probably comes from my negative experiences with my grades and teachers at school. Blogging is a way for expressing myself and I prefer to do that in English. I feel more comfortable in this language.

The same thing goes for reading. I enjoy every second of it and it just feel happy and I don’t have to think about it. I read German books too, but only if I really want to read them and when the original language is actually German.