There are two primary reasons people learn foreign languages: out of necessity or for pleasure.

Economic migrants, for example, like my Romanian husband and so many of his countrymen, have no choice but to learn the language of the countries they work in because very few people speak Romanian outside of Romania. Many economic migrants might never think about these languages in any depth. They might not concern themselves with the complexities of the grammar or the richness of the lexicon, their spelling might leave quite a lot to be desired at times, but they speak their adopted languages relatively fluently (often perfectly fluently) and if they then move to another country, they simply repeat the process.

I am a linguist for pleasure, even though it has since become my job. I still remember picking up a wooden camembert box aged about twelve, and feeling a frisson of excitement deep inside at the “foreignness” of the text. Funnily enough, that didn’t translate to me being a straight-A language student at school, but maybe that was simply down to the dry, uninspiring way languages were (and possibly still are) taught in British schools. I certainly did not feel a frisson of excitement deep inside while sitting at my desk chanting “Je suis, tu es, il/elle est…” or trying to recall whether boring Benoit had mentioned visiting the boulangerie or the boucherie.

Languages really came alive for me when I went on a parent-free holiday to Portugal as a teenager. Suddenly I was surrounded by people who were in some ways similar to me, and yet fascinatingly different in others (some were also very handsome, which no doubt played a part…). Their gestures, the musicality of their words, the seductive otherness of an unfamiliar culture: I desperately wanted to be part of it.

It was at that point it dawned on me that moving to another country and becoming part of another culture was a real possibility. An actual “thing”. That just because I was born and raised in England, my horizons did not have to drop away to nothing at the White Cliffs of Dover. That by learning to communicate in another language, the doors to all this intriguing unfamiliarity might actually open for me and a bigger chunk of the world might become my oyster.

(No doubt my privileged romanticising of unfamiliar cultures and horizon-busting oysters would seem absurd to the economic migrant, who instead dreams of being able to earn a living, in peace, surrounded by their family and friends in the country of their birth.)

As anyone who might be following the serialised version of An English Fandango posted on twice a week on this blog (the kindle version of the entire book is available here) will observe, I did not in fact move to Portugal, but to Spain. The premise for my move, however, remained the same.

Spain led to France, France led to Italy, and Italy led to a Romanian husband. Four new languages over almost thirty years enabling me to open the door onto four new cultures.

But in reality I didn’t just learn the languages and gain an insight into their cultures; the process altered me, irrevocably. The Kirsty who only spoke English is not the same Kirsty who spoke English and Spanish. The Kirsty who spoken English and Spanish is not the same Kirsty who spoke English, Spanish and French, nor was she the same as the Kirsty who spoke English, Spanish, French and Italian. And so on.

I remember driving through the tunnels of Monaco many years ago with my then sister-in-law. She was learning English and I was learning Italian, so we spoken a mixture of both. But for whatever reason I received two phone calls in quick succession; one in French followed by one in Spanish. When I eventually hung up it was to find her staring at me most strangely.

“You are a completely different person depending on the language you speak. Even your voice changes.” She said. “Did you know that?”

I’m not sure I did at that stage, but I have since paid more attention, and I think I get it. So am I a chameleon? Do I have multiple personalities? Am an actor? A mimic? Or just simply a fraud? It is hard to say. Certainly my personal linguistic journey has involved a lot of fitting in, so during the acquisition of each new language, I have also adopted, sometimes unconsciously, far more than just the grammar, vocab and a half-decent accent.

But I think the exposure to different ways of living and thinking about life has also played its part. In this multicultural world it is so important to learn that there are a myriad of different ways to skin a cat (please enlighten me if there if is a better idiom in circulation, this one makes me queasy). Those who boast about the supposed superiority of their own countries and cultures tend to be the ones who know absolutely nothing about anybody else’s. Because if they did, they would realise that although no one country or culture is perfect, each and every one has an enormous amount to teach us.

I have a different relationship with all my languages. I almost lost my spoken Spanish when I moved to Italy – they are two languages that, if neither is your mother-tongue, struggle to co-exist in a single brain. It has been a traumatic loss, which I am working hard to turn around. Of the countries I have lived in, Spain is where I was most at home. Having moved there at eighteen and left at twenty-six, it is the country that saw me transition into adulthood, and I left speaking at native level. The culture of Andalucía, where I spent most of my time, is deeply ingrained in my heart. Despite leaving in 2003 I am often still moved to tears of nostalgia, usually from musical triggers. Reading Spanish comes as easily to me as reading English, but I no longer speak as I once did and that pains me. Having recently discovered Antonio on Preply (an Andaluz from Sevilla, currently living with his Italian girlfriend in the País Vasco) I am hoping to recover some of my fluency through our fortnightly 90 minute chats, which feel absurdly like coming home.

French is perhaps the language I like the most. It is a language that feels very satisfying in my mouth. Like savouring an expensive meal, the sound, shape and taste of it is hearty and rich. My pronunciation is not always perfect (especially when I am having a dry spell of speaking it very little) but speaking it, hearing it and reading it gives me an awful lot of uncomplicated pleasure and I do as much as I can of all three. While doing my translation course there was a dearth of Italian material, so I did much of the coursework from French instead, and was delighted to discover that my translation abilities from French easily matched those from Italian or Spanish. French does not, however, come with an emotional component for me, which is interesting.

Italian was the language I most longed for. I would have happily skipped France (desolée, les français) and gone straight to Italy from Spain, but being in possession of a very old car, I wasn’t convinced I would make it all that way in one piece. Hence the five years dans les Alpes-Maritimes. Italian has been my everyday language now for almost fifteen years. Although I no longer live there, my husband and I still communicate solely in Italian, I read to my daughter in Italian, and often speak to her in Italian when it is just the three of us, much of my translation work is from Italian, my closest friends here are Italian and when I watch television, it is more often than not in Italian. Curiously, I do not enjoying reading Italian as much as I enjoy reading Spanish and French.

Romanian is the last language to join the party. It has been the hardest language for me to learn, despite being a Romance language like the others. The biggest hurdle has been not living there. I learn languages much as a new-born baby does: through observation. Learning solely from books and a weekly lesson is not my forte. My husband speaks to our daughter in Romanian, and now she is a bit older their conversations are getting more interesting, which helps. However his mother tongue is a Hungarian dialect, so during our first few years together, I very rarely heard him speaking Romanian at all. Nevertheless, with lessons, television, books and family, my Romanian is progressing at pace. I am quietly confident when translating medical reports or divorce certificates, for example, but there is still work to do should I ever wish to tackle a novel. The emotion Romanian elicits in me most is frustration at the complicated grammar. I am also frequently peeved at some of the Slavic (as opposed to Latin) based vocabulary which has to be learnt from scratch – I am spoilt, having lucky-guessed my way through much of the acquisition of the other three Latin-based languages.

Now I am back in the UK I still feel more comfortable in the company of immigrants to my country than I do with my fellow countrymen, but character-wise I am probably more English than I am anything else. I feel at home in four different countries, but I also feel out of place much of the time.

Maybe it is the downside of my rather unusual life choices, or maybe I was always that way. Who knows. At forty-seven, and after a reasonably full existence thus far I should probably be happy with my lot. But since I have already promised myself that I will treat myself to Portuguese when I am satisfied with my level of Romanian, and since I also recently find myself with a hankering to learn Turkish, it would appear that I am not yet done complicating my existence with cultural influences…