i know japanese

I love German. The dialect I speak is very specific and not as fluent as my reading of the language. It is my third language. English and Japanese are the primary languages that I speak and read, but here when I say German what I refer to is the habitual uncertainty of speech. I don’t need to confine or expose anything, i simply speak and read German. My language pretty well goes without. saying, speaking, reading, japanese is the language which others think should be my first language. I am my mothers daughter after all. And yet listening to Japanese, speaking i can remain so private quiet quiet, whilst German is the language of experimentation. Whilst English is the language of the everyday, of love (it is sitting at the desk looking at something and measuring the font sizes of a book)- i can feel all of the secrets we cannot speak of when i speak dialect. They are expression and content as if valuable objects. And yet Wilhelmshaven like Tokyo doesn’t make things easy for you. If you want to know this city you have to live there, except perhaps in the city I live in which is unknowable. And remember suddenly that what will welcome you and loathe you, what will love you and loathe you, the language errors of the dialect. Whereas here, sitting in my island in hertfordshire…