if you've only spoken english to me, you don't know me

the hidden language of my soul: why just 'hola' is not enough

tl;dr: being bilingual isn't just about speaking two languages—it's about inhabiting multiple identities and worlds. if you've only known me in english, you've only seen a fraction of who i truly am. this essay explores the science behind linguistic identity and the personal cost of linguistic assimilation.

quick note before we start: the complimentary paid subscription i gifted everyone only lasts 30 days and doesn't auto-renew. this wasn't a sneaky attempt to rope you into paying, i promise - it was my way of saying thanks for 100 posts! i'm devastated that some unsubscribed thinking they’d be charged. please stick around - i promise it's free unless you choose otherwise! 💖

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A photograph of a photograph, lol. My brother Sebi and I in late 2000 or early 2001 after we moved to Michigan from Puerto Rico. I was 13 years old.

I.

i think in spanish. then, somehow, it comes out of my mouth in english. a miracle.

i dream in spanish. internally, i am existing in spanish. at all times.

most of the time, it is way easier for me to express a thought in the language that i first learned. i refuse to call it “my native tongue”. yuck.

it’s my tongue, alright. heh. it’s my first tongue.

one of the hardest things about moving from puerto rico to western michigan in august of 2000 (and of my life in general) was how much i had to hide in plain sight. the change in weather and scenery was jarring enough. the veneer of nicety that often gets characterized as midwestern is… well, exactly that. it’s a veneer of white anglo-saxon - or worse, dutch - propriety that sometimes concealed something meaner. there were many times throughout my life there in which i met people that were truly good, the true embodiment of that midwestern nice stereotype. i’m thankful for them, most of them are still in my life. the midwest, though, taught me the difference between kind and nice.

but let me explain - it was literally day 2, okay? we had just flown in from san juan to chicago, landing late at night the day before. picked up by family members, we made the 3 hour trek back to grand rapids, michigan. then we brought our motetes into the house, crashed, and woke up the next day.

my mom and i went to meijer to buy milk and some basic staples. we were living out of the basement of relatives and needed to get some milk for cereal, eggs, and other things. my mom - who at the time did not know any english outside of fuck, shit, bitch, motherfucker, and fucking - was perplexed by a rice label. “edgard chiquito, ven aca,” she says. a few feet away from her standing by the cart, i bolt towards her. “que significa esto?” i don’t exactly remember what she asked me about. but i remember what happened next.

“you are such a cutie,” an older, suburban mom says to me as she walks past behind her cart. then she looks at my mom. “but you know, we speak american here. english. not spanish. speak english, please.”

my mom was not immediately sure about what happened. “que dijo?” the lady walked away, as i stood frozen in shame, fear, and ugliness. i didn’t exactly know what had just happened. i looked at my mom. she looked at me. it was then that it clicked for her what had just happened.

i don’t exactly remember now if my mom said anything or if i said anything. i remember we didn’t go there alone, but not sure where everyone was. maybe in some other aisle. all i remember was us sitting in that moment, frozen solid by the bigotry and smallness of “midwestern nice”.

II.

there's a joke i tell people sometimes.

i say that i have four personalities: one in english, one in spanish, one in french, and one that's a weird spanglish hybrid that comes out after a few drinks.

this isn't just a quirky observation or something i’m making up. science backs this up.

researchers call it the "polyglot phenomenon" - a phenomenon where people quite literally become different very versions of themselves depending on the language they're speaking. it's not just about words; it's about entire worldviews shifting with each linguistic switch.

dr. susan ervin-tripp, a sociolinguist, conducted a groundbreaking study with japanese women who were fluent in english. she asked them to complete sentences in both japanese and english. the results? when speaking japanese, they completed the sentence "when my wishes conflict with my family..." with "it is a time of great unhappiness." in english? "i do what i want." same women, different languages, entirely different cultural values emerging.

it's not just about personality. it's about how we think.

researchers from the university of chicago found that thinking in a foreign language can lead to more rational decision-making. apparently, the emotional distance created by using a second language can help reduce cognitive biases. ¿quien lo diría? maybe i should start doing my taxes in spanish.

it's not just about switching between languages. it's also code-switching - the linguistic gymnastics of adapting our language, behavior, and appearance to fit different cultural contexts. it's a survival skill, really. one that many of us learn early and practice often.

for me, code-switching started the moment i stepped off that plane in chicago. it was more than just translating words. it was about translating myself. in english, i became more reserved, more careful with my words.

i remember the first time i brought a non-spanish speaking friend to a family gathering. watching my tías switch effortlessly between rapid-fire spanish gossip and broken english pleasantries was like watching a perfectly choreographed dance. "ay, mijo, ¿cómo estás? oh, hello dear, would you like some... ¿cómo se dice 'pasteles'? ah, yes, tamales!" (note: puerto rican pasteles are not tamales, but that's a rant for another day).

this linguistic acrobatics isn't just about convenience. for many of us, it's about survival. people of color often code-switch to alleviate the impacts of bias and discrimination. we change our voices, our mannerisms, our very selves to fit into spaces that weren't designed for us.

Me at my First Communion, 3rd grade, back in Puerto Rico. I feel like this may have been 1993? 1994?

III.

not even two days after the incident at meijer, i started 9th grade in western michigan.

i was a freshman at forest hills northern high school in grand rapids. i was one of five or six latine kids in a school of over a thousand students at the time.

my english at the time (august 2000, i was 13) was okay, but it cost me to speak it. i had a thick accent, slow thoughts, slower sentences. i was polite. reserved. i did not want to command any attention so i stayed very quiet. i stayed out of everyone's way. "excuse me". i often ate lunch with my french teacher, terrified of stepping foot in the cafeteria. there were often times where i didn't even want to exist anymore.

a lot of people thought i was one of the "special needs students" and treated me accordingly. i'd awkwardly say the "car red" sometimes, instead of the "red car". i was very awkward.

i would not speak much. i stopped being the kid that begged his teacher to call on him in class. i stopped being social, i stopped talking to people.

and honestly, why would i talk to these people? they didn't seem the least bit interested in me besides whatever exotic image they'd project on me. "what are you mixed with?", “you’re a latino, huh?”, “where in mexico is puerto rico?”, "do you know ricky martin?", "are you a foreign exchange student?", "oh my god, you sound like fez"… and there it was.

i was called fez for four years by the people i came to call my friends. these were my friends, okay? calling me this. and god, did i always fucking hate it. but they were my only friends in school.

that's when i learned another lesson. i realized i would have to hide in plain sight now. i could survive, pass, assimilate, and be left alone. i had to be seen as present, and i had to be quiet. because apparently, even when i'm speaking american - even when i comply - it's not enough. it's never good enough.

i don't think i have ever met an american, a gringo, that really fucking understood this. a lot of them grasp it from a social justice perspective or from other perspectives, but all of these still remain very "hands outstretched" to me. like when you hold a baby with a shitty diaper? away, hands outstretched, away from you. grappling with it from a distance. they dance around the point a lot. they don't actually grapple with it.

when you're forced to hide parts of yourself to fit in, you're not just losing a language. you're losing pieces of your soul. you're fragmenting your identity into acceptable and unacceptable parts. and the worst part? the people around you - even the ones who call themselves your friends - they don't even realize they're complicit in this erasure.

they don't understand that every time they called me "fez", they were telling me my real name - my identity - wasn't worth remembering. every time they asked if i knew ricky martin, they were reducing my entire culture to a pop star. every time they praised my "good english", they were implying that my spanish was somehow less valuable.

even as i write this, in perfect fucking english, i know someone will see the spanish sprinkled throughout and think it's exotic or cute. they won't realize that these words are lifelines to a self i was forced to bury. a self i often feel disconnected to, a self that sincerely feels like no one will want to ever know.

so when i say "if you've only spoken english to me, you don't know me," i'm not just talking about language. i'm talking about the me that exists in the spaces between languages. the me that can only fully express themselves in a mix of english, spanish, and silent screams.

that's the me you don't know. and that's the point.

i have loved people for years and they never had the curiosity to meaningfully learn spanish themselves. but for them? god. i learned to love cats (net good, ngl!!!) despite having a terrible allergy to many (not to all, thankfully). i sacrificed personal goals and dreams. i learned english. i dialed my volume down. i hid in plain sight. i gave up my dream of having a family of my own. i moved from city to city. i threw out good friendships i didn't need to. i dressed differently. i spoke differently. i didn’t speak at all. i didn’t write music anymore.

do you think these people ever really got to know me? did they ever truly love me?

the irony is choking me. i bent myself into unrecognizable shapes to fit into their world, while they couldn't be bothered to learn more than "gracias" and "hola". i dimmed my light, muted my voice, rewrote my personality - all to make them comfortable. and for what? to be seen as the exotic partner? the token puerto rican? the real-life fez?

how can you love someone when you've never bothered to know them in their entirety? how can you claim to care when you've never made the effort to understand the language that shapes their thoughts, their dreams, their very being?

this isn't about guilt. it's not about making anyone feel bad. it's about recognition.

language isn't just about communication - it's about identity. it's about respect. it's about seeing someone for who they truly are, not just the version that's convenient for you.

so, if you've only spoken english to me, you really don't know me. you know a version of me i created for your comfort. you know the edgard who learned to love your cats, who moved cities for you, who dialed down their volume. but you don't know the edgard who dreams in spanish, who thinks in puertorriqueño, who exists in the beautiful, chaotic spaces between languages.

and until you make the effort to know that edgard - all of that edgard - don't tell me you love me. because love, real love, isn't about comfort. it's about curiosity. it's about effort. it's about wanting to know every facet of a person, even the ones that make you uncomfortable.

A picture of me from 2008; in Grand Rapids, MI.

IV.

it's not just me. it's not just in my head.

the science is clear: we are different people in different languages. and nowhere does this show up more clearly than in our most intimate relationships.

bilingual consumers make different choices depending on the language they're using. in english, they tend to make more rational decisions. in their native tongue? more emotional ones. imagine how this plays out in a relationship where one partner is constantly operating in their second language.

i've been there. all of my serious relationships have been with people that have only spoken english. every argument, every tender moment, every big decision - all in english. looking back, i can see how much of myself i lost in translation. so much just lost, evaporated. the nuances of my feelings got flattened in the journey from spanish thoughts to english words.

bilinguals experience less emotional resonance when reading or hearing emotional phrases in their second language. menos resonancia emocional. that's a fancy way of saying that "i love you" might not hit the same to someone as "te amo".

but it's not just about emotions. it's about how we see the world. linguists have long known about the sapir-whorf hypothesis - the idea that the language we speak shapes our perception of reality. recent studies have shown that bilingual people actually shift their personalities when they switch languages.

a study in the journal of personality and social psychology found that spanish-english bilinguals displayed different personality traits depending on which language they were using. in spanish, they were more extroverted, agreeable, and open to new experiences. in english? more conscientious and less open.

that's me. that's why i joke about my four personalities. it's not a joke. it's science.

so what does this mean for relationships? for love? for understanding?

it means that if you're in a relationship with someone who speaks multiple languages, you're in a relationship with multiple versions of that person. it means that to truly know someone, to truly love someone, you need to know them in as many languages as you can. it helps the most, in my opinion, if you can know them in their first tongue.

i mean it when i say "if you've only spoken english to me, you don't know me." i'm not being dramatic. i'm being literal. you don't know the me that exists in spanish. you don't know the me that dreams in puertorriqueño. you don't know the me that thinks in a language that doesn't have a direct translation for "awkward" or "cranberry" or "serendipity".

this isn't just about me. this isn't just about spanish and english. this is about every bilingual, every multilingual person out there.

this is about every immigrant kid who's ever had to translate for their parents at a doctor's appointment. it's about every international student who's ever felt homesick for a language. it's about every person who's ever felt like they're living in the hyphen between two cultures.

This is me… now. (Yes, this is a J.Lo reference.)

V.

we are not one thing.

we are not easily definable.

we all exist in the spaces between languages, between cultures, between worlds.

so when i think back to that day in meijer, when that woman told my mom to "speak american," i realize now what she was really saying. she was saying "be less complex. be less nuanced. be less you. be more like me."

but here's what i've learned: i am not less. i am more. and i am who i am. i am english and spanish and french and spanglish. i am puerto rico and michigan and washington, dc and san diego. i am loud and quiet, extroverted and introverted, emotional and rational.

i am all of these things. and if you want to know me, if you want to love me, you need to know all of me.

because language isn't just words. it's about worlds. it's about the different realities we inhabit with each tongue we speak. it's about the different selves we become with each language we learn.

so, mi gente, if you've only spoken english to me, you don't know me. not fully. not really. but if you're willing to learn, if you're willing to step into my world, into my language, into my reality?

well, then. bienvenidos. welcome to the real me. all of me.

y eso, mis amores, es la verdad completa.