By Sheina Magdua
Being multilingual sounds like it should make communication easier. It sounds like having more than one language should mean having more ways to explain yourself, more ways to be understood, and more ways to turn what you feel into something another person can hold. But sometimes it feels like the opposite. Sometimes knowing more than one language does not make you feel more understood. Sometimes it just reminds you that there are parts of you that cannot be translated properly.
There is a specific kind of loneliness that comes with knowing exactly what you feel but not knowing how to say it in the language the other person needs to hear. It is not that the feeling is unclear, the feeling is there. It sits in your chest, heavy and loud, but the moment you try to explain it, the words come out wrong. Or they come out in the wrong language. Or they do not come out at all.
Much of the time the frustration I feel towards my parents only forms properly in English. I can think through it in English. I can explain every layer of it in English. I can write it down, organise it, make it sound calm, mature, and reasonable. But when I try to say it to them, I already know something will be lost. I know I will have to simplify it. I know I will have to translate not just the words, but the emotion behind them. So, before I even begin, I prepare myself for their confusion instead of their comfort.
That is the hardest part. It is not just about language. It is about knowing that the version of yourself who can explain everything so clearly may never fully reach the people you most want to understand you. You are not only translating words, but you are translating pain, disappointment, anger, love, guilt, and longing. By the time everything has been translated, it no longer sounds like what you meant. It becomes smaller. Softer. Less honest. Less yours.
There are moments when English feels like the language of explanation. It is the language I use to analyse myself, to justify my feelings, to make sense of things. However, it is not always the language that carries my heart the best. Some feelings only make sense in Tagalog. Some words feel like they were made for emotions that English can only describe from a distance.
Sinta is not just darling. Mahal is not just love. They both carry a kind of tenderness that feels deeper than a simple translation. Gigil is not just excitement or affection, it is that overwhelming feeling when something is so cute, so loved, so much, that your body does not know what to do with it. Tampo is not just being upset—It is hurt wrapped in silence. It is wanting someone to notice that something is wrong without having to beg them to ask. These words do not just describe emotions, they hold them.
That is why love can also feel difficult to translate. I might love someone so deeply, but the words that feel closest to that love are not always in the language they understand. I can say “I love you,” and mean it completely, but it still doesn’t feel like enough. The feeling is warmer than that, older than that, more familiar than that. The only words that truly fit are the ones I grew up hearing, the ones that carry culture, history, family, softness, and home.
For a few weeks, I tried learning Auslan and it made me think about language differently again. There was something beautiful about realising that meaning did not always have to leave your mouth. It could sit in your hands instead. The sign for “friend” felt like two hands meeting, like connection made visible. The sign for “home” felt like pointing back to somewhere familiar, somewhere your body already knows it belongs. The sign for “family” felt like gathering people together, like drawing an invisible circle around the ones who are yours. Even without sound, those words had shape. They had movement. They had feeling.
I remember serving someone at work who signed “thank you” to me. For a second, I recognised it. That small moment of recognition felt so exciting, like a door had opened and I had understood something I was not used to understanding. Then I froze, because I forgot how to sign “you’re welcome.” I knew what I wanted to say. I knew the feeling I wanted to give back. But my hands did not know how to say it yet.
I wanted to ask if he wanted more sugar with his coffee, but I did not know how to sign it. I did not have a pen or paper near me to write it down either, so I just let him walk away. No question. No extra care. No usual sunny greeting I would have given any other customer. It was such a small moment, but it stayed with me because I hated how quickly my kindness became limited by what I did not know how to say. I was not any less willing to communicate. I was not any less warm. I just did not have the language for it yet.
That feeling was familiar. Different, but familiar. Because whether it is English, Tagalog, or Auslan, there is always the fear that the truest version of what I mean will not reach the person in front of me. I could have all these words in my head, all this care in my body, all this meaning waiting somewhere inside me, and still not know how to make it understood.
If the person in front of me does not understand those words, what happens to the feeling? Does it become less powerful because they cannot translate it? Or does it become even more mine because only I know the full weight of it?
There is also a strange power in knowing that people may hear my words without understanding them. I could be insulting you, but you would only hear the foreignness of my voice. You would hear the accent, the rhythm, the unfamiliar sounds, but not the meaning. You might think it sounds beautiful. You might think it sounds harsh. You might think it sounds strange. But you would not know what I actually said. You would react to the sound before the meaning. That is what it feels like sometimes to speak a language other people do not understand: being heard but not known.
Maybe that is what makes being multilingual so complicated. Language is supposed to connect people, but it can also create distance. It can make you feel split between versions of yourself. There is the version of you who speaks one language, and the version of you who speaks another. There is the version who knows how to explain pain, and the version who knows how to express love. There is the version your parents understand, the version your friends know, the version your partner hears, and the version that exists somewhere in between all of them.
I wonder if anyone will ever understand me in the exact language of my feelings. Not just the words I choose, but what those words carry. The history behind them. The culture behind them. The memories attached to them. The things I mean but cannot fully explain.
Being multilingual means having more words, but it also means knowing the limits of each one. It means understanding that not every feeling survives translation. Some emotions change shape when you try to move them from one language to another. Some become too formal. Some become too soft. Some lose their warmth. Some lose their anger. Some lose the exact ache that made them true.
So maybe the problem is not that I do not have the words. Maybe I have too many, and none of them are enough on their own. Maybe I am always choosing which part of myself to sacrifice to be understood. Maybe every translation is a small compromise between what I feel and what someone else can receive.
Because sometimes, the most painful thing is not silence. It is speaking clearly in one language and still not being understood in another.
Too Cool To Ask