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Do You Know How Smart I Am in My Own Language? · Just Julia

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: You know,
• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: there is this incredibly memorable scene from the show Modern Family
• 0:05
  SPEAKER_00: that I think perfectly captures the heart of what we are getting into today.
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, I think I know exactly the one you mean.
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 0:11
  SPEAKER_00: It's the character Gloria.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_00: And she is just completely overwhelmed and like frustrated by not being able
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_00: to express herself properly in English.
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, she is at her wit's end.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_00: Exactly.
• 0:23
  SPEAKER_00: And she finally just snaps.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_00: She looks right at her husband and screams,
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_00: do you know how frustrating it is to have to translate everything in my head
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_00: before I say it?
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_00: Do you even know how smart I am in Spanish?
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_01: That line is just wow.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_00: It's played for laughs, obviously.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_00: But underneath that comedy,
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_00: there is this profound, almost desperate desire to just be truly seen.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_00: And that is exactly our mission for today's Deep Dive.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_00: We are exploring the emotional and, well,
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_00: the cognitive reality of living, working, and thinking across multiple languages.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_01: Which is a reality for so many people.
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_00: It really is.
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_00: So to you listening,
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_00: we are diving into a beautifully written essay titled,
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_00: Do You Know How Smart I Am in My Own Language?
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_00: And to help us unpack this, we have a very special guest with us.
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_00: The author of this essay left Brazil back in 2006.
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_00: And since then, she has been navigating her entire life.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, her career,
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_00: her relationships,
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_00: her experience of motherhood across Portuguese, English and Italian.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_00: It is such an honor to have you here for this conversation.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you so much.
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_01: I am genuinely so excited to be here and to explore this with you and with everyone listening.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_00: We're thrilled to have you.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_01: When you brought up that modern family scene,
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_01: it instantly took me back because when I first saw that episode,
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_01: my initial reaction wasn't just to laugh.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_01: No, I actually felt a lump in my throat.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_01: I watched her scream that line and thought,
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_01: God, I know exactly what that frustration feels like.
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_00: It's a very specific,
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_01: invisible kind of exhaustion that you just, you know, you carry around all day.
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_00: And I think if you've only ever operated in one language,
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_00: it's probably hard to graph the sheer mental load of that daily existence.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, it really is.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_00: I was trying to conceptualize this internal translation process you go through.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_00: And the best analogy I could come up with is having a web browser open in your brain.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_00: But you have 50 different tabs open at once.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_01: Oh my gosh, yes.
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_01: 50 tabs.
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_00: And you know the exact piece of information you need is in there somewhere.
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_00: But when you go to click on the right tab,
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_00: you accidentally click on the wrong one and suddenly,
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_00: like, music starts playing from somewhere and you can't figure out how to stop it.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_01: That is exactly it.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_01: I love that analogy because it captures the sheer panic and the absolute clutter of it all.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_00: It sounds so chaotic.
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_01: It is.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_01: There's this strange, rapid-fire linguistic mathematics happening constantly in my head.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_01: Let's say I am sitting in a meeting at work.
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_01: I know exactly what I want to say,
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_01: I know the idea intimately, and I have the perfect argument ready to go.
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_01: But when I open my mouth, the word simply arrives in the wrong language.
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_00: But wait, why does that happen cognitively?
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_00: Because you'd think the brain would just have like separate tidy filing cabinets.
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_00: One for Portuguese, one for Italian, one for English.
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_00: That'd be nice.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_00: If you're speaking English,
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_00: shouldn't the English cabinet just stay open while the others stay shut?
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_01: You would hope so, wouldn't you?
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_01: But the brain doesn't store language like a dictionary.
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_01: It stores it as an interconnected web of associations and memories.
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, interesting.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_01: The neural pathways for these languages are entirely entangled.
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_01: So if I'm feeling a specific type of professional urgency,
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_01: and the last time I felt that exact emotion was during a project in Milan.
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_00: Your brain goes to Italy.
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_01: My brain might instantly light up the Italian neural pathway because it associates
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_01: that feeling with that language.
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_00: Wow.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_01: So the Portuguese word comes rushing forward when I desperately need
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_01: the Italian word or English suddenly appears instead.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_00: So your brain is basically serving up the word based on emotional memory rather than
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_00: the context of the room you're actually sitting in.
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_01: Precisely.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_01: So in real time,
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_01: while people are looking at me,
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_01: waiting for the end of my sentence, I have to mentally reject the first word.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_01: Frantically search for the right one in the correct language.
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_01: Quickly rearrange the entire sentence structure because
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_01: the syntax might be completely different.
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_01: Check the grammar.
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_00: That is so much work.
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_01: It is.
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_01: And I have to do all of this mental gymnastics while trying desperately not to lose
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_01: the thread of the original story I was trying to tell.
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_00: That sounds completely draining to do on the fly.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_00: And the cruel irony is that the person sitting across the conference table
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_00: from you doesn't see the 50 tabs.
• 4:37
  SPEAKER_01: No, they don't.
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_00: They don't see the neural pathways lighting up.
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_00: They just see a pause.
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_01: From the outside, what you see is a woman hesitating.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_01: You see someone searching for a word, maybe restarting her sentence a couple of times.
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_01: It looks like hesitation.
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_01: It looks like uncertainty.
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_00: Like you don't know what you're talking about.
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_01: But inside my head, three completely different languages are moving at once.
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_01: And this is something I really want people to grasp.
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_01: The pause doesn't necessarily mean there is less going on.
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_01: Sometimes it means there is more.
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_00: Wow.
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_00: The pause doesn't necessarily mean there is less going on.
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_00: That is, I mean,
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_00: if the pause actually signifies a heavier cognitive workload,
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_00: we have a major societal blind spot.
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_01: It's a huge one.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_00: Because we live in a culture that equates rapid fire,
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_00: Aaron Sorkin style banter with high intelligence.
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, exactly.
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_00: Like the faster you could fire back, the smarter the room assumes you are.
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_01: We completely reward speed over depth.
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_00: But I have to challenge this just a bit.
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_01: Go for it.
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_00: If I am sitting in a meeting and I know for a fact I have the best data and
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_00: the deepest expertise in the room,
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_00: that internal knowledge usually acts as a kind of psychological armor.
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_01: Sure.
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_00: Even if someone rushes me, I know I'm right.
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_00: Why doesn't that expertise shield you?
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_00: Why does a grammatical stumble or a momentary pause pierce that armor so easily
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_00: for you in those corporate spaces?
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_01: That is a fantastic question.
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_01: And the answer really comes down to the intensely social nature of communication.
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_01: You can have all the internal armor in the world,
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_01: but if the delivery mechanism is rejected by the room,
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_01: your idea is effectively rejected.
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_01: When you hesitate, the room reacts and you feel it instantly.
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_01: Someone will helpfully or, you know, quote unquote, unhelpfully correct a word for you.
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, I hate that.
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_01: Or someone else might playfully imitate your pronunciation
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_01: or people might just laugh at
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_01: the slightly awkward literal translation you just made.
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_00: And when you're the only one in the room with the accent.
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_00: It must feel impossible not to internalize that immediate feedback.
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_01: It is devastating to your self-image.
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_01: You laugh to diffuse the tension.
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_01: You play along and smile.
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_00: Because what else can you do?
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_01: But internally, I could literally feel myself getting smaller in my chair.
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_01: You start feeling less articulate, less authoritative.
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_01: Suddenly,
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_01: you are less certain of a fact that you are completely 100% certain
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_01: about just five minutes earlier.
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_00: Just because of a pause.
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_01: Because you start focusing entirely on your grammar instead of your actual idea.
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_01: You find yourself listening to the sound of your own accent
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_01: when you should be listening to your own thought.
• 7:11
  SPEAKER_00: It's like you become your own harshest editor in real time,
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_00: completely overriding your actual expertise.
• 7:17
  SPEAKER_01: And when this happens often enough, you undergo this subtle, quiet, internal collapse.
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_01: You begin to confuse your ability to express intelligence with intelligence itself.
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_00: That distinction is vital.
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_00: Conflating the packaging of the idea with the quality of the idea itself.
• 7:35
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 7:35
  SPEAKER_00: The cost of that confusion must be immense,
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_00: not just for you, but for the companies or teams you're working with.
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_01: It's a massive loss for everyone, because what happens next is you start self-editing.
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_00: You hold back.
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_01: You realize a thought is too complex to translate perfectly,
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_01: so you just make the sentence simpler.
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_01: You water down your own brilliant idea.
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_00: I did.
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_00: That's tragic.
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_01: You have a great story, but you tell the shorter version.
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_01: Or, worst of all, you just choose not to speak at all.
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_01: You stay silent.
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_01: We often think of confidence as something that gets taken from us in one big,
• 8:05
  SPEAKER_01: dramatic, humiliating moment.
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_01: But usually we give it away in tiny imperceptible pieces just
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_01: to avoid taking up too much space or making a mistake.
• 8:15
  SPEAKER_00: That resonates so deeply.
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_00: It makes complete sense why a corporate boardroom filled
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_00: with native speakers feels like walking a tightrope.
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_01: It really does.
• 8:24
  SPEAKER_00: But what I don't understand is why you felt so safe in some of
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_00: the other environments you mentioned in your essay.
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, the other rooms?
• 8:29
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_00: For instance, you talk about interning at the United Nations in New York.
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_00: On paper, that is arguably one of the most intimidating high stakes rooms on the planet.
• 8:39
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, absolutely.
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_00: Why was that a sanctuary for you?
• 8:41
  SPEAKER_00: What was fundamentally different about that room?
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_01: That was such a revelation for me.
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_01: The UN, much like my university in New Zealand or recently at Mindvalley University
• 8:51
  SPEAKER_01: in Tallinn, these are spaces that are extraordinarily multicultural.
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_01: I remember walking into those rooms in New York.
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_01: And just being surrounded by this beautiful symphony of accents, French,
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_01: Spanish,
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_01: Portuguese, Italian, Arabic, and languages I couldn't even begin to identify.
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_00: That is a total mix.
• 9:10
  SPEAKER_01: And the fundamental difference was that in those rooms, people paused constantly.
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_01: People searched for words.
• 9:17
  SPEAKER_01: People pronounced things differently, sometimes strangely.
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_00: So everyone was navigating the 50 browser tabs together.
• 9:23
  SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_01: And somehow none of that made anyone seem less intelligent.
• 9:27
  SPEAKER_01: It was the exact opposite of that boardroom feeling.
• 9:30
  SPEAKER_00: Because they were all in the same boat.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_01: Nobody needed to explain to anyone else what it felt like to search for a word.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_01: If anything,
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_01: hearing those accents reminded you just how much existed behind
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_01: the language being spoken.
• 9:41
  SPEAKER_00: Right, you're not focusing on the delivery.
• 9:42
  SPEAKER_01: You weren't sitting there listening to someone's English and internally grading it.
• 9:46
  SPEAKER_01: You were just listening to their ideas.
• 9:48
  SPEAKER_00: Because if nobody possesses the quote-unquote perfect baseline...
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_00: Then nobody is being judged against it.
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_00: It completely removes the linguistic hierarchy.
• 9:59
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_01: I realize that the magic of these spaces is that nobody owns the room linguistically.
• 10:05
  SPEAKER_00: That is a brilliant way to frame it.
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_00: Nobody owns the room.
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_00: If nobody owns the room, then everyone is a guest.
• 10:11
  SPEAKER_00: There is no native speaker sitting on a throne dictating the terms of engagement.
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
• 10:17
  SPEAKER_01: When nobody owns the room, we all have to do the work.
• 10:20
  SPEAKER_01: We all have to build and cross a small bridge to reach one another.
• 10:23
  SPEAKER_00: An equalizing bridge.
• 10:25
  SPEAKER_01: Native speakers have to slow down and listen more carefully.
• 10:28
  SPEAKER_01: Nonnative speakers have to find the best words they can.
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_00: I love that.
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_01: There is something incredibly equalizing about that shared effort.
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_01: It creates a space where your ideas are inherently valued above your syntax.
• 10:41
  SPEAKER_00: That equalizing bridge,
• 10:43
  SPEAKER_00: it really shifts the burden of communication from the individual back to
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_00: the collective.
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_00: Like, we're in this together.
• 10:48
  SPEAKER_01: We are.
• 10:49
  SPEAKER_00: But let's dig into the individual experience for a moment.
• 10:51
  SPEAKER_00: Because we typically view language as a tool, right?
• 10:55
  SPEAKER_00: A megaphone we use to broadcast who we already are to the outside world.
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_01: Right, just a medium.
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_00: But if you are constantly swapping megaphones,
• 11:03
  SPEAKER_00: does the tool actually change the person holding it?
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_00: Are you fundamentally a different woman when you are speaking Portuguese
• 11:11
  SPEAKER_00: than you are when you're speaking English or Italian?
• 11:13
  SPEAKER_01: That is the deepest question, and it's one I've spent years wrestling with.
• 11:17
  SPEAKER_00: Really?
• 11:17
  SPEAKER_01: I've started wondering whether I've been thinking about accents and languages in
• 11:21
  SPEAKER_01: the wrong way all along,
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_01: because perhaps it's not just a change in vocabulary, it's a shift in identity.
• 11:28
  SPEAKER_01: Language carries culture, and culture carries identity.
• 11:31
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, I have to know how this fractures for you.
• 11:34
  SPEAKER_00: How do these different languages manifest different parts of your personality?
• 11:37
  SPEAKER_01: Well, for starters, I am definitely much funnier in Portuguese.
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, you have to give me an example.
• 11:42
  SPEAKER_00: What happens when you try to be funny in English?
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_00: Does it just flop?
• 11:45
  SPEAKER_01: It completely dies on the floor.
• 11:47
  SPEAKER_01: It really does.
• 11:48
  SPEAKER_00: No way.
• 11:48
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, it's tragic.
• 11:49
  SPEAKER_01: And it's rarely a direct translation issue, you know?
• 11:53
  SPEAKER_01: It's about the rhythm of the culture.
• 11:55
  SPEAKER_00: Rhythm.
• 11:55
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, Portuguese is incredibly musical,
• 11:58
  SPEAKER_01: and Brazilian humor relies on a specific type of shared absurdity,
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_01: lots of overlap and warm interruption.
• 12:07
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 12:08
  SPEAKER_01: We talk over each other constantly, but it's as affectionate.
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_01: If I try to interrupt an English conversation to drop a punchline with
• 12:14
  SPEAKER_01: that same rhythm, it's just seen as rude.
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, I see.
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_01: The pacing is entirely wrong for an English ear.
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_00: The cultural timing just evaporates.
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
• 12:23
  SPEAKER_01: On the other hand,
• 12:23
  SPEAKER_01: there are parts of my personality that became incredibly independent and assertive
• 12:27
  SPEAKER_01: in English.
• 12:28
  SPEAKER_00: Why do you think that is?
• 12:29
  SPEAKER_01: Largely because I was learning and using it in academic and professional settings
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_01: where I had to advocate for myself.
• 12:35
  SPEAKER_00: That makes total sense.
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_01: And then there are massive foundational parts of my adult life,
• 12:40
  SPEAKER_01: my career,
• 12:41
  SPEAKER_01: my marriage,
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_01: the entire profound experience of becoming a mother that were built entirely
• 12:45
  SPEAKER_01: in Italian.
• 12:46
  SPEAKER_00: Wait, so your intermaternal monologue, the voice you use to soothe or discipline your child.
• 12:50
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 12:51
  SPEAKER_00: That's all Italian.
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 12:53
  SPEAKER_01: My deepest emotional relationship with my child is framed in Italian.
• 12:56
  SPEAKER_00: That is so beautiful.
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_01: So they are not different women.
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_01: They are all me.
• 13:01
  SPEAKER_01: They are just different facets of my identity that have been unlocked
• 13:04
  SPEAKER_01: by different linguistic keys.
• 13:06
  SPEAKER_00: But doesn't that create a profound sense of being scattered?
• 13:10
  SPEAKER_00: If your humor lives in Brazil,
• 13:11
  SPEAKER_00: your assertiveness lives in English,
• 13:13
  SPEAKER_00: and your motherhood lives in Italy,
• 13:15
  SPEAKER_00: is there any one place where you feel entirely, completely whole?
• 13:19
  SPEAKER_01: That is the real vulnerability of this whole experience.
• 13:22
  SPEAKER_01: Because the funny and honestly somewhat heartbreaking thing is,
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_01: after almost 20 years abroad,
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not even completely safe in my native Portuguese anymore.
• 13:31
  SPEAKER_00: You're kidding.
• 13:32
  SPEAKER_00: Even your mother tongue is shifting.
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_00: How does that even happen?
• 13:35
  SPEAKER_01: It sneaks up on you.
• 13:37
  SPEAKER_01: I will be on the phone speaking to my family back in Brazil and
• 13:40
  SPEAKER_01: an Italian word will just naturally slip into a Portuguese sentence because it's
• 13:43
  SPEAKER_01: the fastest tab my brain could find.
• 13:45
  SPEAKER_00: Read the tabs again.
• 13:47
  SPEAKER_01: Or my family will point out that the cadence of my accent has changed.
• 13:50
  SPEAKER_01: It's shifted.
• 13:51
  SPEAKER_00: Wow, they can hear it.
• 13:52
  SPEAKER_01: They can.
• 13:52
  SPEAKER_01: When it happens, they laugh and I laugh too.
• 13:55
  SPEAKER_01: But occasionally in the quiet moments afterward,
• 13:57
  SPEAKER_01: I think to myself,
• 13:59
  SPEAKER_01: Where exactly is the language in which I sound completely like myself now?
• 14:03
  SPEAKER_00: This sounds incredibly isolating.
• 14:05
  SPEAKER_00: Does it feel like a loss to you to not have a single linguistic home base?
• 14:09
  SPEAKER_01: Sometimes it does.
• 14:10
  SPEAKER_01: I wonder if there even is a single language left where I sound native to my own soul.
• 14:15
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_01: But I am coming to realize that maybe there isn't one anymore.
• 14:18
  SPEAKER_01: And maybe that's actually OK. Really?
• 14:21
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe parts of me just live in all three now.
• 14:23
  SPEAKER_01: It's not linguistic confusion like I used to fear.
• 14:26
  SPEAKER_01: I think this is simply what 20 years of living between cultures actually sounds like.
• 14:30
  SPEAKER_00: That is such a powerful paradigm shift.
• 14:33
  SPEAKER_00: You aren't losing a native self.
• 14:34
  SPEAKER_00: You just expanded into a remarkably complex multicultural self.
• 14:38
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you.
• 14:39
  SPEAKER_01: I like to think so.
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_00: And that really brings us to the core of this entire journey we've been on today.
• 14:45
  SPEAKER_00: To everyone listening,
• 14:46
  SPEAKER_00: we've explored the exhausting hidden mathematics of translation,
• 14:50
  SPEAKER_00: the tragic erosion of confidence in those unforgiving corporate rooms,
• 14:54
  SPEAKER_00: the sanctuary, the equalizing bridge, and the splintering of your own identity.
• 14:58
  SPEAKER_00: So I have to ask you,
• 14:59
  SPEAKER_00: looking back at all of this,
• 15:00
  SPEAKER_00: the self-editing,
• 15:01
  SPEAKER_00: the lost words,
• 15:01
  SPEAKER_00: the multicultural rooms,
• 15:03
  SPEAKER_00: what has this experience ultimately taught you about confidence and self-trust?
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_01: I've been writing and thinking a lot about confidence lately,
• 15:12
  SPEAKER_01: mostly because I was trying to understand where some of mine went.
• 15:16
  SPEAKER_01: I was looking backward at all those little moments in meetings where I learned
• 15:19
  SPEAKER_01: to question things about myself that I never used to question.
• 15:22
  SPEAKER_01: And I realized language was a huge part of that.
• 15:24
  SPEAKER_00: How so?
• 15:25
  SPEAKER_01: Somewhere along the way,
• 15:26
  SPEAKER_01: I allowed the missing word,
• 15:27
  SPEAKER_01: the accent, the grammatical mistake, that extra second I needed to respond.
• 15:32
  SPEAKER_01: I allowed all of it to become evidence against myself.
• 15:34
  SPEAKER_00: Wow.
• 15:35
  SPEAKER_01: I took something that should have made me feel more capable and somehow let
• 15:39
  SPEAKER_01: the world make me feel less.
• 15:41
  SPEAKER_00: You let their impatience dictate your worth.
• 15:45
  SPEAKER_00: You viewed your accent as a deficit rather than an asset.
• 15:48
  SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
• 15:49
  SPEAKER_01: I viewed my accent as proof that I didn't belong in the conversation.
• 15:53
  SPEAKER_01: But I am finally starting to think I had it entirely backwards.
• 15:56
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 15:57
  SPEAKER_01: I am not less because I speak with an accent.
• 16:00
  SPEAKER_01: I am more because I speak three languages.
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_01: I have lived deeply through all of them.
• 16:05
  SPEAKER_01: They carry different countries, different people, completely different versions of my life.
• 16:09
  SPEAKER_01: My accent isn't evidence that I don't belong.
• 16:11
  SPEAKER_01: It is evidence that I learned exactly how to enter the conversation
• 16:15
  SPEAKER_01: in another language, actually in several.
• 16:17
  SPEAKER_00: So the goal isn't and never should have been to fix the accent to make other people comfortable.
• 16:22
  SPEAKER_01: No, the goal is simply to stop hearing it as evidence of something missing.
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_01: Because an accent isn't evidence that you know less.
• 16:30
  SPEAKER_01: Sometimes it's evidence that you know more than one way to name the world.
• 16:33
  SPEAKER_00: That is profound.
• 16:34
  SPEAKER_00: Knowing more than one way to name the world.
• 16:36
  SPEAKER_01: I know there will still be moments when I forget the word.
• 16:39
  SPEAKER_01: Moments when Portuguese rushes in first and refuses to leave the tab.
• 16:42
  SPEAKER_00: Of course.
• 16:43
  SPEAKER_01: Moments when I begin a story and lose my way somewhere between three different languages.
• 16:48
  SPEAKER_01: But I think I can finally stop turning those moments into harsh judgments about who I am.
• 16:51
  SPEAKER_00: I think you absolutely should.
• 16:53
  SPEAKER_01: Because the woman behind the pause isn't less intelligent.
• 16:56
  SPEAKER_01: She simply has a lot of languages to search through.
• 17:00
  SPEAKER_01: And maybe that is something I should finally stop apologizing for.
• 17:03
  SPEAKER_00: She simply has a lot of languages to search through.
• 17:06
  SPEAKER_00: I cannot think of a more earned, empowering way to reframe that internal experience.
• 17:14
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you so much for being here,
• 17:15
  SPEAKER_00: for leaning into the friction,
• 17:17
  SPEAKER_00: and for sharing the reality of your lived experience with us.
• 17:20
  SPEAKER_00: It has been a true privilege.
• 17:21
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you.
• 17:22
  SPEAKER_01: It has been an absolute joy to dig into this with you.
• 17:25
  SPEAKER_00: And if you're listening to this right now,
• 17:27
  SPEAKER_00: we started this deep dive talking about Gloria from Modern Family screaming
• 17:31
  SPEAKER_00: in frustration because the world couldn't see the full breadth
• 17:34
  SPEAKER_00: of her intelligence hidden behind a language barrier.
• 17:37
  SPEAKER_01: We did.
• 17:38
  SPEAKER_00: We've explored the 50 tabs open in a multilingual mind and how easily we can let
• 17:42
  SPEAKER_00: the impatience of a room chip away at our confidence in tiny pieces.
• 17:48
  SPEAKER_00: But as we wrap up, I want to leave you with a final thought to mull over on your own.
• 17:51
  SPEAKER_01: It's a good one.
• 17:52
  SPEAKER_00: Because whether you speak one language perfectly or juggle five imperfectly,
• 17:56
  SPEAKER_00: we are all constantly navigating different rooms in our lives.
• 18:00
  SPEAKER_00: Corporate rooms, family rooms, social rooms.
• 18:03
  SPEAKER_00: So ask yourself,
• 18:04
  SPEAKER_00: what parts of your own identity or intelligence are you editing down
• 18:07
  SPEAKER_00: or keeping silent just because they don't translate perfectly to
• 18:10
  SPEAKER_00: the room you're currently standing in?
• 18:12
  SPEAKER_00: Until next time, keep diving deep.