When we struggle with a new language we struggle with our lungs, our tongues, our teeth and our lips. Our hands make shapes in space, we rock backwards and forwards and we become aware that the words we say are part of our body. When we learn a foreign language words become unfamiliar objects in our mouths; sometimes they appear to be as dry as feathers, as heavy as clay, or as sticky as honey. Sometimes our lips feel as if they are encrusted with ice, frozen on the edge of a word ?what is the word I?m looking for? Our mouths and faces contort in an effort to spit out these unfamiliar objects and we sometimes feel strangely disembodied, and sometimes it even feels as if the language is speaking us. On the other hand our own language, the language we are familiar with, seems to hold its own territory, we are at home with our own language, and as we carry our language around with us we carry its territory, it provides us with our own comfort-zone. When we hear our language in translation, however, with all its searching and pauses, the ?place? of our own language seems to lose its ground. (text by Steve Rushton)

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