Language Fetishism

I love learning foreign languages! It's so much fun. My favorite way of procrastinating. Especially when I discover a new language that I like. I can get so hooked on it that I forget about everything else and spend hours and days doing nothing but listening to it, reading it, and trying to figure out how it works. I also love teaching the languages I already speak. And most of all I love talking about grammar, phonetics or etymology.

Actually, all of the above is a big sexual turn-on for me. Languages are just damn sexy. I think I have a language fetish.

Linguistic polyamory

I'm in love with many languages, each one in its own way.

My newest discovery is Norwegian. It's so interesting! Did you know that there are actually two official written languages in Norway, called Nynorsk and Bokmål, and plenty of different spoken dialects? I didn't know until recently. Before meeting Víkþórr I had never seen or heard any Norwegian. But he introduced it to me and since then I'm having such a big crush on Norwegian. It's fascinating. And VERY sexy.

At the moment I'm learning Høgnorsk, a puristic version of Nynorsk (I am a purist, I can't help it). I definitely want to go live in Norway for a while, to get really good in Norwegian. I find Høgnorsk terribly arousing. Its grammar is hot. When I learn new words I am so happy! And when I succeed in crafting some correct sentences, then it's simple, I just feel like immediately having sex.

I also love Romanian. A few years ago I heard this song by accident on the radio. It's one of those pop songs that I would hardly listen to normally. But when I heard the language, oh my! I was beside myself with joy!

One of my travel projects is to cross the Carpates by foot, so I want to discover Romania anyway. The language will be one additional reason to go.

Many years ago I fell madly in love with Russian, and this never changed. It happened when I watched a movie by Nikita Mikhalkov called Pyat vecherov. I really liked the movie, but most of all, it was the very first time I got to hear some Russian, and that was... love at first sight. Erm, audition.

I feel very passionate about Russian. Somehow I never managed to learn it, but I will, I swear it. And I definitely want to live in Russia for a while too. I'm totally in love with the country, the literature, the people, just everything. And the language of course. Russian is one of the sexiest languages ever. When I hear it, I just melt.

Another extremely sexy language is Icelandic! I haven't heard much of it yet, but what I heard swept me off my feet. A man speaking Icelandic with me in bed would probably make me lose my mind out of sheer ecstasy.

I feel sweetly romantic towards Tibetan. Last year I heard a voice in my head saying "Tibet, music" to me. I didn't know anything about Tibet back then so this was quite surprising! After discovering Tibetan music and listening to those songs, I fell in love with the language too. This love is peaceful though and seems to come more from my heart and less from below my waist. ;-)

My other linguistic projects involve learning Japanese at last, refreshing my rusty Spanish, and improving my English until it's fluent.

English is a pain in the ass. Maybe it's because I'm French, but I have a hard time speaking it. I dislike opening my mouth as wide as if I were trying to swallow a hot potato. It's so totally not elegant. But I love the bitch anyway. Some day I'll end up handcuffing and laying it.

I miss Spanish a lot. Haven't spoken it in about ten years. And I've forgotten almost everything. :-( In school I didn't like it at all, I found it ugly. Later I met people from Ecuador and discovered South American Spanish. That I totally loved.  It's beautiful. It's powerful. It touches my heart. South America is another place I'd like to live in for a while. Especially Argentina, to get to dance some tango argentino. :-)

As for Japanese, it's been a love interest of mine for a long time now. One of those you look at from afar and sigh.

I already speak German and French fluently. We're married. :D I recently discovered that teaching them is exciting though. When I talk about their grammar or history I do feel passionate about them again.

There are unhappy loves, too. I tried to learn Chinese and gave up after a couple months, knowing very well that I'd never be able to speak it with no accent. Same with Arabic, trying to pronounce it is futile. I don't want to learn only the written language in Chinese and Arabic. Both are very beautiful, but this would be like having a relationship without sex. ;-)

Some languages are sexier than others. For example for me personally, Italian isn't sexy. I've been in Italy, I was happy of course when I was able to understand what people said, but I didn't feel in love or excited or anything like that. Italian is nice, but it doesn't arouse me. It's in the friend zone. :p

Why are (some) languages so sexy?

I don't know.

I wish I could explain it, but I can't. Maybe it's the way they sound. Hearing them just turns me on. Or maybe it's the logic their grammar is based on. Or maybe languages just are to me what feet are to others?

Learning foreign languages is very exciting. For me each new language is an additional degree of freedom. I don't think and feel in language A the way I think and feel in language B. So speaking a foreign language is like switching personalities in some way. Some things also can be expressed easily or elegantly in one language and laboriously or heavily in the other one. Juggling between languages allows me greater freedom and is a lot of fun.

Of course there is the communication aspect. Languages enable us to communicate, especially with people who live in a completely different culture. Alone learning their language, even without talking to them, is a way of understanding them better. That's very interesting! I'm fascinated by communication in all its forms, be it spoken language, language of signs, body language, languages of other animals, dancing, sex, telepathy, psychic abilities, electromagnetic waves, music, programming languages, theory of codes, or cryptography.

Languages allow me to play. I love learning about the history of the words I use, playing on their connotations, or playing with linguistic levels. This can be challenging. For example adapting the language level to the content of what you want to say isn't that self-evident when you're not using your mother tongue. Or creating inappropriate word combinations, that's so much fun! For example "Thou shall not utter a shitload of balderdash". XD

I enjoy experimenting with style. There's definitely an aesthetic aspect in speaking a language, be it our mother tongue or some foreign language. How to creatively design the most elegant or beautiful or accurate sentence? Words have a past, an aura and a soul. We have a relationship with each one of them. Some words are cute, lovely, endearing. Others just sound funny, or obnoxious. Others again are scary, they look terrible. Don't you relate to words this way? :-)

And then there's the technical aspect. I guess that is what's really hot. I can't help it, I love grammar. Grammar is so fucking sexy. Learning about the syntax of a language, figuring out how it works, what its most intimate mechanisms are - all that is highly erotic. It totally turns me on to talk about comma rules or about the position of the verb in the sentence. I don't know why. The same way I find Linux sexy or get horny when I prove a mathematical theorem I'm also aroused by the technical aspects of languages.

After all, our primary sexual organ is our brain. So, intellectual masturbation is a valid stimulation. ;-)

I've never had sex with another language fetishist, so I don't know what it would feel like to talk about grammar or in several languages while making love - but I imagine this would be totally hot. :D