Love in Another Language

After we dated for a few months, Miguel told me that when he saw me for the first time he immediately thought, “I hope she’s single and speaks Czech.” Only one was true. 

We’d been given complimentary tickets to a concert from a mutual friend, a classical music promoter in Prague, where I’d been working for five months as a visiting professor. We didn’t know it at the time, but we looked uncannily like our previous partners. This might have explained our immediate connection. Unfortunately, we had little way to describe the attraction. He didn’t speak much English and I spoke little Czech, save what’s needed to order wine or beer.

The night ended late in a pub with two of his friends, none of whom spoke much English. As an expat, I had been accustomed to outings such as this – with abundant beer and Google translate, enough can be communicated to have a very good time. You can learn a lot about a person when his actions are more understandable than his words. Miguel’s kindness and empathy were apparent. We were both music lovers. He was a professional pianist and his emotional intelligence was discernible as we used vocabulary from various languages to critique the concert we’d just seen. Before I left, and with the courage provided by fresh Pilsner, I pointed at him and said, “I know there are a lot of attentive men here, but I like you.” 

When I explained our budding relationship to others, people tended to say the same things. The more polite people asked, “Oh! It’s just like that Colin Firth character in Love Actually!” Others asked if it’s “an Esperanto of broken English, Czech and amorous physicality?” Still others were not so polite. Most were curious about the question my eighty-three-year-old mother posed, “So, how do you communicate with each other, or should I not ask?”

“We’re figuring it out as we go,” was my usual reply. And most of the time we did. But other times I saw my flaws and limitations reflected back at me in a way that would not have been possible had we shared a common verbal language. 

A month into our romance, we sat in a café drinking wine and gazing at each other. We were expressing with our eyes a combination of knowing what the other was thinking, while wishing we could express our thoughts in words. We relied on Google translate “Maybe because of great limitations in our communication, we do not get saturated with too many words and information, do not occupy us so much our brain to analyze everything.” Miguel wrote, showing me his phone. “Our hearts have space and tranquility to understand us.”

He was right. A lack of a common spoken language made every word precious, more valuable, and less negative, because it was difficult to find the exact, right one. I found it much more economical to speak words of kindness and love than to speak about insignificant irritations and annoyances. Positive feelings seemed to exist even without words to describe them, but the minor, negative ones dissipated into the air without the vocabulary to support them. 

We had been together only a few months when I asked Miguel, very slowly so he understood, “Would you like coffee?”  

“Maybe yes,” he replied in English.

“Is that a yes or a no?”

“Maybe yes!” he replied definitively as if I knew what he meant.

But I was aggravated because I had no idea what he wanted. 

And then, just as I was ready to begin to explain in broken English and Czech the differences between “yes,” “no,” and “maybe,” I realized that Miguel used the word “maybe” in exactly the same context that I used it. The flaws I thought I’d conquered were being reflected at me.

For most of my adulthood, I’d been told I wasn’t clear when conveying to other people what I needed. I took the temperature of a room before I spoke, asked everyone at the table if they were getting a second cocktail before I decided if I was going to order another. Indeed, this issue was a focus of marriage therapy before I’d divorced three years prior. “Be direct with putting your needs on the table,” the psychologist suggested to me. “Your husband has trouble understanding the needs of others and you need to be really clear with him.”

I never quite understood people’s annoyances with me as it related to my inability to clearly state “yes” or “no” – to tell them what I needed - but now, after Miguel’s response, I understood. I taught Miguel to say, “no,” firmly, by repeating, “No discussion. That’s all!” His performance was so adorable I made a of video of him saying the words on my phone and sent it to my friends. They reminded me I had never meaningfully said those words myself.

At times, the lessons of love in another language proved to be more literal. Four months after we’d met, Miguel was still confused about pronoun use – it, me, him, her – Czech does not make much use of personal pronouns. The information pronouns typically convey is embedded in other parts of speech.

After I put on a pretty dress for a date, he looked at me with love in his eyes and declared, “I like me!” 

I knew I should correct him, but I didn’t. 

Love isn’t only about loving another person but loving oneself more too. A literal reminder of this suited me just fine. There’s something joyful about looking at someone who loves you shouting, “I like me,” while he looks at you. 

I like me too, I thought. 

Language differences also helped us recognize the temporal fragility of romance.

Our love affair had passed the five-month mark when I asked Miguel whether he bought coffee. “Yes,” he said, “I go to store yesterday.”

“I went to the store yesterday,” I said. “Go is present. Went is past. Will go is future.”

“Please, my love,” he said, “only present. No past, no future.” 

We looked at each other, knowing this conversation wasn’t just about language. Failed past marriages, adult children, an uncertain future on two continents were part of both of our lives. But a lack of ability to conjugate verb tenses reminded us to stay in the present. And for the moment, we did. 

Just as our relationship became serious, it was time for me to return to Boston. I managed to arrange my career so I could work for periods of time in Prague. I took Czech lessons and found the language to be as difficult as everyone said it would be. But I eventually knew enough Czech so that an entire conversation could be easily misunderstood.

After a year of commuting between two continents, I was back in Prague. Miguel and I were walking home from dinner with two of my Czech friends. I would be leaving for Boston in a few days and, because of the impending separation, I felt overly sensitive and emotionally vulnerable. At one point during dinner, Miguel spoke in broken English, giving my male friend advice about how to love a rich, successful woman. They began to speak in Czech and were laughing. I imagined they were talking about previous relationships. 

Perhaps he’s comparing his previous lovers to me, I thought. I was sure I saw a side of him I hadn’t seen before, even though I understood only ten percent of the words he’d used.

As we walked that evening, I attempted to explain why I was irritated by a conversation at dinner that was wholly invented in my mind.

“I no understand,” he said. “No, my love. I only say that different women need different type of love. I no – how you say – ‘yoke’ about you. You are my sophisticated sun…No sophisticated…Bright…You are my bright sun. My joy.”

I looked at him with a combination of gratitude for his heartful words and despair that our language skills were not progressing at the same rate as our relationship. 

 “I spent most of my life married to a man who could understand what I was saying but wasn’t capable of listening to my needs,” I said. “You are capable of knowing exactly what I need but you can’t understand what I am saying. I’m afraid I will compromise and adapt to the situation, like I always do, and will eventually be unhappy,” 

He understood only some of the words but knew what I said was important.

He stopped walking and grabbed my hands. The trams passed us on the street as he tried to get the conversation back on track. 

“Don’t crash my heart.” 

The word he used to describe potential heartache – a crash, not a crack or a break – seemed so violent for the situation it brought me to my senses. I realized I was jealous. Not of a person but of his ability to communicate with others in a way we might never be able to. I was jealous of words.

In that moment, I remembered other times in our relationship when words – carefully chosen, incorrect, unspoken, mispronounced –taught me something about the self I wanted to be. A self who clearly knew and expressed her needs. One who lived in the moment without too much thought of the past and future. One who wasn’t preoccupied with minor issues that need to be stated. One who could say “I like me,” regardless of the image seen in the mirror. 

A shadow passed over me and I wondered if the lessons learned in this relationship would outlast the relationship itself, but I said, “No crash. I promise.” 

We walked home in silence, while I thought how brave an act it is to love in any language.

“Maybe, yes, you like coffee?” he asked as we reached the door.

“Yes,” I said, and I meant yes, and he smiled.

-Ellen Braaten

Ellen Braaten is a child psychologist, a writer, and an Associate Professor at Harvard Medical School. Absent a worldwide pandemic, she divides her time between Boston and Prague, where she is a Visiting Professor at Charles University.