I work with multilingual professionals. I often talk about how it’s important for us to sound like ourselves in our additional languages too.
But, before I could discover my voice in any other language, I had to discover it in English!
I’m not talking about learning to write or how to express my ideas. I’m talking about the fact that, before being self-employed, I worked for a large government organisation. I wrote texts on behalf of that organisation. I varied them according to the intended audience, but I wasn’t writing as Kirsty! That was my job … until it wasn’t!
Young Kirsty was always writing something – stories, poems, letters, even lesson plans for the games that I was playing 😂 But then this voice needed to develop into an adult, and the adult needed to develop into the voice and face of my business. How do I get my personality across in words? Because if you create some kind of bland generic identity and you’re selling services where people actually work with you, not someone else selling a similar service, it probably won’t work.
I had a private blog for a while too – looking back I think writing for that also helped me to transition from the writing I was doing as communications manager to the writing I want to do now.
It’s also worth looking at whether the version of you that people meet in writing matches up with the one they meet when speaking with you. I once had a big disconnect with this in German – my written German was a fair reflection of my personality, but when I started using it in a business context, I really had to work on my speaking. Because otherwise it was confusing! People could have come to the wrong conclusions about who was writing the emails – that part was really me. But the version who spoke needed to come more in line with my real personality.
But today I’m mainly focusing on our first language. particularly if you are using AI for writing, it can be a jarring discovery for others when what they’re used to reading from you doesn’t match up with who you are in person or on screen. It’s not about being better or worse – just a jarring disconnect of two personalities that don’t really fit together. If what you’re posting feels a bit like a lot of the other content online, people may be drawn to the in-person you much more! But they might never discover that if they aren’t drawn to the text and just keep scrolling.
Each of us makes vocabulary selection choices every day. Words that we like. Words that we choose not to use. Our own style of speaking. This varies from situation to situation, but each of us has our own unique way in which we use language. In our first language, we don’t think about it so much, unles we make conscious decisions about avoiding or no longer using certain words.Most of this happens naturally.
With additional languages, it’s sometimes harder. Someone else or even AI might suggest another way of saying something – but if it isn’t something you would say, it doesn’t represent you very well.
I remember many years ago, someone offered to “”””have a quick look”””” at one of my texts. When she’d finished, it was unrecognisable. The message was the same … kind of … but all traces of me were gone. Now it was her voice. The mistakes were gone, but so was anything that anyone would recognise as me. I couldn’t use it in the end because, even though the language was better, it just felt dishonest. Again, I’m talking about using an additional language, but I think we can run this risk of having texts edited, by someone else or by a machine, to the point where they don’t represent us any more. Then the question is about whether this is really helping us.
This is why it’s so important not to focus entirely on what’s right or wrong. On the best way to say something. It’s tru, some things are wrong and others don’t make sense. It’s best to avoid those where we can. But in terms of what’s best – it’s about finding the right shoes that fit us and feel comfortable.
Nowadays I have a 3-part approach to how people can get to know me:
💻 Through my written content and comments on blogs, social media – then maybe a virtual coffee one-to-one
🎧 Through my audio content on the podcast
🌐 Live at my online networking events for language professionals.
And it’s important to me that all of these versions line up and feel like engaging with the same Kirsty! How about you? Where do you find it hardest to show people who you really are?
More from English with Kirsty
If you’d like more articles like this and other news from English with Kirsty to be delivered straight to your inbox, you can sign up for my newsletter.
