I speak five languages. Dutch is the one I was born into. French came from school, from the age of ten, the way Belgian children learn it as a matter of course. English followed, close enough to Dutch in its Germanic roots that the grammar had a familiar logic. Spanish came later, during a year of study in Spain, slipping into place more easily than it might have because French had already given me the Romanesque structure. German I learned in school, another Germanic language, another set of recognisable patterns.

I have lived in Nepal for years. I understand a great deal of what is said around me. I speak Nepali sometimes, haltingly, reaching for words that do not come easily. The script is different from anything I grew up with. The grammar has no European equivalent to lean on. It sits in a different part of my mind from the languages I learned before it, less embedded, less automatic, less mine.

A few days ago I was at a playground with my daughter. There was a misunderstanding with a local girl over a swing. I was frustrated. I was trying to explain, trying to stay calm, trying to do the right thing by my daughter. I spoke in English.

It did not cross my mind to speak in Nepali.

Not once. Not a single word. The language of the country where I live, the language of the girl I was speaking to, the language that might have changed the entire texture of that exchange, simply was not available to me. It was not a decision. It was not a choice. It was an absence.

I only noticed it afterwards. And when I did, it stayed with me.

The Language Your Nervous System Reaches For When Living Between Cultures

There is something that happens when emotions are involved in communication that does not happen in calm, considered exchanges. The parts of your brain responsible for deliberate thought, for choosing your words carefully, for accessing the information you have built up over years of learning, step back. What comes forward is older. More automatic. More deeply wired.

For most people, that older, more automatic layer speaks the language they grew up in. Not the language they learned most recently. Not the language they use most often in daily life. The language in which they first learned to name what they were feeling. The language in which their earliest emotional experiences were stored.

This is not a failure of fluency. It is not a sign that the other languages are less real or less yours. It is simply how language and emotion are organised in the brain. Emotional states are encoded in the language context in which they were first experienced. When those states are activated again, they reach for the same context.

For me, that context is Dutch. It is the language I cried in as a child, the language I was comforted in, the language in which I first understood what it meant to be angry or frightened or sorry. And so when the frustration rose at the playground, Dutch was there. English was close behind it, familiar enough from decades of use to feel nearly as natural. French, Spanish, German, somewhere further back.

Nepali was not in reach at all.

What This Means for Women Living Between Cultures

This is something that many women who live between cultures recognise when they hear it named, even if they have never quite put it into words before.

You have lived in your adopted country for years. You have learned the language, at least enough to function. You can negotiate the school system, follow a conversation at a social gathering, manage the practical demands of daily life. And yet there are moments, the heated ones, the tender ones, the ones where what you are feeling matters more than what you are saying, when the language of where you are simply does not come.

A difficult conversation with a neighbour. A moment of connection with a local friend that suddenly feels fragile. A disagreement at work where the stakes feel high. An interaction at a playground where your child is upset. In these moments, the language you have built so carefully in your adopted country can feel suddenly inaccessible. Like a room you know exists but cannot find the door to.

And this has consequences. Not dramatic ones, not always. But quiet ones.

It means that some of the most emotionally significant exchanges you have in your adopted country happen in a language that is not the first language of the person you are speaking with. Or in your own first language, which they may not understand at all. Or in a shared third language, like English, which belongs fully to neither of you and carries neither of your emotional registers.

This is one of the hidden costs of living between cultures. Not the language barrier in the practical sense. The emotional layer of language that most people never have to think about because they live their whole lives within a single linguistic world.

The Gap That Living Between Cultures Makes Visible

When I thought about that playground exchange afterwards, I found myself wondering what would have happened if I had said even a few words in Nepali. Not a full explanation. Not a careful argument. Just a few words that signalled: I am here. I am trying. I see you as someone I share a language with, even imperfectly.

I do not know whether it would have changed anything. The misunderstanding had already happened by then. But I suspect it would have changed something. The way the exchange felt, if nothing else. The distance between us.

Language carries more than information. It carries belonging. When you speak to someone in their language, even badly, even haltingly, you are making a gesture that has nothing to do with grammar and everything to do with recognition. You are saying: your world is real to me. I am willing to be awkward in it.

I could not make that gesture in the moment. The emotion had already closed the door.

This is what living between cultures makes visible in a way that living within a single culture does not. The gap between the language you know and the language you can access when it matters. The distance between competence and emotional availability. The way fluency, real fluency, is not just about vocabulary or grammar but about having a language wired into the part of yourself that responds before you think.

That kind of fluency takes a very long time. And for some languages, in some bodies, it may never fully arrive. Not because of lack of effort or lack of care. Because of the depth at which language roots itself.