“Mother tongues, like any other first love, are very hard to forget. They are loyal and forgiving. Even when our speech shrivels and our writing is plagued with errors. Even when our native letters appear foreign and our native sounds ring forsaken. After all, our mother tongues raised us. They knew us when we didn’t know ourselves. They watched us learn to speak, to write, to reason. They taught us to love and to grieve. They showed us the rules and the exceptions. They know they’ll echo within our walls long after we become guests in our own homes: from the way we will combine the new words, to the way we will whisper the old prayers.”

— Marianna Pogosyan, “Why learning a new language is like an illicit love affair”
(via mesogeios)