Monolingual people are not familiar with this kind of issue. The feeling to be a different person depending on the language you speak in the very moment. Is it not that you say the same things just using a different language, different words. Why should it matter which language you use?

Let us turn to Lacan for a moment and his floating of the signified under the signifier. What does this mean in the context of a multilingual world? No word has a fixed meaning, but its meaning is created in the chain of other signifiers, in its context. Can you see the floating chain? A constant movement, never stopping, never turning back to the same point, never being in the same chain, because the very same signifier in a different chain will create a different meaning.

Now, when it comes to two or more languages a person is speaking, we will get more chains. How are the chains connected between each other? Both chains are floating, yes, but floating not in the same way, an abyss will be created in which the signified will plunge.

Take the example from the Italian-German- English relationship of two very common words:

casa/casa – Haus/(Zu-)Hause – house/home

In all three cases the first is the building, the physical realization, while the latter is the idea of a place where I am born/where my family lives/where I feel at ease. In Italian the signifiers of both are the same.

Questa casa è bella. Or: Sono a casa.

In German, the difference can be noticed more as a grammatical realization. The second is realized by the old endings for the dative case and sometimes by the preposition ‘zu’:

Das Haus ist schön. Or: Ich bin zu Hause./Mein Zuhause ist dort.

In English, we can see a different story, two different signifiers.

The house is nice. Or: I go home.

Now, translating from one language to the other or switching from one to another, how can one transcribe the signified from one in the other? It is simply not possible. Again: lost in translation. However, we are talking about the same person. As a result, a part of the person is lost, crashed into the abyss. In one language you are someone, in the other you are someone different.

Another, more complex example. The English saying: You’ve got a point.

German: Da ist was dran.

Italian: Not easy to translate. Hai ragione.

Comparing the three sentences, shifting due to the continuous floating of the signifiers, what do they have in common? Not much. In English, you got something, and that something is a point, a good way to see things, a good idea. In German, no person is involved, it is an impersonal concept, there is something on to it. In Italian, it is more straightforward, you are right. The signifiers had shifted quite a bit and they ended up with nothing left in common, the linguistic abyss.

How do we not get schizophrenic about it?