Chips vs. fries: I speak English fluently and yet I am always translating

I was order dejeuner o'er the heel counter when I froze because I couldn’t think back how to say “plastic bags.” 

Nylon. 

Poly bag. 

Those were the English words bubbling up because that’s what it's called in Nigeria, where I lived until I moved to Canada in 2022, when I was 29 years old. I knew the correct Canadian vocabulary, but I couldn't recall it at that moment. 

I gestured with my hands to demonstrate the item and the attendant thankfully found the words for me. “Oh, plastic bags?”

It's not always that dramatic. Sometimes it's just a word I use confidently that doesn’t land. I once said something was “in the boot” of my car, and someone had to help me translate it to “trunk” for others to understand. 

In my mind, I hadn't said anything unusual. I'd spoken English — my first language, the language of my education, my career and my everyday thoughts. But the word I reached for and the word they expected were not the same, and in that gap, I became someone who needed help being understood. 

This has made me think about how my experience in Canada is framed — more than I expected — by language.

Food, for instance. How often I have struggled to understand menus or choose food because most of the words are unfamiliar. When people talk about candies and cookies, I have to remind myself that they are talking about sweets and biscuits. Pop or soda are soft drinks. Those french fries are chips. 

Because of these disparities, I often have to stop mid-sentence to translate in my head. Those pauses often cost me the joke or a rhythm that’s key to what I was trying to say. Sometimes, everything gets lost in translation before it even leaves my mouth.

There’s also the issue of Nigerianisms that slip out when I get comfortable. Not long ago, I was talking to a colleague about something at work. I'd sent her an email and wanted to know if she'd seen it, so I said something like, "You saw my email, abi?" 

She paused, some confusion in her eyes. And then answered my question. 

She didn't ask what “abi” meant, but she had heard it and most likely wondered. In Nigeria, that word would have kept things light. A gentle "right?" Here, it created a snag in the conversation. How do I begin to explain that the word is not gibberish? That it does serious work and losing it in casual conversations slows and stumbles me.

I carry these struggles around with me. Like when I stand out as Black in rooms, whether as the only one or one of a few. And when I open my mouth to speak in English — the very thing that should connect me becomes another layer of distance. English is familiar, but it becomes unfamiliar when I speak it. It is mine, yet always requires adjustment.

I felt this need for adjustment during the English test I took as part of my immigration requirements. I had to discuss a made-up concert experience with the interviewer assessing my speaking skills and I sputtered a few times. It felt like driving up a bumpy hill. Part of that was nerves. But most of the nerves came from the pressure to speak English in a non-Nigerian way. And yet, I was discussing concerts — something I'd only ever talked about colloquially. 

Of course, there have been wins in the past four years of living in Canada. When I first started working in my office, conversations happening across the room sounded to me like muffled noise. Parts of those conversations were lost to me because of unfamiliar intonation and pacing. I used to sit with rapt attention, straining to catch snippets. 

These days, however, I wear earphones to block those same conversations because they are crystal clear even when I am lost in something else. Progress like this is important. There is research showing that dialect shapes social perception — that the way we sound can influence how capable or trustworthy we seem.

Dialects also shape identity – it's a marker of who you are and what community you're from.

I think about that often now. Before coming to Canada, I imagined language barriers as something visible and obvious. I did not consider the less visible barrier of speaking English in a way that requires constant adjustment. 

I don’t know if words will always stall in my mouth. Nylon or plastic bag. Boot or trunk. In those pauses, I am reminded that my migration was also across dialects, not just continents. I already had the language. What I did not yet have was the version expected of me. The version through which my belonging can be measured.

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Freelance contributor

Wole Olayinka is a Nigerian-trained lawyer with an MFA in creative writing from the University of British Columbia. He works in tech, alongside a few other things, all to the detriment of a coherent LinkedIn profile.

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