It is hard to find a language more criticised, misunderstood, and occasionally mocked by speakers of other languages than English. Yet it is equally hard to imagine another language that has spread across the world and connected so many nations. English gradually became the language of business, families, distant lands, and increasingly, everyday life. People often complain about English. Too simple, too practical, too strange. The spelling makes little sense, the pronunciation seems to ignore logic, and half the world grumbles about it while still trying to learn it. I understand why. I did not begin learning English for love, literature, or travel. I began because I had no choice. At the time, I was running the Tashkent branch of ComputerLand, an American-Swedish computer training company. Every important programme seemed to speak English. Software manuals were in English. Business websites were in English. Computers, it appeared, had made their choice long before I had made mine. I already spoke several languages and assumed English would simply become one more. I was wrong. After Uzbek, the language of my childhood, Russian, rich and emotional, German, where words obediently sounded much as they looked, and French, soft and poetic, English felt oddly rebellious. The words were short, slippery, and impossible to trust. Letters refused to behave properly. Why write one thing and pronounce another? I tried grammar books. I memorised vocabulary. Progress felt painfully slow. Yet somewhere in the background, another teacher entered my life. Humour. At first, British humour made little sense to me. Nobody explained the joke. People smiled politely while I sat wondering whether something important had just happened. Then everything began to change. Humour began helping me learn. I started watching short comedy series in English. The characters misunderstood each other, mispronounced words, made mistakes, embarrassed themselves, and somehow survived. More than survived — they laughed. Slowly, I realised something liberating: saying things incorrectly could sometimes be funny, even charming. One imperfect sentence would not destroy the world. For the first time, I stopped being afraid of making mistakes. Then one day, someone told me a joke about eleven couples from different countries stranded on a desert island. Each nationality behaved exactly as expected. The Russians somehow found vodka. The Japanese began planning a factory. The Welsh broke into song. The Germans discussed the economy. The English, however, did nothing. Why? Because they had not been introduced. I laughed far too late, after everyone else. But something shifted in me. Suddenly, I understood that English was not simply a language. It carried a culture inside it. Restraint. Distance. Dry humour. Rules that nobody explained aloud. The joke taught me something grammar books never could. Language was not only vocabulary and verbs. It was personality. Years later, after moving to New Zealand, English continued to surprise me. I learned that “not bad” could actually mean excellent. That invitations were sometimes politeness rather than plans. That silence did not necessarily mean coldness. Little by little, English stopped being merely practical. It became the language in which I slowly rebuilt my life. It became the language that brought me to the people who would change my life and become my family. The language in which I dared to imagine new possibilities for myself. Back in Tashkent, I had a dear friend with a little grandson named Ilyashka. At the time, I was preparing to leave for New Zealand. My friend and I spent hours talking about visas, plans, fears, and this distant country where I was about to begin a completely new life. The boy listened. Then one day, he announced: “I want to go to New Desire too!” The adults burst out laughing. He had simply transformed a country he could not yet understand into something warmer and closer to his own imagination. Not New Zealand. New Desire. The name stayed with me. Because, over the years, that is exactly what New Zealand became. A land of new desires. A place where I began again. A place where I learned to write in English, publish stories, write novels, and slowly discover new parts of myself. Eventually, the child's little mistake became the name of my English-language website: New DesireLand, or Land of New Desires. It is more than a website. It is a small literary world I created in this beautiful language, where my stories, essays, travels, and dreams have found a home. Language gives us more than words. Through jokes, misunderstandings, and small accidents, it changes the direction of our lives.
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