Whose Language Is It Anyway? 

Famous Urdu Shaayar (Poet) Nida Fazli writes:

Ye kyā azaab hai sab apne aap meñ gum haiñ	How distressing, everyone is so self-absorbed
Zabāñ milī hai magar ham-zabāñ nahīñ miltā	(that while) a tongue (language) is at hand, we cannot locate (any)one who speaks in the same tongue

Language is the foundation of a culture, holding knowledge amassed through centuries.  It also helps in connecting one context to another.

An eclectic assortment of speakers, young and old, representing natives from Germany, Canada – indigenous Metis and Anishnawbe and others, India, China, Britain, Iran, Egypt, France, Russia recently met in a Talking Circle. We had gathered to talk about our experience with learning a new language and the insights this brought to each of us.

Most of us knew at least one language other than our family/native tongue.  For instance, I was born into a family where my parents (and some of us, kids) used our maadri zubaan (mother tongue) Punjabi to communicate with the elderly folk, Hindi – the lingua franca – for communicating with most people in and outside the home and English – at school and the workplace. 

English was and perhaps still remains an elitist language in India.  I went to English-medium schools and considered myself sufficiently proficient and dare I say, proud to be a class apart!

However, when I started working at an English bank in India/England, it dawned on me that there was more to English than just reading, writing or understanding the language.  At the time, I could not quite place a finger on what this meant. 

When I recently read celebrated Pulitzer Prize Winning author Viet Thanh Nguyen’s book: The Sympathizer, the Eureka moment struck.  The following excerpt, describing the Vietnamese peoples’ sentiments when interacting with the Americans resonated:

“… We ate their food, we watched their movies, we observed their lives and psyche via television and in everyday contact, we learned their language, we observed their subtle cues, we laughed at their jokes, even when made at our expense, we humbly accepted their condescension, we eavesdropped on their conversations in supermarkets and the dentist’s office, and we protected them by not speaking our own language in their presence, which unnerved them.  … We probably did know white people better than they knew themselves, and we certainly knew white people better than they ever knew us.  This sometimes led to doubting ourselves, a state of constant self-guessing, of checking our images in the mirror and wondering if that was really who we were, if that was how white people saw us.  …” 

This is not necessarily a depiction of the “colonized”; a substitution by any peoples/culture/mise-en-cine would possibly give rise to similar emotions among those who find themselves in a minority situation.  For instance, at home we constantly remind people in family and social gatherings to communicate in a language that all people present can participate in, so that Punjabi speakers do not leave out Bangla speakers or vice versa.

Several non-English speakers in our Talking Circle attested to feeling “ignored” or “marginalized” not just because of language, but as a result of not knowing or understanding the underlying cultural contexts.  Communication difficulties also occur when struggling for words to best express themselves in English while “thinking in my own” language.  Now that he is proficient in English, one Mandarin speaker lamented, “English has started to “re-colonize” my mind after 2 years; now I struggle to find the correct word in Mandarin when speaking with my aging parents!”  To commiserate, I mentioned my frustration at identifying an apt word in English when trying to translate Urdu, Hindi and Sufi poetry.

Still, it is noteworthy that globally, people are impressed by another person’s attempts to learn “their” language; equally, they take pride in trying to guess the source of “your accent”.   I am yet to discover an accent-less accent. 

Intent, more than the words being used best express what is being said.  Not so long ago , one took pride on being asked, “You speak very good English (or, whatever other language).  Where did you learn this?”  Today, people get offended and consider this a token of racist behaviour.

On a more positive note, a newly minted grandmother in our Circle shared that her 3-month-old granddaughter needs no language to communicate with the mother.  That the new mum is able to comprehend her child’s tears of joy, hunger, discomfort and contentment absent any training or past experience, left us all speechless!

I conclude with this verse in Urdu, a language that I love and can converse in, but can neither read nor write:

Ab lafz-o-bayaan sab khatm huye	And now All words and stories are done
Ab lafz-o-bayaan ka kaam nahin	Now words and discourses are not needed
Ab ishq hai khud paighaam apna	Now love is itself the essence
Aur ishq ka kuchh paighaam nahin	For there is no other message of love