S T A T E M E N T
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
Wednesday, April 6, 2022 — 7
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TAYLOR SCHOTT
Statement Deputy Editor
Can love overcome language barriers?
KAVYA UPPALAPATI
Statement Columnist
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Can language barriers within
a
relationship
inhibit
true
connection? Popular media begs
to say “no.” The highly acclaimed
“Love Actually” features characters
Jamie and Aurélia — a couple where
the former speaks English and
the latter Portuguese. “The Little
Mermaid” tells the storybook tale of
Prince Eric and Ariel, the mermaid-
turned-human devoid of a voice.
Such media romanticizes the idea of
falling for your one true love despite
being unable to communicate with
one another.
But can love truly surpass the
bounds of language?
While many Hollywood movies
have a wholesome ending at face
value — with love triumphing
over all obstacles — this clean-cut
conclusion is a shallow portrayal
of romantic relationships. Rather
than falling for each other because
of shared conversation and mutual
interests, oftentimes, the characters
pursue physical attributes and
overall aesthetics of the other
person. When watching such movies
I often find myself wondering why
this
less-chatter-more-chemistry
mode of love is glorified. I struggle
to find the romanticism in being
unable to speak to your significant
other.
As someone who grew up not
speaking the same language as my
extended family, I almost see the
beauty in the connection that comes
distinctly with a communication-
less
love.
However,
I
also
acknowledge the sheer struggle
of it, of attempting to relate to and
connect with loved ones while
tripping over mismatched tongues.
The only family I have in the
United States are my parents and
brother, the rest being 8,000 miles
away in India. Physical distance
is isolating enough, but my sheer
inability to speak to older family
members makes it all the worse.
While they barely speak English, I
speak broken Telugu — their native
language. Although I am blessed
with technology like WhatsApp
and
FaceTime
that
facilitates
international calls and texts, these
resources provide little help when
I physically cannot articulate my
thoughts.
Conversations with my extended
family — my grandparents and aunts
and uncles and cousins — hover at a
surface level: “How are you?” “What
are you doing?” “How’s school?”
“What have you done today?”
Anything beyond this designated,
elementary dialogue travels into
unfamiliar territory. If I try to delve
into more intricate sentences, I
will end up jumbling English and
Telugu words together, leaving my
grandparents confused. Or, if I ask
them a question, like “what fun
things did you do today?” I often get
a “yes” or “no” response (despite my
question not having a “yes” or “no”
answer to it).
So, when I spent time with my
grandparents and wanted to indulge
in complex conversation during the
rare occasions in my life when they
came to the U.S. or I visited India,
I need someone else to translate.
Thus, we struggle to develop a
truly genuine understanding of one
another. My grandparents have
all lived such rich lives, raising
families of their own, growing up in
a generation post-colonization and
participating in social movements.
They could provide insight into who
I am and where I come from. Such
perspective is something I want to
learn from; something that seems so
desperately impossible to access.
But however impossible the
process of overcoming a language
barrier may seem, I’ve found that
it can foster a whole new kind of
connection I’d never encountered
before. My grandparents and I have
an intimate relationship because we
know that our love for one another
is unbounded. In some ways, it is a
closer bond than I have with most
people in my life solely because we
are family. Yes, we struggle through
our broken sentences when talking
to each other. Often a conversation
that could have taken five minutes
will end up taking 10 minutes.
But, however frustrating these
moments are — especially when
the conversation ends in a mutual
acceptance of misunderstanding
— the process of giving up is
representative of our determination
to maintain our relationship.
When we sit next to each other
silently after many failed attempts
of conversation, there is a sense of
connection, of mutual hardship.
But, I can’t help but think about
what would be the case if we weren’t
family. If we were simply family
friends instead, would we feel the
same way about each other? Would
we keep trying to talk our way
through broken speech? I think not.
My experience communicating
with my grandparents is unique and
gratifying in some ways, yet it seems
wholly unfavorable in others. When
I see my friends on the phone with
their grandparents, chatting away
as if they were any other family
member or friend, I feel a sting
of envy.
There
is
some
resentment within my
own family as well. My
older
brother
grew
up speaking Telugu,
allowing him to fluently
talk to family members
with ease. While
he feels a sense of
comfort at family
gatherings, I often feel like an alien.
Seeing him effortlessly converse
with family and family friends
makes me feel a constant sense of
inferiority.
People always tell me: “There’s
so much time to learn!” “If you go
to India you’ll pick up Telugu in no
time!” And, yes — this is true that
my Telugu improves when I am
constantly surrounded by family.
But, it is simply too difficult to fully
learn a language after I have already
been trying — and failing — for the
past 18 years.
And, when I would try to speak
in Telugu during family functions, I
would be ridiculed for my American
accent and choppy sentences. All the
while, my family and family friends
would praise my brother for his
charisma and speaking skills. The
more I tried to speak Telugu, the
more I was mocked for it — causing
me to speak less frequently and lose
what little Telugu skills I did have.
Now I inadvertently present myself
as aloof and disinterested during
large family gatherings, which is
something I wish to change.
I
repeatedly
asked
my parents for some
explanation as to why
they never taught me
Telugu like they had
for
my
brother. The answer was always
the same: My brother had a hard
time finding friends in preschool
and early elementary school due to
his limited English abilities, and my
parents didn’t want me to struggle
in the same way. So, they taught
me English as my first language;
but, once I started effectively and
comfortably communicating with
my parents in English, there was no
longer a sense of urgency to learn
Telugu.
I always felt that I would have
rather struggled socially as a toddler
than be unable to speak to my own
family now. But, rather than assume
the offensive, I know that I must also
be sympathetic toward my parents.
As Indian immigrants, it is difficult
enough for them to navigate the
extent to which they assimilate into
their new culture. This difficulty is
compounded when one has
to decide how to raise
their children, teetering
the
line
between one’s home culture and the
culture they’ve immigrated to.
As a first generation American,
I often think about how my own
children will teeter this line.
Truthfully, they will have no need
for me to pass down the language
skills of Telugu; the only people
in my family who cannot speak
English are older members. They
will never have to struggle through
painful, choppy conversations with
their own family. For that I am both
glad and envious.
So
no,
movies
like
“Love
Actually” are wrong in their
depictions of a communication-less
love as being fun, fresh and simple.
This type of love is anything but.
When spring comes
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When spring comes, everything
will be easier, I tell myself. When the
sidewalks are again crowded with
the overhang of returning leaves,
I won’t dread the walk to class,
heading north on State Street and
navigating through the intersection
that smells permanently, but also
sort of deliciously, of pizza and
cigarettes. When I am eating
breakfast to the chorus of birdsong,
I won’t be so irritable, my coffee will
taste better. Maybe, I tell myself,
maybe I’ll finally stop needing to
drink coffee.
I wish I could say that I know by
now not to fall for this plot every
year. But after an especially long
winter, I’m willing to believe almost
anything. Spring, as a concept, is
hope itself.
We’ve all read — or were forced
to read by a surprisingly passionate
high school teacher — “How to
Read Literature Like a Professor”
by Thomas C. Foster. Didactic, a bit
patronizing, the book lends insights
such as these: “For about as long as
anyone’s been writing anything,
the seasons have stood for the same
set of meanings: spring; childhood
and youth, summer; fulfillment and
passion, autumn; decline, middle-
age and tiredness, but also harvest,
winter; old age, resentment and
death.” Foster continues, “We know
these patterns because they’ve been
with us for so long. How long? Very
long.”
I’ll lay this winter’s problem out
flat: if left undisturbed, I can and
will sleep into the deep afternoon.
Most mornings I find it near
impossible to wake up — worse yet is
when I’ve had the requisite amount
of hours needed (seven, it’s been
said), but with a determination that I
can only describe as self-preserving,
I angrily switch all of the alarms
off as they ring, each one its own
annoyingly unique sound: Bulletin.
Sencha. Marimba.
If I need to get up at, say, 7 a.m.,
I will set the first alarm for 6 a.m.
I will then set at least 6 more, in
intervals of 10 minutes, leading up
to 7 a.m. It by no means ends there: I
will set about five more past the top
of that hour to ensure that I get up.
And it’s usually the very last alarm
that does it. To put it simply: If I
need to get up at 7 a.m., I will get up
at 7:30 a.m., and it will take at least
20 alarms.
Rollaway alarm clocks, light
therapy, melatonin tabs taken at
strategic hours; there are many
such solutions to the problem(s) I’m
describing here. Healthline says
there are various reasons one could
always be tired: nutrient deficiencies
(of which it could be iron, riboflavin,
niacin, pantothenic acid, pyridoxine,
folate, vitamin B12, vitamin D,
vitamin C or magnesium), stress,
“certain” medical conditions, dietary
imbalances, too much caffeine,
inadequate
hydration,
obesity,
“certain” medications. I’m drudging
through a sea of ambiguous and
thoroughly
unhelpful
medical
knowledge. So now what?
It’s April, winter’s ugly last leg,
and I’m still as exhausted as I was
when this season started. The
skies overhead are a dull gray, even
duller, it seems, than gray ordinarily
is — nothing promising ahead
except lunch. I loll my head back
existentially. Everybody I know
and like is abroad. I can’t stand the
sympathy theater that professors
put on during this season: “I know,
it’s that time of year, but hey — listen
— I’ll let you out five minutes early.
How’s that?” Oh, the gratitude I
force myself to feel as I step out onto
a marsh that yesterday was a snow-
covered Diag.
And I don’t particularly care
to hear about truth-functional
language, or atomic sentences,
which sound — at the outset —
incredibly interesting, but are in
fact incredibly boring. Everyone
has to be faking it — faking that
they actually understand what the
professor means when he says,
“If a valuation in this row is truth
functional it is not necessarily
true
tautologically
but
using