The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
Michigan in Color
8 — Wednesday, October 12, 2022
Me and my mother tongue
I don’t speak my mother
tongue. I used to be regretful,
upset and honestly a little bit
ashamed that I never tried very
hard to learn it.
My parents first tried to teach
me when I was a baby. Appar-
ently, I used to flip flop between
Tamil and English, which con-
fused
my
white
preschool
teachers. And I guess my teach-
ers were concerned enough that
they told my parents to only
teach me English at home.
I like to think that my teach-
ers had good intentions, but
deep down, I still hold a lit-
tle bit of resentment towards
their inflexibility in teaching
a bilingual child. In a world of
“what-ifs,” I sometimes imagine
a universe in which speaking
solely Tamil from birth would
have made me feel more secure
in my Tamil identity. I wish that
I had learned earlier that my
American and Tamil identities
aren’t mutually exclusive. I wish
that society didn’t pressure my
parents and other immigrants
to assimilate and sacrifice their
culture to survive in America. I
wish that my teacher didn’t tell
my parents to only speak to me
in English.
In late elementary school,
my parents tried teaching me
my mother tongue again by
sending me to a Tamil school
on Sundays. We would wake
up at 5:30 in the morning and
drive an hour and a half to Ann
Arbor to attend religious and
language classes. Since I was
starting with very little prior
background, I attended a baby
class with 4- and 5-year-olds.
There, the classrooms were
bare, with no furniture and
empty white walls, but I never
felt isolated among the sharp
scolding of our teacher and the
whispers of students. We sat on
the floor, crisscrossing our legs,
studying off of yellowed, torn
workbooks from India. After a
few months, I went from learn-
ing how to count to three to
introducing myself, and before I
knew it, I was piecing together
sentences. Eventually, I was
good enough that when I went
to Sri Lanka, I could talk to the
store owner to ask for a bottle
of soda and converse with my
cousin who didn’t speak Eng-
lish.
Over time, we stopped going;
life got busier, and driving an
hour and a half for a two-hour
class just didn’t seem sustain-
able. Slowly, my Tamil skills
started to fade without practice.
I mean, I can still kind of under-
stand it — I can use my lim-
ited knowledge to put together
thoughts with the help of a few
occasional English words and
exaggerated
hand
gestures.
However, I am far from fluent.
As a member of the Tamil
diaspora that was forced out of
Sri Lanka, the Tamil language
is central to our identity. In lan-
guage lies stories, history and
culture passed through genera-
tions. The survival of the Tamil
language in Sri Lanka particu-
larly represents the persever-
ance of our community through
war and state-sanctioned geno-
cide. Considering the struggles
that my community has over-
come to keep our language and
culture alive, it almost feels
more sacrilegious that I don’t
know how to speak it due to
its vast history and continued
efforts at preservation.
As an adult, I reckon with this
loss. My experience is not dis-
similar to other first-generation
children, who must also now
redefine their cultural heritage
in the absence of their mother
tongues.
In college, without my par-
ents,
I’ve
interrogated
my
relationship with the Tamil
language. I even signed up for
a Tamil class during fresh-
man year but quickly dropped
out when I realized that I was
much further behind my class-
mates. Despite these experi-
ences, by meeting other Desi
peers that don’t speak their
native tongue, I have rediscov-
ered ways to exchange cultures.
I realized that language is not
the only way to build commu-
nity. Instead, I have found other
ways to connect with my Tamil
ethnic identity — through eat-
ing foods like dosa or appam,
going to temple and celebrating
Navratri and Tamil New Year,
learning the history of our com-
munity and sharing it through
MiC. And even though I don’t
speak or even fully understand
Tamil, its rhythmic cadence
gives me comfort.
From a young age, I grew up
listening to my parents speaking
it to each other, my dad playing
the BBC Tamil radio every night
and my Tamil teachers singing
us bhajans. So, when I hear it on
the street or at a party, I feel at
home.
Ultimately, I really hope to
relearn
my
mother
tongue,
but if I don’t, that’s okay. The
sounds of Tamil will always put
me at ease, and maybe I’ve come
to accept that this little com-
fort is enough. In the process of
mourning my mother tongue, I
have redefined what being dia-
sporic Tamil means to me.
MAYA KOGULAN
MiC Columnist
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In the process of mourning
my mother tongue, I have
redefined what being
diasporic Tamil means
to me.
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