I don’t have a mother tongue
By: Marvee Khalid
Tags: Multilingualism, Language Policy, Linguistic Diversity, Punjabi, Inclusion

“I don’t have a mother tongue?!”

I remember being totally horrified when I first realized this about half a year back when I was sitting in my General Linguistics class.

Our professor had just told us that if you don’t know the language of your ancestors, or can’t communicate in it fluently then don’t fool yourself, and go around saying that you have a mother tongue, ‘cause dude you don’t.

You know how they say, one never knows how much a thing means to them until they realize it’s not theirs or is going away. That was me when I found this out. I tried to ask my teacher, what if I learned it now, would it be my mother tongue then? And he said, nah son, it’d still be your second language.

With a strong sense of betrayal lingering at the back of my head, I confronted my parents about this later. And they conveniently ended up putting the entire blame on me, that I was the one ever so ashamed of speaking their mother tongue (in retrospect they weren’t entirely wrong though) — because hello, they talk in Punjabi all time. At home. When they fight. Or are emotional…

Kher, Punjabi, yes, that would’ve been my mother tongue. Unlike my friend sitting next to me sharing my horror that day, whose mother tongue would have been Urdu, my ancestors were the speakers of Punjabi. I reckon that anyone from any regional language speaking family who happened to go to a school with the colonizers’ language as the primary medium of instruction would totally relate when I trail down exactly why I am not fluent enough in the language of my ancestors. And can just ‘understand’ it and not hold a proper conversation in it.

I went to a convent. And among other ridiculous rules you have to follow in a convent in the name of discipline. One of them was not speaking Punjabi in the school premises. I vividly remember, my science teacher pointing out in the morning assembly that she had ‘caught’ some boys speaking Punjabi in full tone. I realize this now how we were actually conditioned to believe that it was somewhat lesser of a language. Something that wasn’t gonna take us somewhere. Because of course, rote-learning some Urdu verses at least got you an easy 80 on your report card.

Heartbroken though I was after this episode, I started to dedicate some time to learn Punjabi. And someone might ask- as some friends did- what’s the point of it? I can understand the language and all. I feel like going back to a universally acknowledged truth to answer this, and that is we can translate words but we cannot translate meaning. That’s something that has always inspired me and was the sole reason for me to be passionate about learning languages because connecting to new people was always something I believed could be achieved best by speaking to them in their own language. Languages hold history, they protect cultures. And when people abandon languages for other languages, they die. Along with the history and culture of their native speakers.

Now before you equate my previous ramble with mere sentimentality and say that ‘Punjabi is not dying’, trust me. It is all not for nothing. I am trying to make a point here.

But for that, first, let’s have a little history revision here, shall we? Y’all remember how Urdu was formed, right? It was a language created by the soldiers, of Turkish, Arab, Persian, and Indian origin for communication. That’s why we also call it the Lashkari Zaban. So, it wasn’t their mother tongue, it was some language those cool dudes with different linguistic experiences had created just to communicate with each other. And any such language, which is created by a bunch of folks from different backgrounds and languages, for the sole purpose of mutual communication by throwing in words from their own language, is called a Pidgin in linguistics. And a Pidgin becomes a Creole when people, pass it on to their children as their native language. And looking around with a surveying eye suggests that, it is what’s happening in Urban Punjab, where people aren’t passing on their ancestral language i.e. Punjabi to their kids, so in turn, Urdu is becoming a Creole there. They may give plenty of reasons for this. Perhaps, they want their kids to know the mainstream language. Perhaps, they don’t want jokes pulled out at them for having weird accents. There’s a lot of room for speculation. Older people themselves have restricted the use of Punjabi language for making humorous remarks from time to time. But in doing so, for whatever reasons they have, they are unknowingly letting go of their heritage and they don’t seem to realize it.

Perhaps, you’ll understand it better if I tell you about the elites and upper-middle-class parents who are not passing on Urdu to their kids for very similar reasons. Where English is becoming a Creole; and the first language of the children.

I don’t know about you but this thought horrifies me when I see those young kids speaking Urdu only when they have to get a message across to their helpers at home. It’s a very troubling idea for me to think that my younger cousins most probably aren’t gonna be able to speak the language of their people when they grow up. They aren’t gonna be able to communicate with all those people who love them, and share the same lineage as them but can’t speak the 'mainstream language’, their parents chose instead of their mother language.

Despite all of this happening before my eyes, I hope against all odds that we don’t throw our generations of kids into an identity crisis like this. Because they’re not going to forgive us if we do, for sure.

One can only wish for some miracle to happen, that takes away all these complexes the colonizers have left behind. And we start not just accepting but celebrating our diverse cultures, and backgrounds and our ability to speak in multiple tongues. It cannot happen unless people change how they perceive these things.

So, I urge you to teach your kids to be super proud of all the things that are a part of your identity and their identity. And you can’t do that without being proud of them yourself. Call people out for making racist remarks, and jokes about ‘wild’ accents. Because even if abandoning your roots and culture for petty reasons is almost always gonna be a veiled act of douchebag-ery no one can stop you from doing, you can always stop people who pollute the world with their racist remarks.

So the next time you see, a Pashtun class fellow getting mocked by a peer for having an accent that shows their history, or a kid acting weird about any teacher’s accented angrezi, don’t stay silent. Tell that douchebag how he hasn’t got an effin’ right to be saying that.

As the world strives to be a more inclusive place, let’s not be the ones to throw away our identity just to be included.

(This piece was written in March 2019)

Illustration credit: Hope McConnell