Linguistic negotiations

Linguistic negotiations 

I found the words from the chapter ‘Exile’ from  'In Other Words' by Jhumpa Lahiri, lingering in my thoughts. Even as I read it my mind was running ahead of me in a parallel universe that houses my own experiences. I feel total empathy  for her estrangement with her mother tongue, Bengali and her comment that her mother tongue feels like a foreign tongue.





Having spent several years in non- Marathi speaking regions, I am reminded of the struggle to keep my mother tongue alive. Trying to keep it flowing for my daughter CC; she may not have yearned for it as she had the resilience and the innocent adaptability of the very young to adopt another language and make it her own with remarkable speed. But for me my mother tongue was the bridge between being a young, bumbling parent and my own happy childhood. Language of course formed a large part of it.

So with enthusiasm I got her CDs of Marathi plays and story books and sang her songs from the language to keep it alive. While in South India, I was saying to a Maharashtrian friend, AB that CC and I speak in Marathi with each other but we have no clue if anyone else will understand what we speak. He laughed and said, - A dialect of Marathi in South India that has 2 speakers – it needs to be documented. Though a jovial and casual remark, it did have a strange ring of truth to it! Over time, it becomes a private language, used in crowded places where we did not need to involve anyone else in our conversation. 

Another friend from Bengaluru, well-travelled, well-read, visited us for a few days. She heard us talking to each other and said – You must miss the language. I can’t imagine staying someplace where I couldn’t speak in Kannada (her mother tongue). I have stayed in the same locality in Bengaluru all my life. I like to travel but I can’t think of long stretches of time without speaking, reading and writing Kannada. 

Having said that, being around other languages and learning them even as you keep learning more of your own mother tongue is enriching in so many ways that I can't imagine it all any other way!


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