On language: learning it and losing it

I was born into a multilingual household however as a child I could only speak English, knowing only a few scant words of my family’s primary language: Gujarati. I learnt Gujarati at 13-years-old through spending a summer talking to my elderly aunts and uncles in various cities in Canada and America. Twenty years later, I can still understand it almost perfectly. Although I now find it difficult to form anything but the simplest of sentences. In contrast to the author of a recent Gal-Dem piece which inspired me to write this, I always wanted to be fluent in one of my family’s many languages - in part so that I could communicate more fully with my older aunts and grandmother particularly when they shared their stories of 'back home’.

My family also speak Swahili as they were born and grew up in Uganda, East Africa. This acted as a secret language for my parents, and their siblings, who would often speak to each other about *that which I will never know* in front of my sister and I when we were growing up. My parents always looked like they were up to something when they spoke in Swahili although that was probably my childhood imagination running away with itself. However, secrets revealed to me by my mother following my father’s death indicate that perhaps I wasn’t so wrong.

I have always been incredibly proud of my parents for their ability to speak so many languages. This was mirrored by my own sense of longing and desire to excel in Gujarati and motivated me to learn as a teenager. Living in North London at the time, I was lucky enough to have no shortage of relatives and family friends living close by to practice with.

After moving out of home at 19, I no longer had the daily practice of talking to my parents and listening to them speak to each other. At first slowly and then quickly, I lost the ability to reply in more than a few words at a time.

Now I’m in my thirties, I’m living in Hamburg and attempting to learn German. And yes I do feel conflicted. All this time and energy I’m dedicating to learning German could be invested in learning my own language.

Even if I am unable to communicate with great fluency, Gujarati will always be my language. I have a deep and unrelenting connection to the language, to me it represents everything that home is. When I hear Gujarati I am at home, even if it’s just a snippet of random conversation in the street, I am back sat at my aunties feet listening to their stories of Kampala, of their school days, of my father, I am in the kitchen with my mother watching as she creates all manner of delicious savory Indian treats.

However, there is a particular loss that I feel for a language which is mine by birthright but which I did not learn enough of as a child in order for it to leave its stain indelibly in my mouth. My relationship with English feels almost incidental in comparison to the way I feel about my language.

I doubt I’ll ever get my skills in Gujarati back to where they were when I was a teenager. There will always be a part of me that aches for that lost sweet Indian tongue of mine. An ache that is soaked in an unabiding hiraeth that every child of immigrants knows so well.