A Bilingual
Aashi Giri
“ A different language is a different view of life ” — Federico Fellini
I had spent the last two and a half years of my life in India, my country of origin. While I was scared of how I would survive in the difficult CCE pattern(The education pattern that is used in many Indian schools), little did I wonder about the things I would learn during my stay. I had finally improved my mother tongue, Hindi. I remember that I always loved to speak in Hindi, even though I was terrible at it. I always felt and knew that my opinion and feelings could be better expressed in Hindi. Besides English, this is the language I feel more comfortable in expressing myself. But, I tend to use a mix of Hindi and English when communicating with my parents and my friends.
At home I speak Hinglish ( a mix of Hindi and English). The language that is spoken in Delhi is Hinglish or a similar mash. No one really speaks proper Hindi at all, except when you are actually learning the language or communicating with a Hindi teacher or professor. We have lost “Authentic Hindi” in Delhi due to Delhi’s rich history and the immigrants coming to Delhi from other parts of the country. I think the present mash of language we use in Delhi has a significant part of Punjabi. Punjabi culture is very popular in Delhi. I personally love the language, but I can neither speak it nor understand it. I only know a couple of words, and this has been possible only due to the efforts made my mother. She was brought up in a Punjabi household. मेरे नाना-नानी पंजाबी मे बात करते हैं (my maternal grandparents speak in Punjabi). They speak in Hindi with me, my brother and my cousins, but speak in typical Punjabi when they talk to their relatives. My dad speaks in another variation of Hindi (A North-Indian Dialect) and he has taught me some words because he uses it with his parents and siblings. Apart from a few words, this variation is like Bulgarian to me. I don’t understand a single word that is said in this variation. My dad just speaks to me in Hindi and not in this variation. My mom tries to teach me Punjabi only when she suddenly thinks I need to learn it.
So, I guess you could imagine my situation in any family gathering on both sides of my family. Whenever something serious is said I find it funny for some reason. Whenever something funny is said, I’m the only one in the room who doesn’t understand the joke. The only reason for this is that I was not raised there and spent most of my childhood in different countries due to the transferable job of my dad who is a diplomat. Hence, I am bound to be confused. Luckily, the situation at school was different. My friends taught me some new words and phrases that would be useful for me during my stay in India. They also took the responsibility of improving my Hindi. We had also invented our own secret language, Hinglish version 2.0
Now, that I have described the languages I speak, I am going to explain their importance in my life. I only use English with foreigners and friends who don’t understand Hindi. English for me is more of an academic language than a mother tongue, though I have learned it since childhood. It is for me completely a lingua franca. Hindi is a lanuage that I use to talk with my family. Hindi has more words for things and people than English does. I have already used an example in this essay. In Hindi, there are specific words for things such as relations. I guess I’m likely to have a more deep understanding of relations and family than a native English speaker will. We have more words to describe emotions and feelings. Hindi makes up a large portion of my real self…the me that only my family and my Indian friends know of. I personally think I am a fun person in Hindi. Hinglish, on the other hand is extremely important for socialising and social media. We don’t even use devanagri( official script for writing Hindi alphabets)script in it, instead we use Latin. Lately, I have started using Hinglish a lot with my family, friends and relatives. I would start in Hindi, put in some phrases or words to emphasize my point in English and then switch back to Hindi. Being a bilingual or a multilingual has many advantages and one important advantage, in my opinion, is that you have more languages to express your opinion, feelings and arguments in, jise samne vale ko aur acche se samajh aae, aapki bhavnaye aur aapka opinion.( so that your listener can understand your emotions and your opinions better)