Language Attrition
“Xainab, aap siruf Urdu bolo.” Xainab, speak only in Urdu. Every time I visit my grandparents, the conversation circles back to my Urdu failure. I am told that it is okay to mix the languages, but I must at least try to speak somewhat in Urdu. Despite my best efforts, whenever I open my mouth to try, only a squeak comes out. My grandparents can switch between Urdu and Punjabi flawlessly and can speak relatively good English. My parents can speak Urdu and English perfectly and are pretty good at Punjabi. My brother and I can only speak in English, but we understand Urdu well.
Whenever I visit my family in Pakistan, I greet them with the traditional “Assalamulaikum” Hello and when asked how I am, I say “Meh teek ho, ap kesai ho?” I’m good, how are you? After these two phrases, my Urdu is spent. It’s time to sit quietly and let the adults talk. Most of my family speaks English well, but they all prefer to talk in Urdu with each other. I can follow the conversation, but whenever I am asked to speak, I must pause and think. My parents usually cover for me and continue the conversation, but my embarrassment cannot be hidden.
When I was younger, I barely spoke at all in my pre-school and my parents worried that it was because they spoke in Urdu at home while English was spoken at the school. They switched to speaking in English at home in the hopes of me speaking more at school. Sure enough, I started speaking more, but my parents did not recognize the costs of what they had done. I lost my Urdu speaking skills and would never be able to fully recover them. Looking back, I wonder what would have happened if my parents continued to speak Urdu at home. Some part of me wishes they had. I have a friend with a similar story, except her family continued to speak in their native tongue at home. Now she can speak in English as well as her native language. Perhaps the anxiety over not being the “perfect” American family pushed my parents to switch their language. My Urdu speaking skills no longer mattered as much as my English-speaking ones because the US was our foreseeable future.
When I was 13 years old, my mother, grandmother, and I all went to get our hair done at a salon nearby our house. To fill the awkward silence between the hairdresser and myself, I made small talk with the hairdresser about TV shows, recipes, and other inane subjects. My grandmother, sitting in another chair across the room, saw me giggling with the hairdresser. Later, she told me about seeing me laugh with her, and wondered how she could make me laugh like that.
It sounds rather strange, but I was always with my parents when I met with my grandparents since they lived so far away. I suppose my parents unconsciously acted as a translator between us. To my grandmother, my connection to the US was stronger than my connection to Pakistan.
As I grow up, my connection to Pakistan seems to weaken. My brother and I were born in the US and have never lived in Pakistan. My family and I have no plans of moving back to Pakistan. Our physical distance weakened our connection to Pakistan, and our inability to speak the language only further weakened it.
The evolution of languages in my family represents the flexibility of my family. Over generations, we gain and lose languages. My communication with my grandparents and my extended family is limited by my ability to speak Urdu. Losing a language is more than an inconvenience. It’s a loss of my heritage and culture.
