Language Limitations

Like most Indian families, my family has a Whatsapp group. Everyday, someone or the other sends a forwarded joke in the group for all of us to read. A lot of times, the forwards are in Benagli. I grew up in Delhi and Mumbai and although my Bengali is very fluent, reading and writing has never been my strong suite as I never had to do those things in school and there was little energy to pursue it outside of school. When I was seven or eight years old, my mother asked the caretaker mama of our Kolkata home to get her a Shohoj Path so I could start learning. I only got as far as "Kau, khau, chhoto khoka bole kau khau." Or something like that. Five years in Kolkata taught me to read the Bengali script. However, reading still takes twice as much time than it usually should for me. I am pretty late on responding to forwarded jokes, and I sometimes think maybe my family members misunderstand and think I'm above it.

I have often thought that I should be better at reading and writing Bengali than I am. Language isn't a weak spot for me. I can both express and comprehend well enough, which, by the way, a lot of people can't even if they know how to speak, read and write a specific language. I went to a very English medium school and still won awards for writing fiction in Hindi, a feat that is underestimated by many as people don't understand how obligatory Indian languages become in English medium schools, and how people from non-Hindi speaking families often have their Hindi skills limited to high fluency in speaking. I now have five years in Kolkata under my belt, where reading signboards, notices, and banners on minibuses has familiarized me with the Bengali alphabet. Why the hell does it still take me five minutes to get through a three-paragraph forwarded message?

This actually takes me back to my struggles with another language--Sanskrit. My elder sister had done pretty well with Sanskrit, and my parents said I should start taking it in fifth standard as it was a "scoring subject" and would help me do well in my Board exams. Every time there was a Sanskrit test, the whole class would hold its breath as soon as the teacher announced my marks. Nobody would quite grasp how a student doing well in all other subject could suddenly be failing in Sanskrit, and they feared they would fail as well. Such was my struggle with Sanskrit!

Another disappointment was my stints with Duolingo. I tried to learn Spanish and Norwegian, but the learning curve was too steep, especially when my only exposure to the language was through an app. Watching Skam and eavesdropping on Mexican passsengers on the subway could only do so much.

My mullings over language have lead me to question certain things.

First off, foreign language is often thought of as a skill, and people who can't speak one are advised to "just go online and learn." I now doubt the plausibility of such demands. I did some research, and apparently, most people cannot learn new languages that they are not using on a day-to-day basis, and the reasons behind that are often cognitive (go to Google Scholar and verify this yourself!). I wonder how okay it is to say a forty-year-old from middle America is insufficiently qualified because of being able to speak only one language and he or she should just take some online classes to fix this. On the flipside, I wonder how we can stop imposing languages on people. For example, there have been many accusations in India about how 'main' languages are being imposed on Indian tribes in education systems. However, many tribes have a very small number of people, and even smaller numbers are educators, and an even smaller number is involved in producing educational material, and it is extremely difficult for non-speakers to master these languages and produce educational materials in them. It is easy to criticize people who do the work from the outside, but would you be able to monitor education in a foreign language with a very limited number of translators? It's often a very tricky subject, and there are no easy answers. It could feel like whichever way you go, you lose.

Secondly, I have been thinking about how parents are disappointed when their children don't master the parents' native tongue in places where the language isn't spoken. I can sympathize with the disappointment. The thought of my children speaking in an American accent often freaks me out. I feel as though it would be an extra mile to the already existing generation gap. But are the children really to blame, especially if the parents also criticize where they came from in addition to demanding their children adopt their native culture more and don't put in the effort to immerse their children in the culture?

The root of these difficult questions is the notion that learning languages is easier than it really is. Maybe we should start changing that notion, and then the solutions will start to present themselves. In the meantime, I think I'll send a laughing emoji in response to the Bangla forwarded joke.