My Relationship With My Mother Language
Bangla and I are Complicated. It’s like the relationship between loving middle-class parents and their isolated teenage daughter. There is a bit of a “gap” or “bridge” in their relationship, and so it feels distant. Deep down I love my language, and I love my culture, but all my interests and preferences and my whole mindset is western due to my upbringing, causing me to feel distant from my culture. It’s the same for my family, and I think that is applicable here because I interrelate the Bangla language with my family.
I interact with my friends and make new acquaintances in English. I listen to English songs, and all the media I watch is in English. I even talk to my younger sister in English, because that’s the language that comes to her (and partially me) naturally. My parents and close extended family are more or less the only people who speak to me in Bangla, and since they were born in a generation where English was less prominent, I associate my mother tongue with them. Hence growing close to my culture and language means growing close to my family, and I’m not the best suited for that, as I have always been a little emotionally distant from my family members. Sometimes I do feel guilty for not being close to my language and history, especially since it’s part of my (national) identity. It makes me feel guilty and slightly embarrassed that my Bangla speaking isn’t as developed as my English. Even though I’m not very devoted to matters like these, I do want to experience the warmth and intimacy of being close with my family and with my language, especially when they both seem so welcoming and tender.
I mainly wish to maintain a healthy but liberating relationship with my familial and cultural backgrounds. Whenever I speak Bangla at home, even if it’s something as minor as “??” (“yes”) or “??” (“what?”), I feel a sense of pride and warmth in being one step closer to my motherland and language than I was before. Bangla as a language has played an important role in forming our history, and speaking it is a gateway to becoming closer to our heritage.
Amaya Hug
Class VIl, Sunbeams School
