no. 28: c’est toujours la langue, meri jaan

linguistic imperialism, and the respectability tiering of multilingualism

Last week, February 21st, was International Mother Language Day, a UNESCO-recognized Bangladeshi initiative to celebrate linguistic and cultural diversity and multilingualism. I’m excited to write essays today and Friday to explore the meaning and value of language and celebrate the way that familiarity with Hindi has shaped my cultural and identity outlook.

Last summer, I attended a book talk by Ayesha Manazir Siddiqi in DC, truly on a whim – I saw a note for it on Tuesday and decided that I didn’t have too much going on Friday and could manage to put it in my calendar. I got a copy of her book, The Centre, that day, got it signed that evening, and got to reading on Saturday. 

Fiction usually isn’t my genre of choice – I tend to gravitate towards nonfiction books nearly every time I go to a bookstore, and I probably mostly picked this book up because I had attended her talk and was intrigued by it. The description that hooked me – 

This ambitious debut novel tackles South Asian diasporic identity, the politics of language & translation, and cultural appropriation with nuance and care without ever veering pedantic in its messaging or sacrificing accessibility.

So I got to reading. And the book didn’t disappoint – it ended up being one of my favorite books I read in 2023 and reminded me how much I do enjoy some types of fiction deeply. A lot of what I loved about the book was how much was implicit – deep, slightly queer-coded friendships between women of color, exploration of culture and family norms, and questions of what it means to learn and engage in languages. 

It also was one of the first moments I lingered on what an author said in her book talk – and started thinking critically about the way we engage with languages. 

There was this moment in Siddiqi’s talk when she mentioned the choices she made on what to translate in the book and what not to. There are almost full dialogue lines in Urdu in the book, reflecting the language the main character speaks with her family, which aren’t translated at all. And what she mentioned frequently was how those lines just were meant to be understood and fully taken in by people who understood the language and could grasp those lines, rather than broadening the audience by way of translating them to English. 

I was stunned. It was the first time I felt like a book was explicitly written for someone like me, who could understand those lines and didn’t require an English translation to understand Urdu. 

But it got me thinking – how many books do this? 

I read a lot of South Asian fiction – it’s pretty much the only type of fiction I read, and yes, it’s pretty centralized around romcoms. In a lot of them, Hindi, Urdu, Tamil or Punjabi is limited, with a nickname or catchphrase here and there. But it’s rarely full dialogue, and if it is, almost always is translated, or just written in English, to begin with, while noting it was said in the local language. 

But in other romcoms I read, (yes, as you’re figuring out, I read a lot of romcom novels), French and Spanish are rarely translated. I’ve learned full romantic phrases in both languages from books because conversations in those languages are rarely treated like they need to be shifted for a different audience. Even when readers don’t understand them, they’re usually given enough context to figure it out, but the words themselves are honored in the language they (hypothetically) are spoken in. 

And sure, there’s an argument for more people in Western nations, where most of the books I read are published and advertised, speaking those languages, so the likelihood someone understands and/or can figure out what is said in them is high. But on a pure population basis, people speak Hindi and Urdu far more than they speak Spanish, French, or any of the other European romance languages. 

So the implicit message I’ve always taken away is that some things need to be shifted to cater to an audience, while others don’t. The Centre was the first book that broke that paradigm and made me feel like Urdu didn’t need to be translated either because maybe those lines were written for a certain audience that could understand it. That audience, for the first time, included me. 

The book, however, frequently explores a broader trend and theme of how we treat languages and their power. 

I’m sure most people reading this who attended school in the US can remember the points at which we were told to learn other languages in school. For me, my earliest choice was Spanish, which I first started learning in 1st grade in Montessori School. Then it changed and shifted in middle school when I started learning French, which I learned through middle and high school. I took 2 years of Chinese in high school, but had to drop it for scheduling conflicts, and then in college, took Arabic for two years before STEM schedule conflicts ate another lingual opportunity. 

Those have almost always been the languages I put to the forefront of my resume, or talk about in the context of my multilingual education – ones that have been framed as advantageous to learn in the fields I’ve been in, and therefore become critical resume skills to get new jobs. And so frequently, we position European languages as those pivotal languages to learn, ones that stand out if learned well, that are worthy of this deep academic interest, and respect once mastered fluently. 

But what about the languages we neglect to give that same respect to? 

The Centre was the first time I put that into words. In the book, the main character, Anisa, discusses the way that her mother tongue and background skills in Urdu give her something small, the ability to translate and subtitle Bollywood movies, but that learning languages like German and Russian opens up a world of opportunity for her in being a translator – a prestige given to her language skills that Urdu would never give her. The premium we often put in academic spaces on European languages, on which languages are “worthy” of academic respect, which languages “open professional doors”, and which languages should be translated or not send messages about the way we prioritize and believe they hold power. 

And throughout my life, it feels like the short end of the stick has always been my most beloved – Hindi. 

I place Hindi on a pedestal frequently – parade it around and call it the most romantic and beautiful language in the world. But it still says something that I associate with art and beauty, love and poetry, rather than how I associate my knowing French with power. 

It’s telling that so frequently, the languages we are told are the most worthwhile and advantageous to study, are those with histories of oppression. The designation of the colonizer’s tongue to hold more value, worth, and respect than the colonized means that in academic spaces, we constantly prioritize and value a certain type of language study. Classes in French and Spanish still often have the most offerings, and it’s hard to find courses for several languages. There were many years while I was at Hopkins that Hindi courses got canceled, due to a lack of enrollment. 

And even on an interpersonal level, we give a certain type of credibility to certain language skills more than we do to others. I often talk about knowing French with a different kind of pride, or with a different type of implication on my multilingualism, than I talk about Hindi – almost relegating it to being less important because my formal grammar is worse, and because I picked it up through family and media, rather than in formalized study. I rarely work in fields that value certain language skills over others – but the internalized language tiering is still something I’ve so strongly absorbed over the years. 

Why, ultimately, should I give more respect to the knowledge of a European language than I do to my mother tongue? 

Even in a microcosm, we often do this on a regional scale. I’ve so often noticed Hindi gets regarded with a different level of respect than comprehensive knowledge of a regional language, such as Tamil or Telugu. It wasn’t until recently that I started placing the same level of value on learning Tamil, at least spoken, as I historically have on wanting to read and write Hindi. Regional linguistic imperialism is so often just as prevalent as the disparity in respect given to their knowledge and comprehension. 

But the “impressiveness” of each of my language skills is something I feel has already been assigned to me by how society values speaking certain tongues over others. Somehow, the ability to communicate in the workplace, succeed in language classes, or engage in Western culture when I travel started to triumph in being able to communicate with my relatives, comprehend my religious texts, and engage with media that is meant for me. 

My mother often talks about this dream that she has, in which Sanskrit will one day make a comeback and my brother and I will think of her when it does. And maybe it will. But at the end of the day, even her dream and mine are somewhat similar – she finds a meaning in Sanskrit that goes past just the ability to read it, speak it, and write in it. It’s not the question of the language I’m capable of speaking to find respect from others in being able to speak other languages. I couldn’t care less how many people have told me that French will benefit me in my career. But I care about how much value I get in Hindi when I get to speak with my grandparents in it, watch movies and TV shows read books in it, and comprehend religion in it. 

Something is always a little lost in translation. With French, it was the ability to succeed on an assignment and communicate with someone when I studied abroad. With Hindi, it’s a piece of my history, an understanding of an inherent concept in my culture, something that is meant for me but just keeps being missed by not being Indian enough to understand it in the native way it’s intended to be comprehended. 

It’s the language that finds a connection closer to us, that lets me understand my family, myself, my community, and my world, that holds the most value. It’s not just that Hindi is beautiful, and that it’s art and love. It is power, regardless of what my Western education has told me for so many years. 

I’ve lost my chance to aspire to that being the primary goal of gaining proficiency in another language and now can only hope that I eventually find a way to treat Hindi with the same love. I hope my kids won’t fall prey to the same internalized linguistic respectability trap.