And I speak fluent CAT!!!!
I was reading a post by Mariana on Scribbles On The Wall regarding bilingualism, and its importance, and how it affect children too, and felt that it was a topic hugely worth blogging my views on too!
Due to where my parents were brought up, they spoke their mother tongue, Punjabi, the language taught at school, English, and the national language of the country, Swahili, as they were both born in Kenya.
My brother and I grew up with a mish mash of all three, (Pun-gli-hili anyone?!) ne it took us an age to decipher why people outside of our whole family, didn’t understand certain things.., still, it hasn’t hindered our lives.. Enriched more like.
My Mum went to a British boarding school in Kenya. She speaks the Queen’s English. No slang or dropped Haitches for her, EVER! And at home with her mother, and grand mother, and other elders in the family she was fluent on Punjabi. To speak with the natives, she spoke Swahili form a very young age. When the time came for her to continue education, she was sent to the University of Bath, where she lived with a proper English family.
My Pops didn’t go to a posh school. He was at the local school in the nearest town. Yes he learned English, but with a slight pidgin accent, Punjabi was the focal point, a everyone in the family, more or less spoke Punjabi at home. He spoke Swahili fluently, and also some of the other tribal languages, learned from the people who worked on their farm, like Nandi, or Jalu-o. He then went to Mumbai, Bombay still in those days, and spent the years required getting his Dentistry degree. So along with Punjabi, Hindi was in the mix too!
They married, and there was no issue, they both understood what each other was saying, they had the same three languages in common. They moved to England, and settled in fine, there was no issue, both spoke the lingo, my mum actually spoke better than some English people! Slowly other members of our family moved over too. Some were there before my parents. Then I was born.
It became an unspoken rule that you were to speak Punjabi to your children at home, so they didn’t forget their roots. And my parents did that. To the extent that I hadn’t got an awful lot of English when I was 3, starting nursery. A friend who I studied with from 3-18 years remembers my first day. She says that she came up to me and said “Hello!”, and I answered back “Hello!”. She asked my name, and I said “Hello!” She enquired about my age, I said “Hello!” So that was a good start eh! Still, I was young, I picked it all up fast and within a couple of weeks, instead of gabbling away constantly in Punjabi, I was now whittering away in English instead!
Some people didn’t like it in the family, that I was speaking less Punjabi, but was it a good or bad thing? I understood what was being said to me, I could answer questions, but my language of choice was English. It was what I spoke every day at school, the language I read and wrote in, the language I watched TV in… ok, yes, once a week we would sit crowded around the VCR and TV watching the grainy copy of the latest Bollywood film, and I understood that enough!
But we socialised with my family enough that I was never going to forget my roots, language or culture. My brother was the same, though he spoke Punjabi less from a young age, With his sports commitments, while I was at functions with mum, Pops was ferrying him around from hockey match to cricket match.
As we grew up, when my parents needed to discuss something not for small ears, they would talk in Swahili, as my brother and I didn’t really understand much of that… a few words, the basics, but nothing more, after all we didn’t really need to!
I learned traditional songs and dances, the more modern stuff, I even started Punjabi classes with an older sister in law of mine, but after starting to master the alphabet, we went on holiday, and I never carried it on, so I forgot the reading/writing aspect of Gurmukhi, the name of the Punjabi script.
At school there were no Indians around until I was at least 11 so within school confines I was always going to speak English. But when I went to university, there was a huge, diverse community, and I quickly became firm friends with many other Punjabi folk, like me. It was great being with so many others ‘like me’ who weren’t related to me! I relished in the fact that I could speak my ‘home lingo’ with others and it felt pretty cool, actually!
Then I hit a brick wall. I was chatting away to a good friend, who always laughed at how I spoke, but in a good way… Punjabi is quite a gruff language, but in my family, and for most Kenyan-origin Punjabi families, our accent is quite soft, it almost has an Urdu lilt to it, which has a grace of its own. It sounds more polite. She said to me “Your Punjabi is so meet-hi, its not like mine! When I speak I speak “chappehr marke!” Loosely translated she said I speak sweetly, she speaks like she is giving someone a slap around the face! Ok, I could cope with that.
One day I asked for the ‘pasi’, she said “What?” I said the “pasi”. She had not a clue what I was on about. I said “The Iron!” And she was like, that’s not how you say iron! Its “Press, or istri!”. Huh??! But this is what we called an iron at home!
I called mum, and it all fell into place! I wasn’t speaking Punjabi, all my life we had, in our family spoken Pun-gli-hili! A mix of Punjabi, English and Swahili! She explained that so many words that I used, like kisu (knife) was Chaku in Punjabi, and boga(vegetable curry) was sabji in Punjabi, ghasia (waste/garbage) was koora in Punjabi! So all this time I had probably been right royally confusing my friends on campus with some words as I really wasn’t speaking the right language! We had mixed a lot of Swahili in there, as that was whet everyone did in Kenya, and as the whole family did it, we were none the wiser!
My cousin then told me a funny story from when she got married. She married into a family from India, no Kenya connections whatsoever! It is traditional for the bride to have to get dressed up, for a few weeks after the wedding, and sit there, all dolled up, for the boys side family and friend to come, and gawp at her. One morning, her mother in law told her to get things ready, the Koorey waley were coming that day. She obediently got dressed, with her new clothes and finery on, and sat down waiting. Evening came and she wondered why no one had come. Her mother in law asked her if the Koorey waley had been. She said that no, no one had turned up to visit. “Silly girl!” her mother in law exclaimed! “The Koorey waley are the rubbish men, come to collect the garbage! Not some visitors!”
See I wasn’t the only one then! but it does work both ways. I remember speaking to my cousin’s wife, and she came from a full on Indian Punjabi family into our mish mash East African Punjabi family. She would be asked to get things, or do things that she didn’t understand, and it took an age for everyone to remember that, of course, she wouldn’t understand half of the vocabulary we use!
I married into a Full Indian family, but my Hubby, like me, was born here, so we both speak English, like a native! His parents speak Punjabi mostly, at home, and I speak Punjabi to them… real Punjabi, not Pun-gli-hili! Though I have explained the differences, and they laugh, and find it so funny, but its an education for them too!
So to my children… What do I teach them? It is natural instinct for me and Hubby Dearest to speak English, first and foremost to them, which we do, and they are totally fluent, never have been anything but. My in-laws speak Punjabi to them, my parents speak a mix of English, and Punjabi to them. I add bits of Swahili in there, but I let them know its not Punjabi in advance! I am constantly being asked if I would send my children to Punjabi school on the weekend, to learn the read and write the language too. They understand it, and are starting to try and reply back in it, but the reading and writing is another matter. Its a big commitment, almost 2 hours a day Saturday and Sunday…when would they get to be kids??
I figure that I know more than most about my culture and religion through my parents teaching me, and my own thirst for knowledge. I speak and understand Punjabi more fluently than a lot of people who went to Punjabi school. It hasn’t hurt me, not knowing how to read and write it. So maybe that will be fine for my two too!
I count myself lucky actually, from a young age, exposure to more than one language has made it easier to pick them up, and now I don’t only speak Punjabi, and English. Yes I have a smattering of Swahili, but I can speak Hindi, converse in basic Urdu, and I speak French too! Working with EAL children at school means I have picked up some other language phrases too, in Slovakian, Roma, Polish, Russian, Lithuanian… And don’t forget Cat… I now know Cat too, so I can speak to Sonu Singh! Now don’t go getting me to make a language name up for all that!!!!
I’m happy with my home language – Pun-gli-hili!
