Language transmission, immigration, and shame

[smmg]

I think one thing that I like about learning Chinese is that it doesn't make me feel as insane as learning Welsh or my heritage languages. I don't have the horrible burden and guilt of not being able to speak it, I can just do it for fun. I don't have any sort of family or personal attachment to it, I don't feel inadequate and shameful for not growing up knowing it. I can just learn it and have fun. I'm also having fun with Welsh and my heritage languages, but there is always this sickening feeling in my chest and in the back of my throat that I should know these. The horrible history of erasure and oppression of these languages is evident to me every time I think or write or just open my mouth and English is the language that comes out most naturally. Not Welsh. Not Cornish. Not Irish. Not Scots. I feel like with minoritised heritage languages, there's a certain pressure (at least in my experience) to get really good at them really fast, as if I have to prove in some way that I'm connected to them. 

I remember someone I knew online years ago who had grown up knowing 5 languages. He was from the Netherlands, and had a Hungarian parent and a French parent who met through Esperanto conventions, and he also learned English at school. So he grew up speaking Dutch, Hungarian, French, Esperanto, and English. And it always makes me think... Why didn't I get that? I'm from Wales, my father is Cornish, and my mother is Scottish and Irish. So why didn't I get to grow up speaking Welsh, Cornish, Irish, and Scots? Why is English my first language? I mean, I know the answer of course. But it makes me realise how children of immigrants of cultures with non-minoritised languages often have access to their heritage languages in a way I never did. Sure, French and Hungarian are minority languages in the Netherlands, but they're not in France and Hungary (well, Esperanto is a different case since it's not attached to a country in that way). But Welsh is very much a minoritised language in Wales, and Cornish in Cornwall, etc. Maybe not every child of immigrants is brought up speaking their parents' languages, or maybe they lose it as they grow up, but my family largely didn't even have access to their own languages theirselves, beyond a few words, in order to pass them on to me (with the exception being my Scots-speaking grandpa, but he still never passed it on). In the case of people from minoritised cultures, they don't even necessarily have the choice of what language to bring their children up in due to centuries of cultural genocide. Who even was the last person in my family to be raised in Cornish?

And I'm not having children, so I can't even break the cycle and bring up my children in their heritage languages. And I do experience guilt over that. Sometimes I wonder why I'm learning my heritage languages if I'll never pass them on, and never contribute to some sort of intergenerational healing in my family. It feels like what I've learned won't outlast me, and won't benefit any of the cultures I care about. I suppose I could teach others. Maybe encourage them to raise their children in those languages.

Comments

[heleninwales]

I wasn't born in Wales, I was born and grew up in Manchester, so English is my native language and I learned Welsh for the love of it and because I live in a Welsh speaking area and don't want to be responsible for contributing to its decline. But learning Welsh as an adult meant that I've been in many classes with Welsh born Welsh people who were denied the language because their parents or grandparents thought their children would "get on in the world" better if they didn't speak it and focused on English. It is so sad because there was a time when it was true, but now being able to speak Welsh is an advantage.