When I moved to the UK last year, aged 24, the first thing I noticed was that I understood every word strangers spoke to me.
I didn’t have to rack my brain for the best word to describe a feeling in English – because I’ve been learning, speaking and thinking in this language my whole life.
You might think this sounds peculiar – but I grew up Chennai, a bustling metropolis in southern India, where the local language is Tamil.
The British Empire is estimated to have taken £9.2trillion from India between the years 1765 to 1938, according to a leading economist. Heavier than the financial loss, a colonial hangover has taken many mother tongues and our heritage away from us.
Speaking English has become a point of pride for many people in my home country.
When guests come over, the kids are inevitably asked to showcase some talent, such as a speech or poetry recital, and doing so in English is considered most impressive.
My parents proudly recall how, by the age of four, I could speak the language fluently, and was able to interact with my cousins visiting us from abroad.
However, when our relatives left and I went back to speaking Tamil, the result was a worrying stutter, as my young brain – overwhelmed by the sudden switch in languages – seemed to have lost vocabulary in both.
India, still holding on to its colonial-style education, is designed to produce colonial elites.
In my private Catholic school, lessons were taught in English and we were encouraged to speak in our former oppressor’s language, rather than our own.
Discouraging children from speaking in any language other than English is common practice in many private schools, and in some schools it’s enforced with fines.
While the language is necessary for social mobility, I worry about the children who are taught to think that English is the better, fairer language and the false sense of entitlement that comes from knowing it.
For someone with college-educated parents, access to English came easily to me, but this isn’t the case for everyone.
It was a given that I would attend a school that taught in this language and spend my summers reading Enid Blyton and Harry Potter.
My childhood was filled with English literature and television, and Western pop culture that didn’t really make sense to an Indian teen like me, as I had no concept of proms or cheerleading.
Still, I sang along to Britney Spears and Lady Gaga, content in my predominantly English-speaking bubble of friends and colleagues. We even made light-hearted jokes about people we referred to as a ‘Peter’ (Tamil slang for someone who shows off their English) – without realising that we too were Peters.
Being forced to speak my coloniser’s language never upset me back then, because I had imbibed the biases of the society I grew up in, equating good English to intelligence and feeling smug about correcting other people’s grammar.
It wasn’t until I started applying to universities abroad, that I started to realise what colonisation had cost me.
One of the requirements for international students is a standardised English test –the IELTS for the UK.
At around £140, it’s an expensive assessment and the result is only valid for two years. International students like me often laugh about the ridiculous notion that we will somehow lose our language skills after this time but grudgingly take the test anyway, sometimes more than once.
It’s patronising and upsetting that I have to prove my fluency in a language that I form all my thoughts in.
On the other hand, I can barely read or write in my native language.
How have I ended up speaking my coloniser’s tongue better than my own? The thought saddens me.
More than being a tool for communication, language is an extension of cultural identity.
It is a bridge to a people’s history and is often lost to the colonial mentality.
As an example, neglecting my mother tongue has cost me an ocean of literature in one of the world’s oldest languages. I’ve missed out on Tamil’s unique history, politics and literature, recorded in its epics, poetry and prose.
For all its faults, English gives an equal footing that is much needed in a country like India, with its many inequalities rooted in caste. It also serves as the common link for people from different parts of the country to communicate in, since the local language differs from state to state.
But it’s a double-edged sword that both levels the playing field while deepening class and caste divisions, due to lack of access.
My English is a product of centuries of brutal colonialism.
Giving English words an entirely different meaning is a small victory over the language. It pleasantly surprises me to learn that words like ‘catamaran’ and ‘cash’ have their etymological roots in Tamil.
It might sound hypocritical, considering I’ve chosen to make a living by writing in English – but while I have nothing but love for the language, I also acknowledge that it isn’t mine.
My native tongue is the language that connected me to my grandmother, for whom I strung together all the Tamil words I knew.
Now far from home, it connects me to Chennai with its colloquialisms, music and cinema that I’m beginning to appreciate.
But to call yourself by an identity and not be in command of it can be a difficult place to be in.
That’s why I am trying to re-learn my native tongue.
Embarrassingly, I sometimes still need subtitles to watch movies spoken in Tamil, but now I pay closer attention to new words I would have casually ignored before and add them to my vocabulary.
I’m slowly finding my way back to a language that is home.
Do you have a story you’d like to share? Get in touch by emailing almara.abgarian@metro.co.uk.
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