To Speak or Not to Speak

"I can understand it but I can’t really speak it"

a line that anybody born and raised in the diaspora would easily recognise. A line I, myself, in our times back in Ghana, would constantly use. The phrase itself was an attempt to cover my tracks and prove I can at least do something; my contribution to the dialogue effort (I even learnt it in my language, to lessen the blow).

But you see, language is such a beautiful, powerful thing. Ever noticed how people’s faces light up when you converse in your home language? When you draw away from the norm of English or French, and towards the language birthed from the land that birthed you? It is such a freeing thing, to converse beyond the surface layer, to share beyond the confines of the language.

And as I'm sure you my readers can attest, things always sound better, sweeter, and funnier in our languages. Telling a joke in English never holds the same weight as it does in your language; there’s a context, a backstory, a home that resonates with everyone who understands it. (that is, if you can understand it). And translating that into English, a language which often falters in allowing us to express what we mean often doesn’t do the story justice.

So the question lies, if communicating in our home language is so beautiful, and vital to empathising with people, why do so many of us miss out on it? Why do many of us find ourselves understanding our native language, our ‘mothertongue’, but cannot progress beyond that? Why is it that many of us, particularly if we were born in a country, not of our origin, or moved during our childhood, cannot bring ourselves to speak the languages our parents spoke?

Recently, I learned it comes down to how we were taught to view the language itself. Frankly speaking, for many of us, we simply weren’t taught to see our language as a means of communication. We were taught to see it as a mode of instruction. We were introduced to it, serenaded with it, even scolded in it (we all know when mothers are truly angry, they resort to what they know best -your government name and your local language) but we were never taught to use it as a tool ourselves.

That is where our limitation began; to always be the receiving end of our language and instructions- grab this, do this, don’t do - but to never learn to respond, creates a lapse in our ability to speak it. We “know” and can recognise all the words of fury, of beckoning, of apologies in our language but we can’t bring ourselves to actually say it.

So many of us grew to see our home languages as one our parents only directed to us, and never the other way around. That's why many of us often feel odd when our native tongue comes out of our mouths. We’re accustomed to hearing how it should sound- from our parents or guardians- but not to how we should say it. There is such a defining distinction there, the former ideal, the latter, practical.

And of course, once formal education begins and English is indoctrinated into the way we view the world, our connection to our heritage and language is irrevocably damaged, if not lost forever. Unfortunately, the spread of English has become so institutionalised into many of our African societies (I mean, my blog is in English and not in my local tongue Akan), that it forces us to be reliant on it and not our native languages. To be seen as educated, to be seen as literate, to survive, we are taught to adopt English as a language -and unfortunately, in the process, to drop that which differed us.

“Ms.April”, a TikToker who recently made headlines for consciously only teaching her child Mandarin, Spanish and not English, said it best; she believed that if her children were introduced to English- an overly dominant language and culture- from the get-go, they would have a temptation to resist their home language. She wanted to instil pride in their language in her daughter before the world determined otherwise. I mean what a visionary; mothers are just so- (read more at… Mother’s May Post)

So I realised, there’s something so deeply powerful and psychological about how we were taught to perceive our language. For instance, in my case, I had grown up in Ghana primarily with my mother and aunty, as my dad travelled often. And for so long, I was immersed in an all-female home, where my native language (Akan Twi) was easily spoken.

And interestingly enough, as I grew older, I began to only see my language as feminine, as solely taught, spoken and shared by women, and rarely ever by men. It had gotten to a point where I interpreted and read Akan in a female voice and never in my own. It felt so foreign, so alien, so disconnected to me. Inevitably, I would come to unlearn this as I met more uncles, grandfathers and my father who reminded me that my language can be used and passed on to men, by men, like myself.

So in the same way, to break this mould, we have to unlearn how we’ve view the language itself. Language is a skill, and for our speech to blossom (à s’épanouir for my francophones out there), it has to be nurtured. So to be comfortable with the words coming through our mouths, we have to do exactly that: we have to let the words come through our mouths. Our tongues must be trained to utter words other than English, just as our brains must be trained to interpret it as it does.

At first, it’ll sound odd and foreign, distant from what we’re used to, no doubt. But eventually, and I say this from experience, with every word uttered, a new barrier of that discomfort is broken, to find a new level of assurance in our language and in who we are.

So join me, as I unearth my native language, to delve beyond simply ‘understanding’ it. The secret? To simply speak. It all begins with a word.