WORDS ON FIRE! CALL THE FIRE ENGIN-GIN!

By SHAGORIKA EASWAR

StatCan figures show that immigration is fuelling a rise in the number of Canadians who speak a language other than English or French according to reports in Global News and CBC News, based on recent census data.

The increase is largely due to a rise in the number of Canadians who report speaking predominantly South Asian languages, including Hindi and Punjabi, Gujarati, or Malayalam, etc.

Roughly one-quarter of the permanent residents who arrived in Canada from May 2016 to December 2020 were born in a South Asian country, and one in five was born in India.

But how many of them (or their children) will retain those languages a few years down the road?

Immigrants tend to bemoan the loss of native tongues, of children losing the dominant language spoken at home in their eagerness to assimilate and belong.

I know, I’ve been there. My husband and I are fluent in four languages with a smattering of words and phrases in many more – enough to get by should we be lost in those regions, let’s say. Our sons, who were fluent in at least two each, now communicate mainly in English. And they know more French than Indian languages.

I blame us for not insisting we speak in “our” languages at home as many parents do, but I will also say we did try. Signed them up for heritage language classes. Made them sit through cringe-worthy Hindi movies. And yet the erosion of language happened.

Mainly because, as a friend famously said, it’s far more efficient to say, “Make your bed. Now. Or else.” Leaving no room for doubt. Convey the same message in another language and you go through the dance of their not “getting” it.

But increasingly, I am learning to see it a little differently. While our kids may not speak our languages the way we speak them, they do so differently, and in doing so, give the languages a new direction.

Languages evolve over time, as every expert says. Immigrants can see it happen in real time, over a couple of generations.

Madhur Anand quotes a song in her book, This Red Line Goes Straight To Your Heart.

Tum roothi raho, main manata rahoon... Except, the critically-acclaimed author, poet and academic, who was born and raised in Canada, translates it to find meaning in the words as she hears them: Tum rooti raho becomes You stay rooted...

In the Candid Life of Meena Dave, Namrata Patel describes a “spinach” paratha. Reading the description I am convinced it is a thepla she is talking about, the ubiquitous Gujarati methi paratha.

Amina Akhtar refers to female househelp as nokari not naukarani, in Kismet.

In Never Trust An Aunty, Maria Qamar used Jeete raho, which is what older people say when blessing younger ones with a long life. But she took a part of the word, jeet, which means victory. And so in her book, it became “Keep winning”.

A friend’s daughter once translated the expression baag-e-bahaar as “run outside”, hearing baag or garden as bhaag or run and bahaar or spring as baahar or outside. Just an extra a or h, and the meaning changes!

The mind is a sense making organ as Gabor Maté says. It makes sense of what it hears or sees and fills in the blanks as it sees fit.

Are these big bloopers or just another way of speaking which then becomes their way? How many of us adopt a cute expression a child used and continue to use it years after they’ve outgrown it?

“Guests are surprised to hear us refer to a television remote as ‘control’ – that’s what our son called it when he was three or four!” a lady I know says with a laugh.

A friend’s son once described jalebis as “those pretzel thingies” and that’s what they’ve remained in our homes since.

Another friend says once, many years ago, a clueless visitor to their home asked for another helping of “yellow chutney”. He was pointing to the bowl of kadhi and she says they all took to calling it that after the giggles subsided.

There are adults who say “fire engin-gin” or “ambluance” because, once upon a time long, long ago, that’s what their kids said.

“Li-berry” is my personal favourite!

Without the back story, all these words would sound just plain wrong to others who speak the language but they make perfect sense to these people.

My friend Pankaj, who also is the one I turn to for translations of words in Urdu ghazals, sent me a link to clip of Indian lyricist and screenwriter Javed Akhtar speaking at a function. In it, Akhtar talks of language being one of the strongest markers of cultural identity. He points to the fact that Oxford and Merriam Webster dictionaries add words every year, and that purists who deem certain words as not originally from their language risk thinning the language down to such a point that nothing much is left. Because, over millennia, all languages have absorbed words from other languages. And sometimes made them uniquely their own.

So what’s so wrong, really, in absorbing words from our children?

Our grandson is showing an interest in learning our languages. Each time we talk, he asks for the Hindi word for different words. He’s also picked up our multilingual sentences. 

When he says, “I got you the dabba with the green moodi for the poori-bhaji”, he’s using three languages in one sentence – dabba is container in Hindi and moodi is lid in Tamil. But dabba comes out like dubber and puri-bhaji is puri-pudgy, and I melt. And that’s what we call these in our home now.

He also tells me that he is teaching his friend Jason Hindi.

“I told him a tree is called pairr!” he says with a big smile.

Imagine Jason’s mom’s face when he refers to a tree as pairr.