My experiments with trilingualism

Musings on the linguistic abilities of a young Indian

Humans are the only living creatures, that we know of, that can read each other’s minds. Communication is vital to us as a species and played a pivotal role in our ascent to the domination of our planet. However, many life forms communicate with each other through sounds and body language. What makes humans any different? Human languages are so much more complex and fascinating than the primal sounds produced by lions or apes. We use language not only to communicate how we feel, but we also hypothesize, ideate, and debug our ideas through this tool. We write poems and sing songs that are cryptic and are clearly not effective communication methods. We create artificial babies of our own and spend years teaching them our languages, and panic when they actually learn them. Often we undermine the importance of the multi-faceted role that language plays in our lives. We can’t possibly solve the mystery of language without a working theory of the mind and intelligence.

As a disclaimer, much of my knowledge of linguistics and cognitive neuroscience comes from popular science books rather than research papers. So if you are a linguist reading this, I beg your pardon for romanticizing your field of study. I am a physics student by day, and I can provide first-hand accounts of how success in research often corroborates with an expertise in communication; especially in the languages of English and Mathematics. It is well worth our efforts to understand something so deeply woven into our lives, and so it has been for millions of years. In this article, I enumerate some of my peculiar experiences as a pseudo-native speaker of two languages (Tamil and Hindi) and a fluent L2 speaker of English.

One of the mesmerizing things about being brought up in India is the exploding diversity in every aspect of the populace. I currently live in Canada, a country that strives hard to bridge the gap between just the two separate ethnic identities of its citizens; the Anglophones and the Francophones. Compare that to the hundreds of languages and dialects spoken in the subcontinent, and somehow I am convinced that even quantum computing couldn’t solve Indian politics. I learnt to speak Tamil (a Dravidian language spoken in the south of India and in the island of Sri Lanka) at home with my parents and grew up in a Gujarati/Hindi (Indo-Aryan languages that descended from Vulgar Sanskrit) speaking city. I picked up English at school, thanks to the oppressing British imperialists and the greedy American capitalists. I underwent formal training in both Hindi and English but never in Tamil, which is supposed to be my first language.

I think the term ‘pseudo-native’ needs explaining. This scenario is ubiquitous amidst the current generation of Indians, and I don’t think it gets talked about as often as it should be given its absurdity. There is one major difference between European multilingualism and Indian trilingualism; Indians have extremely limited opportunities to undertake higher education in any language other than English, which is foreign to about 99 percent of the population. I do not know if it is because of our deep-seated insecurities and adoration of the colonialists, or the yearning to join the global workforce speaking fluently the lingua franca of the financial and scientific ecosystems. As a result of this system, I am far more comfortable writing this article in formal English than Hindi or Tamil. In fact, I cannot even write in Tamil. I learnt to read Tamil as a hobby during my childhood but never bothered to practice the spellings. Growing up, I had very few friends who spoke Tamil, thus not many opportunities to use, make mistakes in, and improve my language. Much of my exposure to the language probably came from watching Tamil movies at home. Hence, my pronunciation of Tamil is quite messed up. In my defence, it is quite complicated indeed. Take the example of rhotic consonants, it has the alveolar flap (the Hindi ‘r’ as in rupaye with no close English equivalent in RP), the alveolar trill (the rolled ‘r’ characteristic of Italian/Spanish) and the retroflex approximant (the ‘r’ in ‘world’ if you are speaking a rhotic North American accent). Funny aside, the word ‘Tamil’ is usually transcribed with an ‘l’ in the Roman script, whereas the last consonant is actually the retroflex approximant. If we were to call it ‘Tamir’, an American would pronounce it exactly the way a Tamilian would pronounce the word (or should I say, Tamirian?). What’s more, my Tamil sometimes interferes with my Hindi pronunciation. Tamil lacks the aspirated consonants that Hindi has; ‘kha’ and ‘ka’ are the same to a Tamil speaker but for a Hindi speaker they are so different that they get their own symbols in the Nagari script. Sometimes, I forget to aspirate some of these consonants which makes it look like I have a speaking disability in an otherwise fluent pronunciation of the language. I think I inherited the worst of both worlds.

Let’s talk about vocabulary. As far as English is concerned, I have an adequate formal vocabulary. However, because of the role of English in my life, I am too ‘stiff’ when I speak it. I’d refrain from making grammatical errors and am very slow in adapting slang vocabulary in my conversations, even if I might use it when writing tweets or creating memes. My knowledge base is largely in English. Whenever I have to communicate an intellectually challenging (or precise) train of thoughts I can only do so in English, with maybe a few Hindi words scattered in if my audience understands the creole language Hinglish. As for Hindi and Tamil, they influence different spheres of my life and hence get prioritized accordingly. I can name family relations in Tamil but get confused in Hindi. I can swear pretty comfortably in Hindi but if I ever tried to swear in Tamil I’d make a fool of myself. Thus, very literally, ‘pseudo-native’.

Why do I consider important putting these trivialities in writing? Again, because I’ve noticed this quite often among others like me in my generation. Why my generation? Well, that can be a little complicated. In the previous two generations that have lived in independent India, a large proportion went through primary schooling in their native languages, thus appropriately qualifying them as ‘native’ speakers of that language in all measures. The proportion of Indian children going to “English-medium” schools keeps on increasing exponentially, what with the globalisation of the Indian economy in 1991 and the demand for an English-speaking workforce. In-country migration intensified with the emergence of urban manufacturing centres, my parents being one of the many who migrated to a completely different culture in pursuit of these new economic opportunities. This lead to the present generation, wandering around as linguistic zombies with less-than-native fluency in two or more languages and formal proficiency in English. If you are an Indian educated in this system, I bet that you can’t translate “A is directly proportional to B” in your first language. On the positive side, this trilingualism trains our brains to think flexibly, and trains our hearts to accept all cultures and languages. On the negative side, it is just plain weird.

Most of this article was pondered upon during my efforts in acquiring yet another language: French, the lingua franca of the place I’m living in right now. Yes, English is enough to get by, but speaking the local language still remains the best way to understand the ways of the people. Trying to form these new connections in my brain made me wonder how I made those in the first place for the three languages I already know. Now if you may, I must return to practising my guttural ‘r’s and nasal syllables.

Au revoir!