¿Hablas urdu?
by Wajiha Adnan
Recently I’ve been learning Spanish.
I say learning, but it is more me trying to keep up with my daily Duolingo lessons in fear of losing my 16 day streak.
It’s funny though.
When I told my sister I was learning Spanish she laughed at me and asked why I wasn’t learning our native language instead.
I told her that I already mostly knew the language and that Duolingo didn’t have the option for it on the app anyways, but we both knew that it was only half truth.
The real truth is that I am embarrassed.
Embarrassed by the fact that when I speak my own language it sounds foreign in my mouth, the words bounce on my tongue and slip out causing me to mess up the pronunciations.
Embarrassed by the fact that when I speak my tenses are incorrect. I use the wrong words when trying to articulate what I want to say.
Embarrassed by the fact that I can understand the language but I can not speak it, despite having everyone around me for the last 18 years of my life speak it.
Having people around me laugh the moment I try to speak my own language. Their comments on how “funny” I sound when I speak is enough to unmotivate me to even try and speak it.
So instead, I am trying to pick up Spanish.
It’s funny though.
When I try to speak Spanish it sounds foreign in my mouth, the words bounce on my tongue and slip out causing me to mess up the pronunciations.
When I try to speak Spanish my tenses are incorrect. I use the wrong words when trying to articulate what I want to say.
When I try to speak Spanish I mess it up in the same ways that I mess up speaking Urdu. I had the same issues when learning how to speak French throughout primary and secondary school.
It is like there is a fundamental error within me not allowing me to connect within my own culture, let alone with others, like my mouth has been hard-wired to speak English only. That the disconnect from my own culture stems from the linguistic portion of myself and not just the societal portion of myself.
While it is not impossible for me to become fluent in these languages, it would take a lot more work for me to learn it than for my siblings, who seem to have picked it up as if it was innate, within our inherent right as an immigrant to speak our mother tongue.
I dream of being fluent in my own language.
However, a part of me knows that the only way I can become fluent in my own language is if I reconnect with my culture.
That part is what scares me the most.
I am so far away from my own culture, it feels as though if I had to reconnect with it I would have to lose my current identity entirely.
To chip away at parts of myself in order to fit into the mold, to find my place at the table and to fluently, properly speak Urdu and ask my family,
”کیا تم پھر بھی مجھ سے محبت کرتے ہو جب میں تم جیسا کچھ نہیں ہوں؟“
[“Do you still love me even when I am nothing like you?”.]
Wajiha (Jia) Adnan (she/her) is a 20-year-old Canadian-Pakistani artist. Her work incorporates surrealist and gothic themes and aesthetics; embedded with ideas revolving around conformity, belonging, despair, and yearning.