{UAH} The Changing Times: Navigating the space in between languages

The Changing Times: Navigating the space in between languages

Published on April 11, 2015

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Iryn Tushabe

Like most Immigrants to Canda, I speak English all the time. Even at home with my Canadian-born children and Canadian spouse.

Iryn Tushabe

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I also spoke English way before moving to Canada. In Uganda where I was born and raised, English is the official language. In primary school, if a teacher caught a student speaking their local dialect on school grounds, they were punished. The harshest punishment was being whipped. The easy-going teachers simply made us write essays about the importance of mastering the English language instead.

We were taught that speaking English well would put us at an advantage in the future. We'd do well at job interviews. We'd get well paying jobs. We'd be happy. How could anyone not want that?

Some of the most popular students in my school were the debate club kids. Their English seemed impeccable and they were the envy of many. They carried dictionaries everywhere it was so cool. I was one of them.

I didn't care if I got mediocre grades in most of my other classes as long as I scored top of my class in English. And I often did. At the end of the school year, students from each grade who had the highest marks in English and math had their names read out in front of a school assembly. They were also rewarded with books and other gifts.

My dad bragged to his friends about how great I was at English. The crappy poetry I wrote still hangs framed in my dad's living room.

The advantage my siblings and I had was that at home, we still spoke our own language. We spoke English while consulting with each other about our homework of course, but that was it. Initially I thought it was because Mom spoke very little English. I was wrong.

I later learned that Mom spoke English very well in fact. She just didn't speak it often.

Mom had attended a very prestigious secondary school (high school equivalent) frequented by volunteer missionary nuns from Britain and the United States. Apparently, one of those volunteer Caucasian teachers had told my mom that language was a big part of any people's culture and that English wasn't more important than my mom's language.

Mom had taken that message to heart and only spoke English in formal settings and whenever there was need for it. She wanted us to do the same.

But when I moved to Canada, I was forced to speak English all the time. I still do. Uganda is a country of many dialects about 37 of them.

I regularly run into immigrants from Uganda here in Saskatchewan, but I have never encountered any from my tribe. I speak a few other Ugandan dialects and can often chat monosyllabically with some of them, but it's just not the same.

After I had been living in Canada for about four years, I started to realize I was losing some of my language's vocabulary. It's a revelation that struck me hard, almost instantaneously. It felt like an assault to everything I thought I was. It shocked me to tears.

I was about to graduate from film school and had been working on an experimental film in memory of my late mom. I'd wanted to voice the soundtrack in my language. But when I started to write the script, I drew a blank. It wasn't writer's block either. It was easy enough to write it in English.

What's even worse is my mom had been dead for seven years and I was starting to forget her face, too. What kind of person does that?

Could forgetting bits and pieces of my language have something to do with the blurring image of my mom's face? I wouldn't be surprised.

I've been reading up on something called first language attrition. It's the idea that the simultaneous maintenance of several languages by a bilingual person may result in trade-offs between those languages. I'm definitely a much better English speaker than I was when I arrived in Canada almost eight years ago. But my Rukiga completely sucks now.

It's a shame. I used to be very good at it, too.

Iryn Tushabe can be reached at iryn.tushabe@mjtimes.sk.ca or on twitter@wordsweaver

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Gwokto La'Kitgum

"Even a small dog can piss on a tall Building", Jim Hightower

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