mr. nation

Imagine yourself at a dinner party, where everybody speaks English, but many are more comfortable in another language. There are enough people in the room to allow for several conversations to happen simultaneously. If three native speakers of Hindi are engaged in a conversation, should they feel a social obligation to carry on their conversation in English? I'm not sure where I fall on this question. Certainly, this action precludes the possibility that anybody at the table who doesn't speak Hindi can enter the conversation. Practically speaking, is this different from carrying on a conversation about a topic that certain members of the party can't speak to? I think it clearly is-- the feeling of not being able to meaningfully contribute to a conversation is surely different, and less isolating, from the inability to contribute in any way at all. Does the situation change if the majority of people at the table are conversational in Hindi? The sense of alienation for those who do not understand Hindi is stronger, I think. Perhaps we now have a stronger obligation to them, to attempt to carry our conversation on in English. While in this scenario, some may feel less comfortable in English, none will feel truly excluded.

On the other hand, when we convert the conversation to English, it is very likely that the quality of discourse will degrade. The bounds of conversation, in terms of ideas, concepts, and argument, is always constrained by the linguistic abilities of the speakers. One chooses which ideas to express from the range of available ideas, and this range is probably both broader and deeper in one's native tongue. Furthermore, while we make the English speakers more comfortable by switching to English, we are inevitably making the Hindi speakers less comfortable. Given that there are enough people for multiple conversations to be happening, should we really insist that they all happen in the shared language? Is it worth trading the quality of dialogue for a more complete sense of linguistic inclusiveness?

To make matters worse, the dialogue may be crippled because certain ideas do not translate. This has always been a fascinating (and humbling) idea to me. Culture and language are so closely intertwined; anybody who speaks multiple languages and has experienced multiple cultures has surely experienced that there are terms and phrases for which no suitable translation exists. The subtle meanings, implications and subtext in a phrase may be dependent on a cultural understanding generally only held by speakers of the language. This is a fascinating, if unnerving idea. Many areas of knowledge and ways of understanding are inaccessible without learning the relevant language.

At times I take for granted that English is, in some sense, the closest thing to a global language. All around the world, people grow up with the understanding that to be successful in a global sense, learning English is a near-necessity (at least so far). My Hindi and Punjabi, while conversationally adequate, are by no means strong. I'd have trouble carrying on a conversation of any depth in these languages. Despite having studied French and Spanish through school, I can't say that I speak either language very much. I opted out of studying them in college, and told myself that this was the right decision, since "I'm no good at learning languages." When I think about it now, it seems sort of obnoxious; arrogant, even. An luxury afforded to me by the fact that I speak the language of the conquerors. I think about when my mother first moved to Saskatchewan, and she would answer my father's white friends' questions with the word "yes" and a smile, regardless of what the question happened to be. I think about the fact that she overcame this with grace and persistence, and became a fluent speaker of English. She never had the option to decide that she wasn't very good with languages.

I have a friendly banter with Ming, the man who runs my neighborhod laundromat. "Mr Nee-teen!", he'll exclaim, when I walk in every Saturday morning. He is most comfortable speaking Mandarin, but he's made a life for himself here. His happiness and energy in this city of foreign tongues is inspiring to me. Whenever he takes my laundry, he writes down my name on a ticket and hands it to me. When I was first coming in, I'd tell him my name, and he'd write down "Mr. Nitin". Soon, as we began to recognize and know each other, he would take to writing it down without asking. One day he mistakenly wrote "Mr. Natin", and began writing my name this way for a few months. Most recently, this has morphed into "Mr. Nation." I chuckled at the irony the first time I saw this; perhaps I ought to brush up on my foreign language skills.