Reading Into Everything.

What It’s Like to Lose Your First Language

culture

What It’s Like to Lose Your First Language

Trying to understand Sinhala now feels like flexing a phantom limb

Ghost Language

Art and words by Hasanthika Sirisena

A year and a half after my mother's death, I was driving home with my father when he suddenly spoke to me in Sinhala.

"Api...gethera...katha...karana...therenne"

"What?"

My father hadn't spoken to me in my native language since I was six years old, and I always thought he was disappointed in me or that he'd forgotten I once spoke it.

I think this was some sort of test. Maybe because I was surprised, or maybe because I was also embarrassed, it took me too long to understand what he was saying.

When I was six, my English teacher asked my parents to stop speaking to me in my first language.
[Picture of Hasanthika as a six-year-old]
Teacher, offscreen:"Well, Mrs. Sirisena, she's very quiet in class."

The writer A.M. Dell'oso in her story "English as a Sekon Langwidge" writes about what it was like at the time: "The assimilation... was a savage process which forced us to prove between the brutalities of the useful and the useless." Useful: English, French, Spanish, Italian, Arabic, Russian (until 1990), Mandarin Chinese. Useless: Almost all of the 6,492 other languages spoken in the world.

My mother still sometimes spoke to me in Sinhala. Even though I understood I wouldn't speak it. This hurt her most when strangers asked why she hadn't taught me.
Hasanthika's mother, offscreen: "Oyaa thawma laesthi naethe?"
Hasanthika, as a preteen: "I'm ready!"
[Next panel]
A woman with long dark hair: "She speaks only one language?"
A man in an orange robe: "It is her mother tongue?"
A man in a polo shirt: "My kids speak three languages fluently."

After my mother's death, I streamed Sinhala movies to hear the language though I didn't understand what they were saying.

Sometimes I dream in Sinhala, but I don't know if what people are saying really makes sense. When I focus, I can hear the sound of the words in my head, but I stumble when I try to speak. It's strangely painful like a phantom limb.

Scientists say there is a process to how you lose a language. It's called first language attrition. First you lose the words. Then you lose the grammar. Last, you lose the sound. But scientists don't believe the language is completely lost.

A process like hypnosis, for example, might be used to help recall.

Stop! I don't want my first language back.

W.S. Merwin has a poem called "Losing a Language." It's not about losing your first language. It's an older artist talking to a younger artist. It's a curmudgeonly poem, but I understand it. I understand the anger and the disappointment Merwin feels. "Many of the things the words were about / no longer exist" "The children will not repeat / the phrases their parents speak"

My remaining family and my friends don't speak Sinhala. Learning it now will only remind me that I cannot speak it to my mother and that my father, who had a stroke four years ago, cannot comprehend what I am saying. The language belongs now to a person I might have been.

And, when my father passes, I'll have lost the last reason to remember.

[Portraits of Hasanthika as a baby with her parents, labeled Amma (mother) and Thatha (father)]

Read Next

Dear Hollywood, Please Adapt These New Books

Because we're all bored of remakes and sequels

Aug 14 - Adam Vitcavage Read

More Like This

Graphic Narrative

My Family History Isn’t the Ming Dynasty

"Family Time," a graphic narrative by Kat Y Tang

Oct 10 - Kat Y Tang

Excerpt from "Stone Fruit" by Lee Lai

conversations

The Transformative Joy of A Good Breakup

Lee Lai's graphic novel "Stone Fruit" follows a queer couple as their relationship falls apart

Dec 9 - McKayla Coyle

Art from Let’s Not Talk Anymore by Weng Pixin

conversations

A Graphic Novel About 100 Years of Matrilineal Family History, From South China to Singapore

Weng Pixin on reimagining the lives of five generations of her female ancestors in "Let’s Not Talk Anymore"

Nov 4 - Samantha Cheh