My Language Is My Identity

“Whenever you and your sister talk, I love listening to your voices. It’s so different compared to Bengali,” My aunt said, looking over at me and my sister. English wasn’t her first language, so everything she said was in Bengali.

“Really?” I answered back in Bengali, “I never really thought about how different English could sound to someone who doesn’t know it.”

“Yeah, it’s very interesting.”

“For some reason, it wasn’t that weird when I first arrived here, and everyone was speaking just Bengali.”

“You spoke both Bengali and English back in America, right? You must be used to both languages.” She responded truthfully.

Me and my family were visiting Bangladesh for the summer, and we were excited to see all of our family members since most of them didn’t live in America.

It was Ramadan, and that night, we were going to go over to a close family friend’s house to end  our fast. We were all ready to go and were waiting in the living room, for my uncle to get his keys.

“I got them, let’s go.” He said, entering the living room swinging his keys in between his fingers. Once the car arrived at the house, we got out of the car, and stepped into the pouring rain. When there’s a group of pre-teens and little kids in the rain, there will always be screaming, and laughter. That group was us.

One of our aunts greeted us at the door, “Come on guys, hurry, hurry!” She said gesturing us to get inside before we got soaked. In our culture, even if an older woman isn’t related to you by blood, you still call her “aunty”. It’s just how our culture is in Bangladesh, and that’s how it is for Bengalis in America as well.

I walked inside and my stomach instantly grumbled at the aroma of the food.

“Assalamualaikum aunty!” Assalamualaikum means ‘may peace be upon you’ in Arabic, and it’s how Muslims greet each other not only in Bangladesh, but also in America. I hugged her and took off my shoes, leaving them on the shoe rack next to the door.

We all sat around a table, and when it was time to break our fast, we ate.

“Can you guys believe Ramadan is almost over?” One of my uncles asked, looking around the table.

“It has become a routine. The month of Ramadan always goes by quickly.” My older cousin said, and I nodded.

Even though I was born in Bangladesh, and I had lived there for 5 years, I didn’t know how to explain things in Bengali very well. I was not able to reply to my uncle’s question because I didn’t know how to put into words what I was thinking in my head. However, when my cousin replied, it made sense and I understood what she was trying to say.

Other times, when I did try to explain things in Bengali, I would speak Banglish, which is Bengali and English combined. For an example, if I had tried to respond to my uncle, I would have said something like, “Yeah, Ramadan onek fast gece.” (Yeah, Ramadan went by fast) Because I don’t know all of the words in Bengali, I have to also use English words.

Whenever I pronounced a word wrong in Bengali, my family would correct me and teach me the proper way of saying it. I remember once, when I was texting my cousin, he asked me how I was, and I said, “Balo acci” (I’m good). He corrected me and told me it’s “Valo acci”, which is the same meaning, except I didn’t spell it right because in my head, I pronounced it differently.

Most of the time, the English words I used in Bangladesh were simple, so my family there was able to understand it. If my mom was next to me, who is 100% fluent in Bengali, and I didn’t understand what to answer, or what the person was saying to me, I’d look to her for help and she would explain it to me in simpler terms.

When we went shopping in Bangladesh, you would have to negotiate with the store owners about the prices because there wasn’t always a fixed price for an item. We used to go to the mall in a big group consisting of my mom, my aunt (from my mom’s side), my cousins, and my siblings and I. I can only understand Bengali numbers 1-10, but after that it gets confusing, so when my mom used to call out numbers, I would ask her the what that number was in English. Even now, I still do this because I can’t get the hang of numbers.  

Because I stayed in Bangladesh for three months, I ended up learning a lot more Bangla. From my cousins, I learned slang words, and I noticed that I started to use them more.

There is a variation called Chitenga that people from Chittagong (my family) speak. There is also another variation of Bangla called Sadhu Bhasa (which is the general variation that almost everyone speaks). I can speak Sadhu Bhasa, and understand it, however I can understand Chitenga, but can’t speak it.

Now looking back, I’m surprised that I still didn’t learn how to speak Chitenga even though my mom, dad, uncles, aunts, and grandparents all spoke it, along with some of my older cousins. I remember once when I went to the village side of Chittagong, which is where my Grandma lived, everyone spoke Chitenga to me, and I responded in Sadhu Basha. A similar situation happened in America as well, when one of my neighbors was of Bangladeshi descent.

Whenever I speak Bengali to people that aren’t my family, I always feel insecure about it because I there’s a possibility I might mess up at any point. However, I think that taking that trip to Bangladesh in summer ‘11 really allowed me to better my Bengali, and learn more about my language.

Federico Fellini once said, “A different language is a different vision of life.” He is stating that each language gives you another perspective on life. I agree with this because behind every language there are cultures, traditions, and a way of life. The Bangla language really made me who I am today because I learned so much about the type of people we are, and how dedicated we are to our language.