Tenzin Ngawang

Iron Stream

Talking about myself is really not my thing but I’ll have to write something as my autobiography for my english project which is specifically for my language so here it goes.

Language from my perspective is a way of communicating in one specific community and that can be learned by foreigner. I have always been interested in learning different languages. I pick up languages quicker than everyone because it fascinates me the most. My favorite way to learn languages are to watch TV shows or look at how people speak it.

In my earlier years, I lived in a rural place in northern India with small amount of people. I went to tibetan school and took hindi classes. My family spoke tibetan at all times, my god grandpa would speak heavy tibetan with big tibetan words but I was little so I only knew couple of big words. When I visited my parents in south India during winter vacation, I’d blurt out big tibetan words and my mom would be in awe. I didn’t know a lot of different languages existed.

I remember this one time when I said “thamp tu” meaning like the stamp with blue ink. It was a really hot day like always and it had been a week since my arrival in south india. I was around 5 years old and my mom just got home from her shop. My grandma was working on some paperwork and I picked up a stamp that had our address on it.

“Mommy, how do you have our address on this thamp tu (stamp)” I asked curiously.

“awww my baby said “thamp tu”! I’ve to call your dad. He’s going to be so proud of you!” my mom replied in awe. I was pretty surprised to see her so proud of me. I overheard my mom talking to my grandma saying something about being happy that I got into the tibetan school in Dharamsala. Also that she sees the improvement in me already and that it’ll be good for my future etc. I wanted to learn more and more new words in tibetan when I went back to my school in the spring. All my teachers were pretty surprised at how well I was doing in every classes. Then during my 6th grade, I had to take hindi classes. I had the most strict teacher in my whole entire life. She’d hit us with broom if we failed our quizzes. In India, teachers were allowed to hit their students. The whole hitting part made me want to pass all the quizzes and it actually helped me a lot in learning hindi even though I speak it already. I learned hindi just by living in India of how people talk, for example, in a store, you’d want to ask can I get this? or how much it is? etc. Basically wherever you live, you’ll catch up with the language pretty quickly.

One day, I got home and my god grandpa told me that my dad fled to United States and I wondered how would he manage to speak english when he only had a 5th grade level of knowledge. He is a smart man but, he knew only few words in english back then. I later learned that he went to my uncle’s first and my uncle was like the eye to his body. He taught everything he needed to know.

I started learning the full english in 7th grade. Meaning I already learned alphabets and everything in 3rd or 4th grade but we were finally starting to learn meanings to passages and or paragraphs of english essays. During my 7th grade, I flew here, in US. I had to 4 months till I can join school because we arrived in may. In June, american students were suppose to have summer vacation and there was no point in going to school for a month. My siblings and I started watching TV shows to catch up with the language because my siblings were even worse with English because they hadn’t started learning english yet in India. Then during september when school started, I could easily understand what people were saying when they asked questions. I didn’t have a rough first day in middle school like every book I read said. I even made couple friends.