Victoria Tothill-Brown
“Are you bilingual?”
“Yes.”
“When did you start learning French?”
“I don’t speak French.”
“But you said you were bilingual.”
I have had the above conversation more times than I care to acknowledge. I will never forget the time my high school counsellor, after I told her I wanted to forego the standard French classes to take Japanese, called me a “bad Canadian”. More than 10 years of studying and seven years of my life spent in Japan, I sometimes wonder if there’s space in the Canadian identity for “bad” bilinguals like me who struggle with a lack of national identity.
I will admit that I am a bilingual in the purest sense of the word. I speak two languages: English and Japanese (save for some sacres and enough French to stutter my way through buying a sandwich). I’m also a “bad” language speaker.
From my external appearance, I don’t match the typical image of “bad” language speakers. I’m white, blonde, born and raised in the good bilingual city of Ottawa, and yet the first thing that comes out of my mouth when someone speaks to me in French is, more often than not, Japanese. I don’t claim Japanese identity, but the amount of time I have spent learning the language and living in the country has meant that it makes up a decent chunk of my being. Most “bad” language speakers are visible minorities in neighbourhoods like Burnaby, British Columbia where Chinese-Canadians running for political office are scrutinized for using Mandarin sparingly on their posters aimed at the resident population, made up predominantly of Mandarin-only or limited English immigrants. While I don’t claim to face nearly the same struggles as they do as those are combined with racism and xenophobia, people like me who choose to expand our linguistic identities into languages considered “useless” and “wastes of time”, as I have heard Japanese described, face a different set of questions.
Is something wrong with me? Do I hate my country? Why can’t I just learn the language my place of birth destined me to learn? These are all questions that I’ve asked myself after telling people that I’m bilingual, just not how I should be.
When I first returned to Canada in 2017, I refused to call myself bilingual. It felt like a word that was off limits to describe me where I was living, despite it being my home. Nowadays, the word feels more comfortable in my mouth, though I’m constantly having to explain and defend myself. In my language portrait, my body is dark not because of sadness, but rather a sense of emptiness that comes from being in a country that espouses the joys of multiculturalism, but simultaneously condemns me and others who do not follow the prescribed language path set out for those who choose to make Canada their home. While I have no doubt that my sense of Canadian identity would have formed much more easily had I chosen to learn French first and Japanese as an additional language, my choice to make a “bad” language my second one should not have resulted in me feeling detached from my own homeland, just as no one’s choice not to or lack of ability to learn dominant languages should lead to their own being attacked, regardless of where they live.
Questions!
– Do you know any “bad” bilinguals? Have they mentioned similar issues?
– How do you grapple with your sense of national identity as a bilingual/multilingual?
– Have you ever had to defend your bilingualism to others?
Oy, Victoria! How RIDICULOUS that our Canadian policy of official French-English bilingualism has forced us into this tight sociopoliticolinguistic corner where we have collectively, as a nation, lost sight of the real meaning of the word “bilingual”! And how could anybody think that Japanese, of all languages, is useless or a waste of time? It all just drives home how emotionally charged an area this is. Thanks for starting off our second edition with such a punch! I look forward to your next post…
Whoa, there is a lot going on here and it’s not just about language. You have suffered for your linguistic art (sounds like a song), but why not use those smarts and pluck another language from the candy-box of life? French! It should be easy for someone who has the energy for Japanese.
Coincidentally, I have just booked a flight to Japan for this summer and have glanced at some phrases. It will be a challenge.
Most of what happened during our high school years is no longer worth holding onto once we reach adulthood. We can move to becoming who we aspire to be. I say a learner of Japanese is a language adventurer. And sometimes it’s just good to be bad!
I very much wanted to bring the social part into the linguistics issue! Thank you for your comment, Beatrice.
-Victoria
I think I can somehow sympathize with you as a “bad bilingual” at odds with national identity. My experience was somehow related to past Taiwanese political ideology that is still quite influential among many elderly people even today. Here is a short history of Taiwan-people were educated to be patriotic and anti-communist by Kuomintang, which is a party once led by Chiang Kai Shek and losing the civil war to the communist party in China. Therefore, many people, who are now elderly, had once been instilled such an ideology and influenced by a slogan “消滅萬惡的共匪！保衛民主憲政！反共抗俄！(The slogan could still be seen all over the place in the military bases when I served in one-year mandatory military service)” Such slogan means”Eliminate the evil communists! Defend democratic constitution! Fight against communism and the Soviet Union! When my parents heard that I am interested in learning Russian, they were like”what are you talking about? what is wrong with you learning a “useless and communist language?”To answer your question “do you know any “bad” bilinguals? Have they mentioned similar issues?” I would say it’s me.
Chingheng
My grandmother said a similar thing when she found out I was learning Japanese. To her, the Japanese were still the enemy they were during World War II, which all my grandparents were veterans of, so it took a little bit of convincing to get her to understand that the Japan of the 21st century is quite different than that of the wartime. In the end, she came to accept it and be interested in my travels, so I hope your family will come around as well. Thank you for your story!
-Victoria
I have recently experienced a similar feeling in my own family. My children have spent half of their lives out of Colombia and demonstrate pride and a strong sense of identity when it comes to their bilingualism. However, when facing pragmatic demands in interactions with family via Skype or friends who live here, my daughter in particular has expressed her interest and the need to learn “that kind of Spanish” to not feel left out when we share with family and friends. Her feelings about being bilingual have entered a phase in which she sometimes feels bad about not being able to follow along jokes, expressions and even cultural references that she has not experienced. She has also developed an awareness that makes her sense when she is being too “anglo” when she speaks Spanish as certain discursive patterns of English tend to cross over when she is expressing herself. In her efforts to build pride for her Colombian roots, she has embraced a routine in which my wife and I try to “teach” her about our ways to use Spanish. These explicit attempts, although somewhat artificial, are reshaping the hybrid character of my daughter’s identity and provide me with rich opportunities to strengthen her confidence in her ability to use her mother tongue. By taking that kind of ownership, I’ve told her, she is creating heritage that she can then pass on to her own children later on in life. This makes me think of the role that context plays in assuming how close your mother tongue is and how we as immigrants, need to find ways to feed our interactions with sociocultural and sociolinguistic elements that make our mother tongues come alive for our children despite the distance from the Caribbean in my own case.
John
John, I wonder what your daughter would say when asked about her mother tongue? Would she say she has two?
She sees herself clearly as multilingual (now learning German!!) but certain aspects of her personality connect with either English or Spanish. Her relationship with languages and her sense of mother tongue has become more fluid over the years. However, her affect leans towards Spanish as connections with family and treasured memories and values are more intricately related to our background as Colombians.