I’m forgetting my mother tongue
My go-to response to any icebreaker question is that I speak four languages. It piques peoples’ interest, allows me to organically share the many places I call home and reminds me of my history. “I speak four languages.” This is not false, but I have to confess that it is not entirely true either. The story of my linguistic ability is a story not of my skill in speaking foreign languages, but a story of resistance and survival. It is the story of a migrant group that desperately and silently clings onto language as its sole claim to a heritage that was once violently stolen.