Speak freely

The room filled with the laughter of my family. They rocked in their seats and patted one another as their laughter bounced off the walls of the echoing drawing room. Once they had dried their tears, they turned back to me.

“Say it again!”

I pressed my arms against my sides as I felt a rush of blood to my cheeks. I was unused to the sweltering days in India where I was now visiting my extended family. They sat staring, waiting for me to ask for ice cream again in my subpar Punjabi; to embarrass myself in exchange for relief from the heat. When I did, using English grammar with Punjabi shabads, words, out of nervousness, they laughed again before directing me to their freezer.

The memories of hot summer days playing with my cousins and enjoying the lands of my heritage are speckled with moments like this: perspiring faces filled with anticipation to hear me mess up speaking Punjabi because of my “Canadian-ness.” When I would speak Punjabi in Canada, I was met with the same laughter and judging glances for similar reasons.

Growing up, I had two first languages: English and Punjabi. The elder members of my family spoke Punjabi to me and I spoke to my cousins and friends in English. I was fairly fluent in both until I started school and began learning English grammar conventions and sentence structures. This new focus on learning English resulted in a dwindling fluency in Punjabi.

I spoke Punjabi frequently enough at home, but the effects of prioritizing English at school eventually seeped through. The Punjabi alphabet and phonology are very particular; certain sounds have similar articulations that are sometimes only deducible if you have the ear for it. When I mispronounced a word or made the wrong sound because of these similar articulations, I was met with laughter and pushed to repeat what I had said before getting support on correcting myself.

Seeing the frequency of my mistakes, my parents enrolled me in a program at a Punjabi language and cultural school so I could practice, memorize and improve my speaking. Even though I could read and sort of write, I was still burdened with an Anglo accent and involuntary code-switching when I combined English and Punjabi to create sentences that my family could not understand. It made me feel less South Asian and more removed from my own culture and ethnic community.

Eventually, I stopped speaking Punjabi entirely. Instead, I spoke to my parents in English to avoid being criticized or laughed at again. I was still made fun of for not speaking Punjabi and even had some family members tell stories of my mispronunciation as anecdotes, but it was better than giving them a new story to fuel my insecurity.

At school, however, it was different. Being raised in a community where the majority of residents are South Asian immigrants meant that a lot of my friends faced similar language problems. There were some like me who were criticized and ridiculed for trying to speak their parents’ native language. Others couldn’t speak it at all. We connected through the similarities of our experience and enjoyed our languages more because of it.

We cracked jokes in dialect and had full conversations in our languages. When students immigrating from South Asia joined our classes, they didn’t condemn us for our anglicized accents. Although they found it amusing, they were just happy they could communicate in dialect with us. There were times when we made fun of each other for misspeaking or forgetting an English word and using the dialect counterpart, but these were contrasted with the norm we established when we approached each other with a kindness that we could not find elsewhere.

We found solace in our shared experiences and enjoyed the freedom of speaking to each other without judgment.

I am still grateful that I can speak Punjabi even if I’m laughed at for it by my own family. Though it’s unfortunate, I got used to it over time and improved as I began to speak it more, which also meant that I was made less fun of.

But with the community I had built at school with my friends and classmates, with people who spoke subpar Punjabi, Hindi, Urdu and Farsi, they made me feel like I was enough. Though I held a different kind of South Asian identity because I was also Canadian, I realized that didn’t make me any less South Asian.

Now, I confidently speak Punjabi and English without worrying about being made fun of. After experiencing a community made up of second-generation South Asian Canadians and children of immigrants, I know who I am in my language and I wouldn’t know myself without it.

The cultural knowledge and connection we hold through language is as powerful as it is daunting. Although language for me was a point of tension and sometimes pain, it was also an escape and an opportunity to build community. I am more myself because of it.

First online May 25, 2025, 9:59 p.m.