The In Between
The holi-daze and heritage languages, the meanings in between & translation brilliance in the season finale of Pluribus
Greetings from that strange in-between holiday time when Christmas is over but new year’s eve and day are still to come and those lucky enough to have this week off are not quite sure which day it is. Holidaze? I hope the festive season has been kind and most importantly, gentle, however that may be for you. I know the holidays can be a tricky time for many people. If you are raising multilingual children in a minoritised/heritage language and spending considerable time over the holidays with friends or family who only use the majority/societal language, this may add a complicated layer to the already emotionally-heightened period. Even in smaller settings where your co-parent does not use the same minoritised/heritage language with the kids, these full (and sometimes, full-on) days together, as wonderful as they are, can take a toll on the use of a heritage language in the home if your partner is there more than usual.
I know a few of you have had to navigate situations where perhaps you are spending the holidays with your partner’s family, sometimes a much bigger, busier, louder family than your own, none of whose members use the language you are trying to pass on to your children. Maybe you have asked yourself:
Will they think it is rude if you continue to use your heritage language they do not understand with your kids in front of them? Will your in-laws feel left out? Do you have to translate everything you say, adding to your own physical and emotional labour? Should you switch to the societal/majority language just for these few holiday days? Will children begin to favour the societal language even more after, and how many times will we then have to ask them to switch back to our heritage language to get back into some sort of groove?
I have asked myself these questions dozens of times. It is like the playground example where mothers tell me they often worry about using a heritage language in the playground in front of other children and their parents who do not understand for a variety of reasons. But over the holidays, these worries are on overdrive and amplified a thousand times. Plus, it is much more personal with people you know and who are close friends or family versus playground families you may never see again.
My instinct is to tell you to keep using the heritage language no matter what and to use it as much as you want as doing anything else sets a precedent that is not fair on you, your kids, or the minoritised language. But from experience, I know it is easier said than done. In some families, it is worth having the conversation directly ahead of time, but I worry that too creates a burden on the caregiver who is already feeling nervous about the situation. And then there is the question of the children because they have their own agency, and a majority language rich environment will likely mean they will have a harder time responding in the heritage language. And that too is frustrating in itself. I can’t tell you what is right for you and your family but what I am here to do is to validate your feelings and worries. Will it be OK after the holidays? Of course. But that does not mean these days are not uniquely hard and complicated for multilingual and multicultural families.
The worry is not always about the children either. I have a multilingual friend who went back to a heritage-language rich environment for the holidays. Her children are now immersed in the minoritised language until the family returns in the new year. However, before they went, she worried about her monolingual partner in that environment, and part of her even considered how trips to see her family are often easier if she is alone with her children as then there is no other language input or worries about having to balance multiple languages.
I am currently reading Exophony: Voyages Outside the Mother Tongue by Yoko Tawada, translated by Lisa Hofmann-Kuroda. A lovely Instagram friend recommended it and I picked it up the other day. (Thank you!) In the introduction by Naosie Dolan, she quotes Tawada, who writes in Japanese and German:
“I’m not interested in studying lots of languages…to me, it’s the space between languages that’s most important, more than the languages themselves. Maybe what I really want is not to be a writer of this or that language in particular, but to fall into the poetic ravine between them.”
When I was writing Mother Tongue Tied I constantly thought about the in-between of languages and of language, singular. At one point, my book’s subtitle literally had something about the in-between of languages. The final version was “disrupting myths and finding meaning”, mostly for space considerations as the subtitle was already getting too long. Although the paperback edition no longer has this part of the subtitle, again, for space considerations, it is still something I am always aware of not only in my language writing, but in the way I communicate with my children, with my partner, with friends and family — yes, sometimes maybe too much.
What does it mean to consider the in-between of language and languages? Anything and everything, really. For some, it might be literal in that communication may be achieved between languages through other means of communication, or through some beautiful and awkward way humans have a way of eventually finding. Or, it might mean translanguaging, code mixing, style shifting and fully accepting that this is both a use of a full linguistic repertoire but also finding an in-between of all of our languages. This idea is not unique to multilingualism either, speakers of different varieties of the same language find the in-between all the time too. Maybe the in-between days call for a mid point of letting go of language, of everything (!), and falling into that ravine.
On a related note, and I promise this is not a newsletter about the show Pluribus but thank you to those who read my last letter and wrote to tell me they too were watching the show. I feel like we need a language discussion group about it, especially after the season finale! I wrote about the show and its beautifully nuanced use of language themes here for a recap and how it has made me think so many things about how we communicate and what it means to learn a new language.
I have since watched the season finale. Again, no spoilers, but in the episode, two main characters, who are both beginners in the other person’s dominant language, communicate using a translation app. If you recall, I mentioned a few times now, in the show, the rest of the people in the world can speak every single language fluently, except these two characters who, arguably need to communicate the most in order to save the world from a dystopian future.
Again, I found myself tense, uncomfortable and on the edge of my seat watching as Carol and Manousos try to communicate, him in Spanish with some English and her in English with a little Spanish, but mostly using a translation app on her phone. The actor playing Manousos, Carlos-Manuel Vesgas, said in an interview that the actors had to leave space in the scene for improvisation as there was in a way, an unpredictable third character (my interpretation) meaning the translation app on the phone. As they filmed the scene in real-time as the translation app was translating, the actors were not sure how it would play out — a perfect example of an in-between of communication, of translation and even of AI and what it is doing to the world, for better (translation!) and for worse (too much to name). And if you are watching the show, you know this is all happening in a high stakes, life or death situation. And yet still, so many in-betweens. While watching, I can’t tell you how desperately I wanted these two characters to reach some sort of communication beyond any one language! Perhaps a wish for the entire world.
And with that, I wish you a peaceful and joyful rest of December and a very happy new year. Thank you for being here however it works for you.