Struggling With My Native Language

“Never make fun of someone who speaks broken English. It means they know another language.” – H. Jackson Brown Jr.

You might think I speak broken English, but not at all. Then why would Brown’s quote attract my attention? Two reasons explain why I chose to include this quote in my story, the first one being about my family members while the second is related to my own experience.

Ten years ago, my dad, my young brother and I left Rwanda and came to the United States of America to join mom who had arrived a year before us. When we first came, my brother and I didn’t know any English. When we started preschool, our parents decided to speak English more to us to help us succeed in class. Soon enough, we learned English and completely stopped using our native language. As of today, we are pretty fluent in English and we have no struggles at all in speaking, reading, listening or writing it, but we have a lot of trouble speaking Kinyarwanda, our native language.

On the contrary, the majority of our family members don’t know English or they speak it with difficulties, which makes our communication with them complicated. It is very heartbreaking to get a family member on the phone and not be able to tell them what you want to say because of a lack of or limited language skills. When we get to talk to those who speak some English, even if it may be in the category of “broken” English, we feel much excitement.

Mom and Dad kept talking to my brother and I in Kinyarwanda and English, which was somehow helpful because we can understand what they say in Kinyarwanda. I would say I can understand 95% of what they say but for the life of me when I decide to try and speak, I can’t remember a word much less say a sentence. What makes Kinyarwanda even more difficult is the fact that it is a tonal language. Instead of focusing on what I say, I also have to focus on how I say it. Otherwise, I will say something that I didn’t mean to say.

Despite how difficult Kinyarwanda appears to be, I am determined to learn it because of its importance. In his interview with Scott London, Richard Rodriguez stated, “Rather than becoming multicultural, rather than becoming a person of several languages, rather than becoming confident in your knowledge of the world, you become just the opposite. You end up in college having to apologize for the fact that you no longer speak your native language.” I don’t want this to happen to me. Therefore, learning Kinyarwanda has been among my top priorities. This goal aligns with parents’ and uncle’s advice; they all frequently encourage me to try and learn Kinyarwanda. In our recent conversation, my uncle even told me to prepare Kinyarwanda sentences and memorize them in advance for our next phone call. Thanks to him and my parents, I feel motivated to try and learn how to speak my language, rather than regretting and apologizing for having failed to speak it later. I have planned to start doing some research about it as my uncle advised.

I cannot conclude my story without mentioning Nelson Mandela’s quote, “If you talk to a man in a language he understands, that goes to his head. If you talk to him in his language, that goes to his heart.” I have the intention to reach my people’s hearts so that we can share our deepest feelings and emotions starting by sharing our common language. I want to talk to my family members feeling more comfortable and not awkward. Even though I don’t speak broken English, I speak broken Kinyarwanda, but I want that to be history.