“I felt odd. Something that was once so familiar suddenly felt foreign. That was the moment when I realized what I’ve lost – a connection to my heritage; my identity itself. This moment of realization came after I heard my college friends talk in their indigenous language. We belong to the same ethnic community. They could speak our language, Newari, but I couldn’t.
I felt unsettled. I felt guilty because I spoke the mother language fluently as a child. It was the primary language in our house and community. But outside this small circle, people mostly spoke Nepali –the national language. During pre-school, my friends bullied me for not knowing how to speak the national language properly. I went home crying, threw a tantrum, and told my mom that I would never speak my mother language again. I literally stopped speaking Newari from the next day!
Even when relatives talk to me in Newari, I only reply in the national language. Over time, I could understand really clearly what people were saying to me but couldn’t reply. My tongue couldn’t get itself around the words with my lack of practice. That’s how I forgot my mother tongue.
After this realization, I was determined to reclaim what I had lost. I rigorously practiced the Newari language with my mom. She’d laugh at how funny I sounded as I stumbled over my words. She’d given up trying to teach me. But I didn’t let her. I held on; and eventually conquered. I now feel that I’m connected to my roots more than ever.”
Manjula Shrestha
Coordinator, Futures Program
Kopila Valley School
Note: This #InternationalMotherLanguageDay, let’s celebrate and promote linguistic diversity all around us! Multilingualism promotes cultural diversity. And here at Kopila, we are blessed to have children and staff from diverse ethnic backgrounds, boasting different mother languages. Did you know Nepal has 126 ethnic groups and 123 different languages?!