English Has Colonized the Indian Heart (and Mind?)
Ever wonder why you instinctively start hurling abuses in your mother tongue while riding a scooty? Or why your most vulnerable conversations suddenly shift to English? Do you ever crave a partner who understands your mother tongue, so you don’t have to spend an eternity translating your soul? Or does watching content with subtitles bother you, knowing something is always lost in translation? And do you ever wish you could speak every language, just to understand the raw essence of everything?
Unless you’re from America, you must’ve understood what we are talking about.
We all have a very different relationship with languages. If you’re born in India, it’s probable that English wasn’t your first language. English is a language learned in school, in movies, a language that feels somewhat removed, and has a safe distance from the raw core of your being.
India is the second largest country that speaks English fluently. And it’s great. Knowing the language opens a lot of doors. Speaking a universal language helps you get better jobs, meet new people, and culturally diverse people. And most importantly, English lets you escape the vulnerability and helps you express your emotion without any shame and embarrassment. This is not a very positive thing, as the meaning does get lost in the translation. But then if you’re someone who finds it extremely difficult to vocalise your emotions in your mother tongue, English is great.
Speaking your mother tongue comes naturally as easily as breathing. But when you learn this universal language something shifts in your being.
Ever thought how, when you talk about your emotions in a language other than the one in which you feel them, it creates a sense of emotional distance. While you know these emotions are still yours, the associated shame or embarrassment may lessen, as if they belong to a different, perhaps more resilient, version of you. This process, where bilingual people find it easier to articulate emotions in their non-native language, has long been a subject of interest in psycholinguistics. This is often attributed to a combination of psychological, emotional, and sociocultural factors that influence how we experience and process emotions in our first versus subsequent languages. Research shows that bilinguals often manifest more intense emotional responses when using their native language compared to their second.
When you use this universal language you create a new version. You let your emotions go through this process called metamorphosis. Here these emotions are shaped in a way that distances them from you, almost like a defence mechanism so that your vulnerability isn’t exposed to the world. While it feels safer, this is counterproductive, when you shift to a subsequent language while speaking of your emotions you deny yourself the opportunity to feel emotions to the fullest. You deny yourself the honesty and rawness of your being.
English has colonised your brain and your heart and the problem is, you let it.
Sayuri Hayakawa, an Assistant Professor in Oklahoma University, argues that the context of language acquisition plays a crucial role. She posits that our native language, learned within the intimate family, friends, and early experiences, becomes deeply intertwined with emotions. Her reasoning aligns with a lot of people. English is like a suit of armor that protects your raw emotions. It keeps you safe, it comforts you.
The act of translation is one, of destruction or alteration. Words when translated from one language to another, go through a process of transmutation. This act destroys the original version and creates a new one, which has resemblance, but does not convey the same meaning.
The content you consume, the art you connect with – English saturates it all. It’s the language of your movies, your playlists, your reading lists, and the creators you follow. There’s no getting away from it.
When we launched Konsume, without a second thought the language was going to be english, we never thought why? While we love digging the niches, we certainly never wanted to be the minority that speaks in a non-universal language. Let’s see why Konsume has english content, other than the fact that there are thousand easily available references on the internet, one of the vital reasons Konsume features English content is its target audience: Gen Z. This generation is living online, nearly 90 percent – of the content they’ve consumed has been in English. Even the slang they use with their friends is often in English.
While we have enough exposure to English, there’s a lack of exposure to our own languages. While a lot of Indians talk in hinglish, it’s not hindi plus english but english with a lil bit of hindi. If you’re someone who constantly consumes various forms of content, from music and books to art and videos, you might find that since your teenage years, you’ve focused on enjoying things created outside of your own country – a fact that you might now, in adulthood, view with a sense of shame.
We’ve come to realize that part of why we feel overshadowed by the overwhelming consumption of English content is the lack of readily available content from our own country that truly resonates with and represents us. This is a situation for which we can only hold ourselves accountable, stemming from a potential disconnect with our own culture and the fact that mainstream trends within our country don’t always reflect who we are.
Maybe English allows us to connect with more people and explore cultural narratives beyond our country’s mainstream. Yet, the constant use of English, even in everyday conversation, can feel like a detachment from our own identity, as if empowering an invisible, imperial influence.
When we think about how we swear in our own language when we’re frustrated, and how we talk about our feelings in English. It shows how complicated language is for us in India. English helps us connect with the world and hide our true feelings a bit. But it can also make us feel distant from who we really are and the beauty of our own languages. It’s not about saying English is bad – it’s everywhere, even online for young people. But we should ask ourselves if using English so much is making us forget our own languages and the special feelings they carry. Maybe we should try to use our own languages more – for fun, for talking to people, and even for our raw feelings – while still using English to connect with the world. Think about this: every time you choose to watch or read something in another language, and every time you don’t pay attention to things made in your own language, a little bit of your culture and who you are gets weaker. The special feelings, the things you just understand without saying, the heart of where you come from could disappear because we choose what’s easy. It’s up to us to keep our languages alive, to enjoy them, and to share them. Let’s not let what’s easy make us forget how beautiful and important our own languages are.
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