I recently came across information about Speaking in Tongues, a documentary which follows four diverse children on a journey to become bilingual. As the website states, “At a time when 31 states have passed “English Only” laws, four pioneering families put their children in public schools where, from the first day of kindergarten, their teachers speak mostly Chinese or Spanish.” Before I continue, take a peek at the trailer:
The film discusses the growing need that parents are feeling to raise their children multilingual.
To be or not to be? Well, apparently for Surjit Singh Hans – it is to be. Hans, an academia based in Mohali, is undergoing the feat of translating Shakespeare’s work into Punjabi. Hans retired from Guru Nanak Dev University in Amritsar, where he had once been head of the department of history having done extensive work on Sikh literary sources and in particular the Janamsakhis. He has been working on this task for the past sixteen years.
The translation follows the original line by line—you want to locate line 20, Act II, scene (i), in the Arden edition of Hamlet, all you have to do is look at the corresponding line in the translation. The iambic pentameter of Shakespeare has given way to the chaupai in Punjabi, but what matters is that these lines are almost as resonant in Punjabi as they are in the original English. They work well when read aloud, as Shakespeare is meant to be, and there is little here that a Punjabi can’t take to heart. Indeed, the heavy-headed revelry ‘takes from our achievements, though performed at height’. [link]
As for how well Shakespeare’s work translates into Punjabi, Hans suggests that King John could parallel the story of Aurangzeb and Two Noble Kinsmen could be a scene out of a Punjabi village (two men, one girl – hardly promising).
A few weeks ago I attended the Sikh Education Conference hosted by the Sikh Research Institute that brought together educators from across North America. One of the presentations focused on the importance of language education. The presenter made it quite clear – teaching young children multiple languages does not confuse them or hinder their development. In fact, research has shown that bilingualism and multilingualism is advantageous in several aspects. Exposure to two or more languages increases critical thinking skills, creativity, and flexibility of the mind in young children.
According to neurobiologists, the human brain is “hardwired” to learn languages as an infant and toddler. Any language learned during this period is stored, literally, in a different part of the brain than language acquired later in life, and in the right environment young children can learn up to four languages without significant slowdown. [link]
It seems, however, than in immigrant communities there is often hesitation around raising children in multilingual homes. The fear is that children will not learn English fast enough which will pose an obstacle to their assimilation into American society. It happens in our own community – young Punjabi children not being able to communicate with their older Punjabi grandparents. There is a language gap and if we consider the importance of oral tradition in our history – you can just imagine how much information is not being communicated and in fact being lost between generations.
A blogger recently mentioned that many of us switch back and forth between English and Punjabi in conversations, and how it’s sometimes more comfortable to speak Punjabi. Have you thought about how your mental frame of reference shifts when you switch languages? Do you think this affects your personality? A recent study seems to think so…
Bicultural bilingual individuals have incorporated two cultures within themselves and speak the languages of those cultures. When cued by a particular language, these individuals activate distinct sets of culture-specific concepts, or mental frames, which include aspects of their identities. Three studies show that language-triggered frame switching (i.e., switching from one set of mental frames to another) occurs only with biculturals, not with bilinguals who are not bicultural. The studies uncover frame switching at the within-individual level, and they include both qualitative and experimental evidence. They also provide a methodology to identify the relative activation strength of specific mental frames in different languages. [link]
Researchers found that women classified themselves and others as more assertive when they spoke Spanish than when they spoke English. The study was based partly on women’s reactions to television commercials shown in English and Spanish.
One part of the study got the volunteers to watch TV advertisements showing women in different scenarios. The participants initially saw the ads in one language – English or Spanish – and then six months later in the other… “In the Spanish-language sessions, informants perceived females as more self-sufficient and extroverted,” they say… For example, one person saw the main character in the Spanish version of a commercial as a risk-taking, independent woman, but as hopeless, lonely, and confused in the English version. [link]
I haven’t read this paper yet so I don’t know the entire methodology, but from the TV-ad experiment, I wonder if the perceived assertiveness is a reflection of the level of comfort within the culture that the individual was responding to. If you’ve noticed a shift in mental frames when you switch from English to Punjabi (or French, or whatever else you speak), how does the shift in mental frame affect your personality?
A couple of weeks ago while driving with my friend Rajpreet, I started speaking Punjabi in the middle of an English conversation. I was caught off-guard by Rajpreet’s response, “… why are we speaking the ‘secret language’ when it’s just us two in the car”? Rajpreet for some reason thought we only spoke Punjabi amongst ourselves around other English speakers when we had something “secret” to say [in the past we also spoke it when there was another Punjabi-dominant speaker with us]. However, for myself, it just happened, after some thought I feel I spoke out of the comfort of knowing that Rajpreet also understood Punjabi … not to say anything “secret”. Rajpreet’s statement made me think about how at department stores and other official places of business, I sometimes spoke a mixture of Punjabi/English to family and friends because we did not want other English speakers to know what we were saying in “translation” … but it was not always the case. Sometimes it was out of comfort, group/ethnic solidarity, or just plain funny. In my eyes, I wasn’t using Punjabi as a “secret language”, but more as a form of code-switching or hybrid language use.
Code-switching is a sociolinguistic phenomenon where bilingual speakers (i.e. Spanish/English and Punjabi/English) use terms from both languages in a sentence or conversation. In the past researchers have argued that code-switching was a sign of language inability. For example, the speaker did not know the terms for bowl or potato in English so used the Spanish or Punjabi terms. However, now sociolinguistic researchers believe it is a marker of group identity, ethnic solidarity, and relationship-building. I remember one person telling me that as part of his research on hybrid language use at a major state-owned park, he found that one park employee spoke “Spanglish” to their largely Latino cliental because she wanted to convey safety, comfort, and other feelings of “home” at this large American “place”. By creating such an environment through language she felt that the Latino cliental was more likely to explore the site and ask questions.
Thus, I ask do you ever speak Punjabi to English-speaking friends and family? If so, when?
Do you code-switch? Why?
