Being bilingual is truly a gift. It is not easy to pick up multiple languages, and it is estimated that only 43% of the world’s population can do so. Many jobs look to hire a person who can speak more than one language and it is said that students who know another language generally perform better in school. It is clear that being bilingual comes with several benefits.  However as an ungrateful middle schooler, I did not understand this. 

I always thought knowing a well known language such as French or Spanish was cool, but knowing a language many do not know seemed unimpressive to me. I also did not really learn my second language, I just picked it up as that was how my parents, uncle and aunt, and grandparents would communicate to me ever since I was a baby. I did not feel proud or even considered myself fortunate to have the ability to speak in my native tongue. My grandma would try to expand on my knowledge by teaching me how to write using the language’s alphabet. I showed minimal interest and was unable to learn it that well.

Almost all my family members from my mom’s side live in New York. I know all of them very well as I grew up around my extended uncles, aunts, and cousins. Our family consists of three generations, some settling in the United States sooner than others. Many of the elders of the family spoke to each other in Tamil, while us younger kids spoke to each other in English. The only people I spoke Tamil to were my grandparents and so did all the other kids, or so I thought.

I do not remember exactly when this occurred, but I would guess it was back when I was in middle school. I was around my extended family and we were all having a good time. As mentioned before, the only people I spoke Tamil to were my grandparents. I was speaking to them when all of a sudden their niece/my aunt happened to overhear our conversation. She praised me for my fantastic Tamil skills and how much better it was compared to hers. This small interaction filled me with immense shock. My aunt is from the same generation as my mom, with children who are my cousins close to age as me. It baffled me that she considered me better at Tamil than her when she was an adult. After this day, I learned more about my family. My mom, her brother, and my grandparents moved to New York way later than when this aunt did. My aunt and her brother grew up in the United States; therefore, their Tamil was nowhere near as good as my mom’s and uncle’s (mom’s brother). I quickly realized that this aunt wasn’t the only one whose Tamil was worse than mine. There were several of my mom’s cousins who could not speak better Tamil than me and would be unable to teach their children. I also realized that even aunts and uncles who were of the same generation as my mom who could speak good Tamil were speaking to their kids in English and so my cousins (their kids) could not speak Tamil the way I can. I only found this out after talking to my grandparents while being on facetime with my cousins who were amazed at my Tamil. It even occurred to me that my own sister is horrible at speaking Tamil. Watching her try to mix Tamil and English to communicate with our grandparents is sad. I came to a conclusion, Tamil is slowly dying in our family. Fewer and fewer relatives can speak and understand the language of our ancestors. Although most of my generation can at least understand the language, there will be a time when I am the only one who can actually speak it for them to understand it too. What scares me most is the fact that I feel like my Tamil is pretty standard. I do not even consider myself an expert at all. But everyone seeing me speak as if I currently live in India horrifies me. 

Although I can speak Tamil, I am definitely way more comfortable speaking English. I do not even talk to my parents in Tamil because of how much I prefer English. My mom stresses the importance of me speaking Tamil and I finally understand why. If I were to have a kid in the future, it is hard for me to imagine speaking Tamil to them. But after realizing that I may be our culture’s last hope, I may have to take passing down this language more seriously before it goes extinct forever.