Spoken Words
As a French person living in Australia, I am often worries about losing touch with French culture and society. The first 20 years of my life were spent in the south of France. All my firsts were there, in French. To keep in touch, I listen to French music, read French books, and overall try to keep French things in my life... but still I can feel it slipping away. Every day is a bit more dissociated from the country of my early years.
Recently, my dad commented on how my French is becoming poorer. As often with my dad, while said in the most offensive way he's not wrong about it. My French is simpler than it used to be. It doesn't mean that I don't understand it anymore, but simply that I don't practice it enough. I thought that I could keep my root intact but as my Australian life develops, my French one atrophies.
This reminds me of a poem by Sujata Bhatt "Search for my Tongue" Here's the first verse:
You ask me what I mean
by saying I have lost my tongue.
I ask you, what would you do
if you had two tongues in your mouth,
and lost the first one, the mother tongue,
and could not really know the other,
the foreign tongue.
You could not use them both together
even if you thought that way.
And if you lived in a place you had to
speak a foreign tongue,
your mother tongue would rot,
rot and die in your mouth
until you had to spit it out.
I first heard this poem when I was younger. Back then, the second English verse, not the first, stuck with me:
it grows back, a stump of a shoot
grows longer, grows moist, grows strong veins,
it ties the other tongue in knots,
the bud opens, the bud opens in my mouth,
it pushes the other tongue aside.
Everytime I think I've forgotten,
I think I've lost the mother tongue,
it blossoms out of my mouth.
This is such an optimistic view. I used to like it, to think it absolute. Of course your mother tongue will prevail, it doesn't require any argument it's obvious.
But is it such an absolute? And if it's not, what should I do? I am now at the age when my partner and I are talking about having children which bring me so many questions:
- Will my children speak my own language?
- How different will their childhood be from mine?
- Will I be able to share my culture with them?
I don't have the answer to any of those questions. About my own identity, about my future or my language. All I can do is take it one step at a time. The first one will be to have more conversations in French!