Dear Queenie,
I am having a battle with my teenage son over Sindhi. Our family is Sindhi, but our story has taken us a very long way from Sindh. My great-grandparents left after Partition, when our family lost the homeland they knew. They eventually went to Africa. The next generation moved again, with my grandparents settling in Panama. Later, some members of the family made another move and built their lives here in Sint Maarten. So when I say I want my son to speak Sindhi, I am not simply trying to get him to learn another language. For me, it is one of the threads connecting all those generations and all those places. My parents and older relatives speak Sindhi fluently. I understand and speak it too, although English has gradually become the main language in my own home. My son understands bits and pieces but has absolutely no interest in learning to speak it properly. His argument is: "Everybody speaks English. Why do I need Sindhi?" From a practical standpoint, he has a point. His school is in English. His friends speak English. His entire world functions perfectly well without Sindhi. But that is exactly what frightens me. Our family has already lost a homeland and crossed continents. Through all those moves, people carried the language with them. Now it could disappear, not because anyone forced us to stop speaking it, but simply because English is easier. I keep telling my son that Sindhi carries our jokes, sayings, songs, family stories and ways of expressing things that don't translate quite the same way. Recently, after I pushed him again, he said: "But that's your culture. Why does it have to be mine?" That hurt more than I expected. Queenie, how hard should I fight to preserve something generations of my family managed to carry from Sindh to Africa, Panama and eventually Sint Maarten? —Trying Not to Lose Our Language
Dear Trying Not to Lose Our Language,
Your son's question is difficult precisely because there is some truth in it. "Why does it have to be mine?" Culture can be inherited. Attachment cannot. You can give your son Sindhi ancestry, history, food, traditions and language. Eventually, he decides what those things mean to him. But I understand why this particular rejection hurts. Your family didn't simply move from one country to another. Partition severed millions of people from places, communities and ways of life that had existed for generations. Your family's response was movement. Sindh. Africa. Panama. Sint Maarten. Different homes. Different countries. Different generations. And somewhere in the luggage was a language. That makes Sindhi more than a convenient way of communicating with Grandma. It is continuity. Languages carry things that history books cannot. The particular way a grandmother scolds you. The joke that becomes flat in translation. The pet name nobody quite knows how to say in English. The song an elder remembers from childhood. The expression that immediately tells another Sindhi person: You know where I come from. So no, I wouldn't dismiss your concern as nostalgia. Preservation matters. But I also wouldn't turn Sindhi into a burden your son must carry because previous generations suffered. That's a very heavy way to hand a teenager his inheritance. Instead of insisting that he learn the language, make sure he experiences the world that lives inside it. Speak Sindhi around him. Let his grandparents speak it to him even if he answers in English. Teach him the funny expressions and the slightly naughty ones teenagers are much more likely to remember. Tell him why certain words matter. Tell him about Sindh. Tell him why his great-grandparents left. Tell him about Africa and Panama and how part of the family eventually arrived in Sint Maarten. Give him the whole story, not merely the vocabulary. And be honest with him: "You don't have to feel about this the way I do. But I want you to understand what your family carried so that you have the choice to carry it too." That is preservation without coercion. Your son may never become fluent. Or, twenty years from now, he may find himself desperately trying to remember the phrases he heard around the house as a child. Identity has a habit of becoming more interesting as we get older. For now, keep the door open. Because after everything your family carried across generations and oceans, your job may not be to force Sindhi into his hands. It may simply be to make sure it is still there if, one day, he reaches for it. —Queenie
