Things my mother said: the gift of bilingualism

Things my mother said: the gift of bilingualism

Last year a friend of mine discovered that my parents had never learned English even though they moved to England in 1969.

he raised an eyebrow. "But you speak it so well," he said, and a cheeky smile plucked to his corners of the mouth when he mocked those who had complimented me so much in the past.

he, an Asian born in Great Britain like me, knew that there was no reason for me not to speak English well. Finally I was born, grew up and trained in England.

Maybe I shouldn't be snippy about the compliment. After all, English is my second language, although I (and only in it) write, think and dream.

My first language or "mother tongue" is Bengal, and although she was left to the conversations with my mother, I am grateful that I have it. It certainly leans against the English, but its unique colloquial expressions and twists bring a wealth in my life that would otherwise be missing.

as a writer (and also as a reader) I often write down particularly nice sentences.

You can hear this laughter, right?

dementia walks through the corridors of your thoughts and switches off the light. And the darkness that remains behind is often filled with phantom fears.

patter. What a word!

I don't read Bengal, but my mother occasionally says something wonderfully humiliating or amusing in a way that cannot be translated into English.

Amar Shoril Ekere Kulya Zargi

The literal translation for this is "My body opens", the best translation is "my body loosens from all the seams", but neither of them captures the sharpness of a woman who mourns the loss of her health.

In a completely different mood, my mother once noticed:

Tai Ekhor Fon Gontor Farborni

This wonderfully caustic insult was thrown towards a particularly dark neighbor. The expression - "as if she could count a hundred pounds" - is not nearly as caustic in English. The nuance and the bite are completely lost in the translation.

Operas like the above remind me of how happy I am talking about how happy I am, to be able to access the words of another country on another continent and use them to turn a charming sentence or carve a cutting insult.

These occasions also let me complain about the lines that I will never read. What a pleasure it has to be to read Gabriel Garcia Marquez in his own language. I tried it once, but gave up when I realized that my Spanish wasn't nearly good enough. I'm still practicing, but I'm afraid that I will never reach a point where I can enjoy the subtleties of the language, or the unexcited gemstones that give me so much joy on Bengali.

alt = “What a pleasure does it be to read Gabriel Garcia Marquez in his own language”> Dream time What a pleasure does it have to be to read Gabriel Garcia Marquez in his own language

If it were possible to urge monolingual people without a conduct to learn a second language, I would do it. I benefited from one of the best state training in the world, but I believe that she lets us down linguistically.

You only have to travel to Norway or Switzerland to see how a second language can be learned seamlessly next to a first. We in Great Britain, the USA, Australia or any other English -speaking country in the world can draw great advantages from learning a second language.

two- and multilingualism open job opportunities abroad, offer a wealth of cognitive advantages, even make it easier to travel and strengthen the economy. They improve perception, decision -making and can even improve English.

Also, perhaps the most beautiful of everything, you can help you write deliciously formulated insults for your idiosyncratic neighbors - and who wouldn't want that?

Mission statement: Dreamstime

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