Losing Language

Stare at your grandfather as he arrives. Think: ‘What’s the word again for grandfather from my mother’s side?’
It’s not yawg because that’s grandfather from my father’s side.

Hear your grandmother, her seamless mythical voice, and try to connect her words to context, but they are just sounds — they have no meaning to you. Like warbled radio, the words enter one ear and out the other; your brain doesn’t imprint them, dissipating like gas. You want to make them solid and sensible to grasp.

After a few seconds, ‘grandfather’ comes, but the word trips like a burp and you say yawg txiv — grandfather father — instead of yawm txiv.

Zaub txhwb is cilantro. Dos is green onion. Cilantro and green onion. Zaub txhwb thiab dos. Remember: Zaub txhwb is cilantro. Dos is green onion. Don’t mix them together. Zaub txhwb thiab dos. Green onion and cilantro.

Listen attentively, but you don’t quite understand your grandmother like you used to. Hear what she always repeats when you leave, “Come back and visit” but you always forget. You think it is impossible — your mother tongue could never be lost. Yet, you listen blankly, enunciate with cottonmouth, searching for the logic, trying to recall.

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