Language & Culture Identity

Culture is a way of life which consists of many factors influencing and creating it such as traditions, music, technology, history, race, religion, and many more. The most important factor forming a person's culture in my opinion is his language. Language is the basic way to communicate with people, without it, how could we express our emotions, ideas and knowledge? Would they even exist without language? Therefore, in terms of our culture, language allows people to communicate, pass on and learn certain ideas, emotions and knowledge which define their identities.

In her article First Person, Raekha described the struggle she faced by not inheriting the Indian language from her father. She was frustrated by the fact that she couldn’t communicate with her own family. This was very challenging to her since she was an Indian by appearance but lacked the most important "tool" to learn more about her culture. Raekha was lost between 2 worlds, she was struggling between learning a culture of Indian standards, and the intensity of her western liberal British culture. She was confused, helpless, and miserable. How could she learn about her Indian culture if her own father ripped away her only tool?! Her identity was blurry. How could she become the person she was meant to be, if there was no way for her to be able to understand and learn it from her family? SHE NEEDED TO LEARN HINDI IN ORDER TO FEEL THAT SHE BELONGS TO HER CULTURE.

Language allows the learning of religion, concepts, standards, and beliefs. By learning her father's language, Raekha would finally be able to perceive the world the way he did, to understand why he cried when he listened to certain songs, why he laughed with his Indian friends. She simply wanted to have a sense of belonging to her family, community, culture, and finally to her true identity. Language can either be a barrier or the key to a person's identity depending on how it is used. Her father, wanting to protect her in Britain, gave her the weapon of the English language without being distracted by Hindi. He protected her for a short while in school and such. But the truth is that he was going to scar her for the rest of her life. As she grew older, she ended up going back to India. She felt embarrassed, crippled, and most of all… hurt. English, once a weapon, became a barrier between Raekha and her family. She was judged hard by them because they assumed that she abandoned her own culture. To them, language was simply passed on. But to her, it was detached without even getting to choose.

In conclusion, a person cannot understand his culture without learning its language. There are many people out there like Raekha who haven't learnt anything about their cultural identity because they were consumed and pushed to fit in a different community. But each person will ask himself someday: who am I? Some will "just try" to fight in order learn their culture starting by their language. This will definitely be a magnificent journey to finding their self-identity.