How do we Benefit when We and Our Kids Learn to Love our Mother Tongue?

My kids are in Grade 7 and Grade 4. My younger one just started with his exams. Their half-yearly exams are underway at the moment. The subject that they both run away from and struggle the most with is Hindi. Considering my husband is from Himachal and I am from Punjab, Hindi becomes my kids' primary mother tongue followed by Punjabi and Himachali / Pahari. 

As I began to reflect on how my kids were struggling with their primary mother language and began wondering how could I support them, it struck me I didn't know how to read and write in Punjabi and that my fellow Punjabis will probably laugh at my spoken language. I further recognised that I had lost touch with Hindi myself.

So began my journey to re-discover my heritage so that my children can grow taller because they have stronger roots. Without owning our roots, we are unlikely to reach our maximum growth because nourishment only reaches through the roots.

I told my kids that I will speak to them in Hindi at home. Yesterday was the first evening and there was a laughter riot as I searched for Hindi alternatives for common words. I lost so many ice-creams to them that in the end they stopped counting how many English words were creeping into my Hindi monologue. I am not the kind to give up easily. I intend to google my way up to Hindi mastery.

If I decide something, I never waste much time to implement the idea with maximum energy. Sending love to Jeff Bezos because thanks to Amazon, I have Premchand, Rabindranath Tagore, Satyajit Ray and Harivansh Rai Bachchan on the way home. Bedtime stories for my kids in perfect hindi most beautifully sculpted by the masters of the language. 

I am super excited about my new project. To confess, more than the kids who have already extracted a promise from me to behave and talk normally in front of their friends :-) My mind is racing ahead and another project is already taking shape - to learn Punjabi and connect my kids to 50% of their heritage. I trust I will have inspired my spouse enough to immerse in his Himachali heritage and gift that to the kids.

I wished my home support staff 'Suprabhat' instead of Good Morning when she came in the morning today. She promptly responded back with her usual Good Morning along with a cheeky smile; used to my strange ways by now. I guess it will take a while for me to create a culture at home for her to not feel inferior because she doesn't know English. Up until now, I was thinking about how to get her to learn English because she is a keen learner and understands the value of English in India. I am grateful for the wisdom to understand that without the deep connection with our own roots, we cannot truly grow.

There are multiple benefits of being multilingual. Here are a few to inspire you:
1. According to research conducted by Julia Morales of Spain’s Granada University, children who learn a second language are able to recall memories better than monolinguals, or speakers of just one language.
2. Being multilingual leads to improved listening skills.
3. A study from 2010 shows that bilinguals have stronger control over their attention and are more capable of limiting distractions.
4. Recent research found that individuals who speak two or more languages, regardless of their education level, gender or occupation, experience the onset of Alzheimer’s, on average, 4 1/2 years later than monolingual subjects did.
5. Language learners also show greater cognitive flexibility (Hakuta 1986) and are better at figural creativity (Landry 1973).
6. Another research found that bilingual children are more creative in their problem solving than their monolingual peers.
7. Bilingual students consistently score higher on standardized tests in comparison with their monolingual peers, especially in the areas of math, reading and vocabulary.
8. Studies show that bilingual children show superior performance on non-linguistic tasks.
9. The results of the recent study showed that bilingualism is highly correlated with the breadth of vocabulary knowledge and reading skill. In other words, bilingual participants have a larger size of vocabulary knowledge and they enjoy better word reading skill.

We are in a unique place being born in India because most of us have atleast 3 languages that we can call our own - Hindi, our mother tongue or state language and of course, English if you went to school. And, if your spouse is from another state, you have 4 language to play with and learn, grow and evolve.

Lets not deny the huge advantage that this places us and our kids in. We are tremendously lucky and let us now claim that enormous good fortune as our own. 

I will keep you posted on our journey with Rabindranath Tagore, Satyajit Ray, Munshi Premchand, Harivansh Rai Bachchan, Amrita Pritam, Krishna Sobti and many more masters that we discover along the way. Would love to hear about your journey as you undertake to reconnect with your roots along with your family.

Wishing you and your family the joy of coming home to yourself.

Love, Jyoti.

​References:
Amazing Benefits of Language Learning