Talking Tamil

In class last week, we looked at two different interpretations on what it felt like to be an outsider society. We read Firoozeh Dumas's piece on what it meant to have a foreign name in America, and David Sedaris talked about how it felt to not understand French in a French class (with a scary teacher as well). I also feel that in some ways, I can relate to these two authors.

I grew up speaking Tamil, just as the rest of the members of my family had done. I never went to daycare like other children did, so my only exposure to English for the first four years of my life was the television. With this in mind, you can probably tell I never really had an American accent growing up. In fact, when watching old videos of myself, the first thing that stands out is the heavy Indian accent I had. I never really saw it as a bad thing. One thing you should know about me as a child is that I loved talking. I didn't care who I was talking to or what I was talking about, all I knew was that I was talking, and it was probably about why the T-Rex would beat a Spinosaurus in a fight (still salty about that one from Jurassic Park III), or about why the tiger was the king of the jungle. The point is, having an accent never really stopped me from talking.

Ten years later, and the situation became completely reversed. Long gone is my accent. I barely speak Tamil anymore. My parents talk to me in Tamil, and I simply respond to them in English. In a way, I definitely feel like Sedaris. I can understand the language, but speaking it is another beast on its own. I can still speak in Tamil, but many of my words have a palpable American accent to them. My speech is littered with grammatical mistakes that make me sub-conscious about whatever I'm saying. Whenever I go to India, I don't talk as much as I used to because I'm worried that they won't understand what I'm trying to say, or I don't even know how to communicate my point across. My parents tell me that I should just speak English to them, but I'm not sure how much of that they would understand either. It really is a very interesting predicament that I am forced into.

I wish that I simply had the ability to switch accents whenever I felt like it. When I'm speaking English, give me an American accent. Maybe I want to sound fancy that day? Give me one British accent to go please! When I'm speaking with my relatives, let me have a Tamil accent. That would be ideal.