The Language That Hides...
Excerpt from the manuscript
Beginning in my early teens, I was fascinated by the way that English words were composed. I love looking to the Latin or Greek roots to see the composition of one root and suffix to form a word we know today. What proved even more important, was seeing the ways that linguistics drove meaning and understanding, and how that could apply to words in Shona. Given that Shona is what I call my mother tongue, but not my first language - that is, it is the language of my ancestors, but not the language I grew up speaking - I wanted and still wish to know if the same kinds of word compositions apply. In some cases, in my journey to learning more Shona, I have learned that they do. Particularly with names.
After about 7 years of living in Zimbabwe, I started to realise that all Shona surnames ended with vowels. For me that meant a myriad of things. It meant that the consonant in Shona was a structure that held up words, but did not constrict them. It meant that ch, sh, and tvs sounds felt more like a linguistic scaffold than a brick wall. These sounds were soft, and amiable. The vowels were the real bearers of sound, the bearers of meaning. In my understanding of linguistics, and how I have theorised it, the vowel is an opening, a beginning, a jumping-off point. A consonant supports, closes, ends. Most of the English words I know end with consonants. To me, the standard, Mariam-Webster*, Cambridge English is therefore a closed language. It does not want visitors. It does not adapt to change, it does not open to itself, it does not bend to the wind. I find English to be beautiful if you can weld it with grace and allow it to stumble just a little. I find it inspiring if used with cadence, with trust, and with honour. I find it banal when used ordinarily. And English is the first language I learned, and the only one I know intimately. Which is perhaps why I can speak so plainly about it.
Shona is a faraway paradise to me. It is a language that hides, it is a language that seems to cower from me. I adore it like I do my greatest love. And I am always leaving it. Always escaping back to English’s shell. The fact that all Shona names that I know end in vowels, led me to believe in its potential to open doors to understanding that far precede the realms of translation. I know most of my Shona through translation. At a family function, when the prayer is being recited, or a guest is giving a speech, it is my mother, my father, my aunts, or grandmothers who whisper translations into my ear. The way I have absorbed the most Shona is in song, and in laughter. It is second-hand. My Shona stumbles, it cracks, it sputters. Shona yangu yakabenda, as my father told me to say, if I was ever asked why I could not speak my own language. It roughly translates to my Shona is wonky. And it most certainly is. I am beyond used to the chuckles, the nudges, the disappointed but compassionately piteous glances from people when I attempt to express myself in my mother tongue. Shona’s roots are deeper than I could ever know, and I regret that I may never be able to reach them. It seems a betrayal, even now, to write about such things in English. Because English is the language of my birth, but it will never match that of my blood.
This is a matter of knowing oneself. How can you truly know yourself? I would argue that knowledge of the self in the realm of consciousness far transcends language, far transcends the physical realm. Of that I am certain. What I am not as sure of, is when one is positioned in, accepts (and in my case loves and is proud of) their culture and history, how are they able to find a place within it, when they were born and grew up so far outside of it?
I do not know how I will be able to walk through the openness that Shona bears. I believe that knowing my mother tongue through the mouths of others will never be enough to know my culture fully. And it will never be enough for me to know myself. To know a language, to know a song, a story, a recount of someone’s day through translation is to lose the person, the melody, the hours toiled. It is to mourn, constantly, that which will never be known again. It is to bend to the weight of one’s own circumstance, and to sigh under the realisation that perhaps such a thing cannot be resolved. To not know my mother tongue, is not to know my mother. Maboula Soumahoro writes “la France n’est pas ma mère.” “France is not my mother.” And English is not mine. It has been gifted to me, it has opened all of the doors that I have walked through, and it has connected me with the greatest souls, the most inspiring material, and some incredible experiences that I could not have had otherwise. I do not despise English for all that it has given me. But I must recognise its limits. If English is the room into which I was born, I have reached the threshold of its walls, and must leave to know myself.
So, if a language, when used as a form of oppression continues to depreciate, what can be said about English? How is this language being broken down by injustice, by colonisation, by violence? Are we able to interrogate this with honesty, to see our own horrors reflected in the languages we speak? And what of indigeneity? How can a return to one’s roots, to one’s mother tongue and culture be a catalyst for healing, for wholeness, for discovery?
