On my first day of going to primary school in Lakemba, I understood very little English and spoke even less. Although I was born in Australia, up until that point I had limited exposure to English because Vietnamese was what we spoke at home.
My parents seemed to feel little anxiety I might be disadvantaged, and assumed I'd just figure it out at school. Turns out they weren't wrong — I learnt English quickly and mastered it well enough that I'm now a writer and editor. However, what they probably didn't anticipate is what would happen to my Vietnamese.
The typical pattern of immigrant language shift in Australia (and elsewhere) is that the first generation is bilingual, with dominance in the language other than English, and the second generation is bilingual with dominance in English. According to Ingrid Piller, professor of applied linguistics at Macquarie University, 'a key driver in generational language shift comes from schooling; through schooling, the state favours one particular language over all others and engineers linguistic homogeneity in a population.'
There are good reasons for the state to drive this agenda, and having English in Australia as our national language has many advantages. But it comes at a cost. One area where we can see this is in our literary culture, which brings this issue into focus.
To apply Abram de Swaan's influential theory of a global language system, the languages of the second generation in Australia are 'peripheral' in that they are 'languages of conversation and narration rather than reading and writing, of memory and remembrance rather than record'.
Our community languages are not necessarily 'peripheral' in the global sense because some of these languages have tens of millions of speakers. However, in an English dominant society like Australia they become peripheral languages that few grow up educated in, with formal schooling options limited. So when writers from the second generation try to incorporate their mother tongues into their writing in English — if they do at all — they may falter.
This was the topic of a conversation I hosted at In Other Words, held on the International Day of Mother Languages last month. One of the writers who spoke was Zarlasht Sawari, a writer and researcher born and raised in Perth. Her mother tongue is Dari, a dialect of Farsi. 'My experience has been one of being locked out of [Dari] because I am basically illiterate in the language,' said Zarlasht. 'Although I'm quite fluent I can't read or write it myself. It blocks you off from delving into the literature of that language and the knowledge that it carries of the culture.'
"In the context of English language dominance, expressing another language in public - which is what writing for publication is - can feel like a subversive act."
When Zarlasht said she felt 'locked out' out of her mother tongue, it was a powerful descriptor which resonated with the panel — among us were speakers of Arabic, Turkish, Vietnamese and Cantonese. When you come from a language background other than English, becoming a writer is daunting because of the many practical and emotional hurdles that need to be overcome. We often have to tread where few have gone before us.
We may also be haunted — and inspired — by ideas and stories that involve our mother tongues yet feel a sense of inadequacy that we can only access part of our heritage. Achieving fluency in a stepmother tongue like English usually leads to a fractured relationship with the languages of home and hearth.
This is a crucial problem to address in creating a literary culture that's a true reflection of Australian society. How are we to draw on our experiences in our mother tongues, for whatever genre of writing, and how do we situate these other languages? It's a challenge literary translators already understand well. Writers who speak languages other than English are translators of experience in addition to language itself.
It's a problem of realism but it's political as well. In the context of English language dominance, expressing another language in public — which is what writing for publication is — can feel like a subversive act.
'I don't fully translate everything ... it's important for me in my writing at least to convey that sense of alienation that is produced in many non-English speakers in Australia,' said Eda Gunaydin, a Turkish-Australian writer and researcher, who also took part in the discussion.
'I'm a true believer that there are some things that you just can't understand, that you can't fully replicate. Not just interactions but the histories behind those interactions and everything that comes along with speaking a language. That's what I try to get in my writing. Maybe it's almost good to embrace not understanding what's going on in that particular exchange.'
Once you've written a piece that includes representations of your mother tongue, it might still get stripped out in the end. An editor might take out the words you've so carefully included, particularly when the language is not a prestige one (like French). I've experienced this with Vietnamese and it was disappointing, as well as a missed opportunity. Editors could show more faith that readers will figure it out — perhaps even feel locked out — but appreciate the opportunity to develop more empathy through exposure to other tongues.
Sheila Ngoc Pham is a writer, producer and radio maker. She currently teaches public health ethics at Macquarie University and is a PhD candidate at the Australian Institute of Health Innovation. She tweets as @birdpham
Main image: Audience at the In Other Words festival (Alyx Dennison)