Lana Altunashvili ’27 is a prospective international relations major. She is a James Monroe Scholar and a member of Club Tennis. Contact her at laltunashvili@wm.edu.
The views expressed in the article are the author’s own.
My boyfriend and I are living on opposite spectrums of the nth-generation immigrant experience. Of course, “the immigrant experience” has no universal definition, but for the purposes of this article I will call myself a first-generation immigrant and him a third. Born in the United States, he grew up speaking Chinese but then lost touch with it over the years. I was born in the country of Georgia, grew up speaking Russian and Georgian, learned English through school, YouTube, and my grandmother, and eventually came here to the US. The opposites of the spectrum look like this: while I am actively losing bits of my culture and language, every word and thought replaced with English, he is actively getting his knowledge of Chinese back. There’s no rulebook guiding us through the longing for something slipping through our fingers. But boy, do I wish something like that existed. …
The idea for the article came after my boyfriend told me he had dreamt in Chinese. Part of me was happy for him, because this means he’s really getting in touch with his heritage. He’s getting closer every day to what he set out to achieve last year by taking Chinese for Heritage Speakers. And yet, there’s another part of me that started wondering … When was the last time I had dreamt in Russian or Georgian? Don’t they say that you “think” in the language you dream in? Do I “think” in English? Languages were always my talent, particularly how well I spoke English. My goal has always been to “sound native” and have no accent. Why then, now that I dream and think in English, do I feel like something is missing?
Examining my own feelings whenever my boyfriend reaches a new linguistic goal of his is even more interesting. He often tells me that he’s now able to speak to his grandparents in Chinese without much hesitation, that he’s more sure of himself. The same evening I could call my grandma and beg the universe for Russian words back because I don’t want to, yet again, ask: “How do you say ___ again?” Because asking for words seems to be an admission of some sort of incompetence, a lack of something that should inherently be with me. My grip on my mother tongue is slipping more than ever before, and I don’t know how to stop it or slow it down. With nobody to talk to in this language, nobody to even know what it is, how do you keep in touch with your old self while embracing what you have in front of you?
I realize now that I may be living the experience of my boyfriend’s grandparents. That maybe while I slowly shed Russian and Georgian words, my kids and grandkids will be able to pick them up along the way and put things back into place. It’s a double-edged sword. In some ways, non-first-generation immigrants understand the loss of language that occurs over time. In others, my boyfriend, for example, has a community of people here at the college to empathize with. Perhaps it’s also easier to regain something you barely had than to hold onto it in an environment that is completely new. Maybe I should be relearning Georgian and Russian? But isn’t my goal to be even better at English? To this day, there are words I do not know, sentences that have a non-native structure to them and maybe slight accent slip-ups. I’m left wondering what to do, how to reconnect or whether to let go completely. My time is so often eaten up by activities, classes and other commitments. Needless to say, everything happens in English.
My only solution is to watch Georgian shows, listen to Russian music and speak to my family in the two languages. It’s easy to feel as if these efforts are futile, though. All I have left for now is hope that the next time I talk, I will not waste 30 seconds thinking of the simplest word that is on the tip of my tongue. The word that, when I finally hear it, I will think myself stupid for not having remembered it. The word that, when my grandmother sees me struggling, she herself will think of in two seconds.
There’s a saying in Georgian: ვარდი უეკლოდ არავის მოუკრეფია: “Nobody has ever plucked a rose without thorns.” Maybe this is the price immigrants pay for speaking the language well. They live and breathe the new life, they adjust and they shed their old selves. They lose some parts and find others. But is there really no way to preserve everything? To appreciate it all? I wish I had the answers to these questions. For now, though, I’ll keep listening to Niaz Diasamidze’s albums in the hope that today’s music gives me the words for tomorrow.
