the vulnerability attached to native languages

Why is expressing myself in my native language harder?

I know it’s been a moment, school has been demanding but thank you for the recent growth.

I pride myself in being a person who will watch, read, listen to anything if I deem it interesting enough; subtitles and translations barriers too small to limit my art consumption. Whenever I consume any foreign media words of endearment always stick out to me from movies entirely in a foreign tongue to books with traces of an unfamiliar vocabulary with a glossary at the back. The words often occupy a designated portion of my brain the reasons being my love for love and my envy towards people who can shamelessly express themselves in their mother tongue something that’s harder for me to do than it should be.

Nkem- my own in igbo
Elkaskan min- my love in Icelandic
Mudiwa- my love in Shona

Meu coração - my heart in Portuguese
Sthandwa sami - my love in Zulu
Yeobo- darling in korean
Meri jaan- my life in hindi

I find expressing my feelings a difficult task and doing it in my native tongue an immovable mountain. My feelings towards my mother tongue are frustratingly mixed. I’m proud of my roots yet expressing myself fully in it feels a bit too vulnerable and ashamedly awkward. A feeling bilingual people sometimes have; the vulnerable part that is. The root of my bilingualism is colonialism which was partly successful in the supplanting of my native language.

I’m from Zimbabwe, if you’re new here. It was once a British colony and like any other ex-colony we speak the language of our previous colonisers. The majority of Zimbabweans—as is mandated in schools—speak English and one native language. Mine is Shona which is one of the tribes in the nation. I had recently began to feel somewhat dissatisfied with how the average conversation between two natives has traces of or is entirely in English. A cloud of unfamiliarity lingers when conversing entirely in Shona. I think an effect of colonialism we don’t often discuss is the displacement of language. Some countries had their native tongues reduced to a second language or almost entirely eroded.

In Zimbabwe native languages were not eroded but they weren’t unaffected either. I think what fuels the lack of tribal/linguistic pride in my case is the lack of “major” tribal diversity in my home country unlike in say Nigeria and South Africa, where there are many “major” tribes with which people identify with and whose culture and language they openly and proudly claim. In my opinion having multiple coexisting tribes encourages stronger ties to the language and culture because it makes you different, similar to how being in the diaspora often makes some people a bit more patriotic.

(Howeverrrrrr I’m aware there’s a lot more nuance, history and complexity when it comes to culture and language feel free to share your thoughts)

Everything else aside the depth associated with native languages is seemingly universal. There’s a rawness that expressing myself in my native tongue guarantees. It feels too real akin to ripping my heart out and leaving it on the floor. Even a simple request of asking for water feels like a poetic surrender. It is also incomparably tender and comforting when I’m the recipient. I consider acts of service to be my love language. The acts often open to mental decoding which I find utterly endearing. ”They remembered”, “they noticed” “they did it subconsciously” a reflection that their love for me registered subconsciously. My native language seems to also have a similar direct invisible link to my heart. Whether I’m the orator or the recipient. Verbally nothing will ever mean more to me than my native tongue yet it simultaneously feels awkward almost sacrilegious. A form of surrender I’m not comfortable with.
Perhaps that is why words of endearment always stick out to me when I consume content from other languages. They might not mean the same to me but I have some that are of equal value.

Bonus: Shona songs