Word has it that there’s a new trend on the horizon.
For once, it isn’t a piece of clothing, a hairstyle, a movie or a song. This time, it’s a language—something that the younger generation is putting in a lot of effort to learn. They call it the Cool Language.
Like all other kids, your eighteen-year-old child is also making a lot of effort to learn the Cool Language, and when you talk to them in English—the language of your birth and heritage—they look at you with dismissive eyes and ask you to learn the Cool Language. They say that this is the only way you can communicate with them. Even though this disrespectful demeanor towards English troubles you, you bite your tongue and choose parenthood over personal pride. After all, you want to be able to communicate with your child.
Soon, it’s time for your child to go to college.
As you stand at the airport and bid them goodbye in English, they roll their eyes and respond in the Cool Language. You don’t approve of the eye-rolling, but for once, you decide to let it go. Your child is going to be away for a while and you do not want to pick a fight with them. At least not at the airport. You take yet another deep breath, and in the Cool Language—tell your child that you love them. They nod in response, and insist that you should use the Cool Language more often.
A day after your child’s classes start, you decide to give them a call. Seeing your little baby wrapped in the almost-adult cloak of college life fills you with an absurdly flavored surge of parenthood, something that they talk about only in the movies. “You look so grown up!” you exclaim, and almost instantly bite your tongue. You forgot to speak in the Cool Language, and you’re afraid that your child might not respond.
Sure enough, your offspring rolls their eyes. “I understand that you can’t talk in the Cool Language, but at least don’t speak so loudly in English,” they argue. “English is so embarrassing. None of my friends speak in English. It isn’t the trend anymore,”
You push an angry retort back into your esophagus, and press your tongue against it. No matter what happens, you can’t let it escape. Again, you re-use that one sentence you know in the Cool Language, and look back at your child on the screen with smiling eyes. “I love you,” you say.
Dear Editor, I’d like you to step back from this scenario for a moment and allow me to carry out some role assignments. You are my sixty-seven-year-old Indian grandmother who is struggling to preserve her Hindi roots, and your child is eighteen-year-old me, who like 80-85% students from diverse linguistic backgrounds, resort to mindless code switching, under the assumption that shifting countries and shifting identities is basically the same thing.
Very interesting piece. I learned something very basic.