Every Saturday morning, I wake up to the sound of my mom speaking our native language on a WhatsApp call with my grandma in India, updating her on my life, my sister’s life and her own. Sometime during each call, my mom says, “Hey Avani, talk to your grandma.” As this may seem like a simple job for most, I struggle to hold a basic conversation in my native language without my mom standing next to me, being my own personal Google Translator. 

And I’m not alone. Many children of bilingual families face the same problem. According to the United States Census Bureau, which found that over 70% of immigrant children can speak only English fluently at home, highlighting the tendency for kids of immigrants to lose touch with their native language. 

This may seem like a minor issue in situations like school or the grocery store, but whenever I’m among people who share the same culture as me, I’m continuously asked the same question: “Do you speak your mother tongue?” to which I reply time and time again, “I can understand it, but can’t speak it.” Still, as much as a disappointment to my family to utter those words, it shouldn’t be the key thing to dictate how connected I am with my culture. 

I’m not denying the fact that language is crucial to life. It is. It’s the first thing we pick up on from our parents when we are children, a building block of our lives. Yet, this building block isn’t the only thing that shapes our identity. As insecurities about your ability to speak a language impact you, it creates the impression of being the only quality that links you to your heritage. Even so, it only distracts from the true responsibilities you have upheld in preserving your heritage.

Culture is shown in the way we attend big family gatherings for holidays while wearing traditional clothes, to show that growing up in the US didn’t fully Americanize us. Or, in the way every kid dreads to have another bite of their mom’s home-cooked meals for a fifth time that week, only to crave it after a few days away from home, realizing that taste will never be matched anywhere else. It’s in these moments where our culture isn’t just something you speak, but live. 

I mean, before my trip to India, I was nervous about how I’d “fit in” with the other people there. I looked the same, but with my lack of speaking skills, I felt like a visitor in my own culture. Yet looking back, I realize I shouldn’t have underestimated myself. Cultural association shouldn’t have defined me by the way I spoke, but the way I shopped at local markets, visited historical sites and sampled street food on crowded streets; my culture is rooted in raw experience, not fluent speech. 

There will always be a part of every kid in a bilingual family that wants to speak their native language. But speaking a language is just one small part of the countless things that make a culture unique. At the end of the day, culture is felt and lived, not just spoken.