Language as Destiny and as Destination - A Review of In Other Words

In Other Words by Jhumpa Lahiri

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


English is my native language, my mother tongue. I know that might not make sense, since I live in the Philippines and have never lived anywhere else, but I still consider it my native language. As a child I was raised in the language, with my parents, grandparents, and other relatives speaking to me in English, and expecting me to reply in the same. My mother also made sure that I watched Sesame Street every day - the only television I was permitted to watch without parental supervision when I was a child. I heard Tagalog, of course, and could understand it if it was spoken to me, but my grasp of it was exceptionally weak: I did not even start using it regularly until I started school, and even then I was spectacularly bad at it - indeed, I still am.

This lack of mastery of my own native language is a point of frustration on my part - not least the inability to read with ease the vast amount of literature written in Tagalog. I hate that I cannot approach my own country’s literature with the same ease as I can approach the literature of the Anglophone world, that I am necessarily cut off from the poetry and prose of some of my country’s own great writers, simply because I have not mastered Tagalog as I should. This has led to a certain inferiority on my part, that I cannot call myself truly “Filipino” because while I can speak, read, and write exceedingly well in English, I cannot do the same in Tagalog. I am, in a way, a foreigner in my own country.

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