A few nights ago over dinner, my four-year-old son was trying to name the Lebanese dish we were eating. It involved pronunciations of Arabic letters he wasn’t used to saying – pronunciations he had been trying to get right over multiple meals before – and he was desperate to nail them.
When he finally uttered his ‘Kh’ sound after multiple attempts – imperfectly I might add – he was thrilled, and even though I was happy myself, I once again felt a pang of guilt.
A guilt that comes from not being able to share my mother tongue more frequently with my children, who are growing up mixed-race among members of my extended family who are more fluent in Arabic, and sometimes, more strongly connected to our Lebanese culture.
For the most part, I don’t need to worry. My kids proudly identify as half-Lebanese. My daughter, who is seven, recently produced an A3-sized artwork where she drew and described Lebanese dishes, Lebanese attractions she’d read about in books and Lebanese instruments.
And despite his young age, my son insisted his new daycare change his ‘About me’ poster in the classroom from describing him as Australian (my children have their father’s Anglo-Australian surname) to Australian-Lebanese, because he noticed that the Lebanese flag was missing from his poster but present on that of other children, who didn’t have a non-Lebanese parent.
Still, I can’t help but wonder if that’s enough. Speaking one’s language can be a fundamental part of cultural identity. For me, it’s the biggest barrier between being Lebanese and actually feeling it.
How can I be the bridge between my heritage and my children’s experience of it, if I feel like I am faltering in my own cultural identity? And how had I let that happen?
Once upon a time, my grasp of my mother tongue and my connection to the Lebanese culture was solid. Culture was inherent to our way of life when I was growing up: we socialised with mostly Lebanese families whose language, customs and values were akin to our own; and my parents sent us to a Lebanese school where we learnt our mother tongue.
Speaking one’s language can be a fundamental part of cultural identity
My parents recognised, I think, that they were essentially outnumbered: by our English-speaking friends, the music we listened to on the radio, every program we watched on television. Reaffirming our culture through language classes and our incidental exposure to Arabic-language television programs that echoed through our home was their way of preserving what they could of our heritage.
Although my fluency in my mother tongue was never a given when I was growing up, I now understand that it was a nurtured skill: supported by my mother’s enduring presence in my life because we were a single-income household; enhanced by the constant stream of visitors who spoke it in animated voices in our living room nearly every night of the week; strengthened by my parents’ use of it to us and to one another.
Passing this on to my own children has been infinitely harder: they’re not exposed to the language when I chat to their father, and our work schedules leave us very few opportunities to attend feast days or village parties with the broader Lebanese community (in truth, sitting down to a family meal is a feat). Even attempts at Arabic-language classes were thwarted by the pandemic, and they are yet to start again.
Now, I understand how much my parents would have struggled, and what an achievement it is on their part that I can still speak and understand my language. Of course, recognising this means acknowledging my own failure in passing it on.
I’ll be directing my energy to building a village far from my own village
As I write this, I am thinking of concrete strategies I might employ to increase my children’s incidental exposure to Arabic. Brainstorming shows they might be able to watch on YouTube, using the dinner table as an opportunity to practise language skills so their father might learn alongside them (thus encouraging their own learning), and perhaps making more of an effort to speak in Arabic with other Lebanese families when we socialise, even if that might raise the eyebrows (and perhaps ire) of non-Arabic-speaking people.
It’s hard enough being a second-generation migrant feeling connected to my culture while I live, work and socialise in Australia. As much as I value the diversity of my circles, it also means that it’s limited my children’s exposure to their heritage culture.
Even though I know that that culture is also found in the , I’m now incredibly conscious of the role that community plays in the preservation of culture and specifically language. So I guess that means I’ll be directing my energy to building a village far from my own village, knowing it’s the love of our people and our commonalities that can sustain us.
