Mother Tongue
The Stoop
Hana Baba and Leila Day
4.4 • 1.2K Ratings
🗓️ 10 August 2023
⏱️ 33 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
What’s it like when everyone at home speaks a language you don’t understand? That’s the story of Claudia, a Ghanaian American who grew up not speaking her home language —her ‘Mother Tongue’. But everybody else did, including her own siblings. The effects were real: disconnect, frustration, shame, and at some point a full on identity crisis. We also ask other people in the diaspora if they speak their home languages, and Hana contends with her own kids’ lack of fluency, and what it means.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | شو تحون جيدا |
| 0:24.0 | هيا |
| 0:27.0 | هيا |
| 0:28.0 | هيا |
| 0:29.0 | هيا |
| 0:30.0 | لقد أستطيع ماذا تتعلم about |
| 0:32.5 | حسنا، حسنا، لليلا، أتبع بشكل أبوحك |
| 0:36.0 | أعلم أن تقول بحيليلا، حسنا، هل تتجد؟ |
| 0:39.1 | and that today we're going to talk about language |
| 0:42.4 | حسنا، حسنا |
| 0:43.6 | أعرف، لليلا، it's one thing that you didn't understand what I just said in Arabic |
| 0:49.5 | that's fine because you're not expected to right |
| 0:52.8 | but it's a whole other story |
| 0:55.2 | عندما مرحباً لا تستخدم |
| 0:57.7 | هو من ذلك |
| 1:00.3 | يمكن أن يكون مرحباً |
| 1:02.2 | و it can even be traumatic |
| 1:05.2 | و like what is it like to grow up in a house |
| 1:08.2 | where everybody's speaking a language |
| 1:11.2 | you don't understand |
| 1:13.2 | I really don't know |
| 1:15.2 | but we need to stoop this out |
... |
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