PGR VOICES: Between Two Tongues: Reflections on International Mother Language Day

by Shukanto Das | PhD student

Every year, on 21 of February, we celebrate International Mother Language Day, a day when we honour the languages we grew up speaking. As someone born and raised in India and who has spent over four years studying in the UK, I take this opportunity to reflect on my relationship with language and invite you to do the same. 

Our mother tongue is special. It is the first language we learn as children. For me, Bengali is the language of my childhood, my family, and my earliest memories. But my vocabulary is richer than that. I grew up surrounded by friends whose mother tongues were Hindi and Gujarati. We shared words, expressions, and ways of seeing the world. This multilingual childhood shaped how I think. Sometimes my thoughts flow in Bengali, sometimes they borrow structures from Hindi or expressions from Gujarati. Our mother tongues are powerful learning tools. When we learn in our first language, we understand better. We can explore ideas freely. But I often wonder: do we value our mother tongues enough as adults? Many of us slowly push our first languages aside as we grow in our careers and academia. We focus on polishing our English instead of celebrating our linguistic roots. 

Oftentimes, translation becomes painfully visible. I have sat in rooms where I had good ideas perfectly formed in my mother tongue but struggled to express them as effectively in English. I have watched peers speak effortlessly while I built sentences, conscious of my accent and grammar. In those moments, I felt small and invisible. My ideas were weighed down by my ability to express them in a language that was not my first. It might especially be frustrating when one has put so much work in thinking and still struggles to contribute fluently in meetings. All that knowledge gets trapped behind a language barrier. 

If you are reading this and nodding, know that you are not alone. Millions of us live between languages. We might be better at writing than speaking in English, but that is not a weakness, it is just a different way of being good. I keep reminding myself that it is not something to be embarrassed about. It takes courage to speak in a language that is not our first. There is strength in moving between languages. I am consciously trying to stop seeing my multilingual mind as a problem to fix. Yes, my thoughts take a longer journey from my brain to my mouth, and while mental translation might slow us down sometimes, it means we see the world through multiple lenses. And sometimes, something wonderful happens. Days when I think and speak in English without that extra step in my head. These moments are reassuring. They remind me that I am making progress and that this gets easier. 

This International Mother Language Day, I am proud of my mother tongue. I am equally proud of the effort it takes to speak in English. If you are on this journey, too, let us be proud of the fact that our voices, with their accents and pauses, do not just add to the conversation, they make it more human for everyone.