To start, my language profile has been made through generations of my family. I was able to learn many things about my family’s history that I never knew before but it made me understand my background a lot more. It saddens me that I never asked about the history of my family’s language to my grandparents themselves when they were alive, but I was able to learn a little from my one grandma. I think I would’ve gotten a more in-depth explanation if I had that chance but am still quite content with what I know now. It makes me interested in learning some of the languages that my family members used to speak, especially since I find learning new languages to be a fun and exciting experience. Things are a lot different than how they were back and it is a lot easier to access a language course which I feel very thankful for.
When having this conversation with my parents about our family’s language history we started off talking about my great grandparents. I never met them since they died before I was born but I think it would have been quite interesting to have met and learn from them. My mom’s grandparents grew up in both Germany and Sweden therefore they could speak, read and understand German and Swedish. My dad’s grandparents grew up in Germany as well and Scotland which made them also able to speak, read and write Scottish and German. During their early twenties, my mom’s grandparents immigrated to Minnesota in the United States and then a little town in Saskatchewan called Kipling, and my dad’s grandparents immigrated to a little town called Aberdeen. This change made them be forced to learn English and unfortunately as time passed by they slowly stopped speaking and using the languages they did when growing up, and just stuck to speaking English.
When my great grandparents had children; my mom and dad’s parents, they were still using their language a little bit around the house. They would teach my grandparents some words and slowly, they would understand some of what they were saying. But, because they never lived in an environment that solely spoke German, Scottish or Swedish, and never got taught the language other than in their homes, they never picked up on how to truly speak it. Both my dad’s and mom’s parents lived in Saskatchewan all their lives. Moving from a few different small cities in Saskatchewan to then Regina. Once my grandparents moved out of their parent’s house they heard those languages a lot less and slowly started losing their understanding of the few words they knew. They never took any other language classes nor did they try to keep up with the languages they somewhat knew. In their school, they only learned English because “Between 1900 and 1950 the teaching of French was abolished in the public schools of nearly all provinces of English Canada” (Mackey, 2010, p.30). Due to this, they didn’t have many opportunities to learn new languages since it wasn’t honored and encouraged. This made them only English speakers with some past knowledge of their parents’ languages.
Once my grandparents had my parents all they ever knew was English. They never got the opportunity to learn Scottish, German or Swedish and have expressed to me that they wish they would’ve learned a language back when they were younger and stuck with it. When they were younger and in school, there weren’t many language classes provided like there are now. But, “after 1967, however, some French (an hour a day) was allowed in school, increased in 1974, and an Official Minority Language Office was created in 1980, these services were later extended to heritage and Native languages (Mackey, 2010, p.52). I was very happy to read about this change that happened in the education system back then because I think that it is so good to be given such a wide variety of languages to choose from as many people have different preferences on what they are interested in. My parents were very young when learning French and so they did not comprehend it very well and don’t remember anything. There were a low number of classes available that were free and that you didn’t need to pay money to take at their age. Therefore, learning a new language because they wanted to over needing to wasn’t their main priority as they had many other things to pay for.
Transitioning over to me and my language timeline, I am fluent in English but that is not the only language I understand or speak. Throughout my elementary years of education, having a french class was in the curriculum and you did not have a choice to not go. My teacher wasn’t the best but I still found learning a new language to be very interesting and saw it as something that could be helpful in my future. When transitioning from elementary to high school I decided to take French as an elective. The main reason is that I was told that the teacher is great and you learn a lot but in a fun way. This was true. It has for sure come in handy sometimes as well and although I don’t speak it fluently I still pick up on certain words or sentences. I then decided to further my knowledge of French and take it as the language elective needed in the faculty of education. Looking back at languages and what I know, when I was in high school I found and used this app “Duolingo” to help me learn French better. I explored the other languages that they teach you and thought German would be cool to learn and so I know a few sayings and words in German but definitely not to the extent of the amount of French I know. I have an older brother and he went to the same elementary school and would know some French words but he went to a different high school than me and picked to learn German over French as his elective. Hearing him saying words and studying for tests made me interested which is what also got me more interested in learning some German. I think it is so good that the education system has allowed languages to be learned other than strictly English. Once I started University I was offered to take Cree as one of my language electives but as stated above, I decided to take French. Although I chose a different language to learn, due to residential schools and people being stripped away from their Indigenous languages, it made me very happy they offer Cree as I see it as a way of trying to fix their wrongs that were made in the past and bring Indigenous language back. The wrong being about residential schools and how they “were chronically understaffed and underfunded and became sites of physical, sexual and psychological abuse, often including punishment of indigenous children for speaking their home languages as well as systematic malnutrition, inadequate shelter, overcrowding, poor medical care, the spread of lethal and untreated infectious diseases and the substitution of harsh physical labour for school work.”( Haque and Patrick, 2015, p.29). I have never experienced true language loss but I can’t imagine what that would be like. Both my parents and I speak English and the only language I speak on odd occasions is French where I may read or speak it but English is my main language as I speak it in public, at home, and everywhere we go.
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