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Society & Culture

‘Hold tight to your roots’: The Right to Learn in Mother Tongues

February 22, 2022
Roghiyeh Rezaei
7 min read
International Mother Languages Day is often celebrated by people who no longer live in the country of their birth, the place where they first learned to speak and communicate
International Mother Languages Day is often celebrated by people who no longer live in the country of their birth, the place where they first learned to speak and communicate
Children’s author Darya Hodaei says that every child has the right to be educated in their mother tongue
Children’s author Darya Hodaei says that every child has the right to be educated in their mother tongue
Darya Hodaei has published several books in two languages: English and Azeri-Turkic
Darya Hodaei has published several books in two languages: English and Azeri-Turkic
Hodaei’s book Jirtdan's Halloween tells the story of a naughty but clever Azerbaijani child arriving in Disneyland
Hodaei’s book Jirtdan's Halloween tells the story of a naughty but clever Azerbaijani child arriving in Disneyland

International Mother Languages Day is often celebrated by people who no longer live in the country of their birth, the place where they first learned to speak and communicate in their first language, their mother tongue. For these people — many of them now displaced due to political or social upheavals, economic hardship or persecution on political, religious, or cultural grounds —  marking the day on February 21 is a way of acknowledging their roots and reconnecting with their homeland and their mother tongue. IranWire spoke to an Iranian linguist based in Montreal, Canada, and Darya Hodaei, a Turkish cultural activist and author of multi-cultural children's books, on the relationship between language and identity, and what it means for future generations in the diaspora.

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Mother Tongues and Cultural Identity

In Iran, people who do not speak Persian as their first language are often deprived education in their mother tongue. The Islamic Republic does not publish accurate statistics about citizens who cannot read or write in their mother tongue, but according to international sources, including the CIA Factbook and the World Population Review, between 39 and 46 percent of Iran's population are not Persian speaker and do not speak the language as their first language. And yet, they are forced to use it in school, university, in places of work and for all official matters.

These groups, including Turks, Turkmen, Kurds, Lors, Baluchis, Arabs, Gilakis and Mazandaranis, use their mother tongue only in informal social interactions, with their families, and for everyday conversations.

"As linguists like Noam Chomsky say, language has an inherited and genetic property, in the sense that we have the power to learn it inherently," a senior linguist at McGill University in Canada originally from Iran told IranWire. "But at the same time, learning our mother tongue is essential for learning other languages ​​and to live in today's multilingual world. Therefore, learning our mother tongue as our mothers and fathers and grandparents speak it in the very first years of childhood is essential to a complete realization of our linguistic and social abilities.

“We form many of our social, psychological and cultural groundings in our mother tongue. Individual and collective identity, access to cultural roots, myths, oral history and a sense of belonging to a group.”

IranWire also spoke to ethnic Azerbaijani Darya Hodaei, a qualified pharmacist and author of 10 children's books in English and Turkish based in Florida in the United States.

”Until I immigrated, I had only lived in Tabriz, where everyone is the same. I have always had a good relationship with the Persian language. I learned it very well while in the Iranian educational system, in which Persian is the only language used. I was always a top student."

"But when I had children here in America and decided to speak to my children in my mother tongue, I realized that I did not have enough fluency to teach my mother tongue to my children. Here I was just like Persian speakers who grew up in America and constantly use English words when speaking Persian. It was problematic for me that I could not teach Azerbaijani Turkish to my children in its original form.

"This was common among my friends, and some of them stopped teaching their mother tongue to their children because of this problem," she said. "It is clear that when a centralist system does not allow ethnic groups to learn in their mother tongue and know their culture, individuals will not be able to pass it on to their children. It was just when I came to the United States that I found out more about my native culture and language.”

Hodaei went on be the co-founder of an English Azerbaijani website that teaches the Turkish language in an Azerbaijani accent and introduces Azerbaijani culture to immigrant parents and their children.

A Violation of Rights

"After my children were born, I had an identity problem and it took a lot of time and energy for me to pass on what I am to my children," Hodaei said. "It is the right of children to grow up with the identity that belongs to them and to learn the language that their parents speak."

Hodaei added that children who speak a mother tongue other than the main language of the country of their birth are stigmatized. The fact that they are different is consistently emphasized. "The fact that children, because of the dominant political and cultural system, are not allowed to know their culture and roots, is fundamentally a violation of children's rights. It is their right to be accepted by society in a way that the child is comfortable with and has learned from his or her parents."

She equates the rejection of these children to the experience that other minorities, including people from LGBT communities, encounter. This discrimination is rife and should be taken seriously.

"The feeling of being marginalized because your true identity is not accepted by the system is a violation of the rights of children and a violation of the rights of all human beings," she said.

Encouraging Adult Education is Vital

The linguist IranWire spoke to said it was vital to offer education to children in their native tongue. "Apart from the commitment of parents and others to communicate in their mother tongue, video and audio resources are the best ways to teach children their mother tongue," she said. She added that this also applied to children with learning disabilities.

She said adults who were deprived of this right should not give up. Even later in life, people whose first language is different from the mainstream language they were educated in should pursue further learning in their first language.

"In Canada, in addition to the two European languages brought to the country by the French and English colonizers, indigenous languages, such as Inuit or Inuktut, are also taught in Nunavut schools in north-eastern Canada. In other parts of the world, indigenous peoples teach their language to children.

"Even Netflix here often broadcasts cartoons in both English and French, which are spoken by the majority of the Canadian population," she said. “Of course, the main state television here has both languages."

‘Hold tight to your roots’

Darya Hodaei recalls how, at the time that she and her friends launched the English-Azerbaijani teaching series online, no updated source for Iranians to teach the Turkish language and culture to their children existed.

"We did not even have a simple platform that focused exclusively on the Azerbaijani-Turkic language and culture outside a political context. There was almost no content or animation that children could access and learn."

She points out that many Azerbaijani parents have no choice but to turn to animations produced in the Republic of Azerbaijan or Turkey to learn their language and culture. Many are poor in quality, without current content, or with content that makes little sense to people who don’t live in those countries. They feature people speaking in Turkish accents that are difficult for Azerbaijani children to understand. "I was the only source of my children's Turkish language at home, so when they heard other dialects in Turkish-made cartoons, they did not understand it," Hodaei said. "So I came to the conclusion that maybe I could create it."

At least four of Hodaei’s books are written in both English and the Azerbaijani-Turkic language, and she presents both Azerbaijani and North American cultures. "Below our logo on the website appear the words: 'hold tight to your roots.' My friends have dedicated sections for learning Turkish with an Azerbaijani accent, Azerbaijani Turkish culture and customs, and, of course, animations for children in the Azerbaijani-Turkic language and focusing on its culture."

"One of my books, Halloween Jirdtan, has been one of the best-selling [Azerbaijani-Turkic] books on Amazon and is very popular among the Azerbaijani Turkish diaspora population. Halloween was approaching and the main character of this book, Jirdtan — or the naughty and clever Azerbaijani child that many of us have heard about in our childhood stories — comes to the West and to Disneyland and something happens to him there. I think this combination of several cultures has been attractive to people.

"Our children need to be able to learn about their native culture and language, far removed from the political issues and discrimination of Iranian-American society. Unfortunately, here, as an Azerbaijani Turk from Iran, I see the Iranian diaspora has the same singular approach that the government in Iran has taken. When we appeal to the diaspora people of the Republic of Azerbaijan, they try to ignore the part of our identity that is Iranian. These two things are the same to me, and I want to teach our language and culture to our children in a world where such discrimination is no longer justified, and for our children to benefit from the facilities available to Persian-speaking children."

 

Related coverage: 

Living on the Margins in Iran: East Azerbaijan

Poverty in Iran: West Azerbaijan

Iran Arrests Azerbaijani Activists Demanding Ethnic Rights

Azerbaijani Language Activist Jailed in "Five-Minute" Court Hearing

#Manofarsi Hashtag Highlights Language Discrimination in Iran

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