When your mother tongue sounds like trauma - how to teach yourself your language
By Christy Ku
The majority of the abuse I received throughout my childhood was delivered in my mother tongue. As a result, it’s incredibly hard for me to now learn it without being distressed or having flashbacks.
Abuse is already isolating and very hard to talk about. People like me are often given the additional burden of having to translate the verbal abuse we receive to those we’re seeking help from. We find ourselves searching for the equivalent words in another language and culture, knowing we risk mistranslating.
And when we mistranslate, the other person doesn’t understand the gravity of what was said and dismiss it. Or, they’re far too shocked and then we feel we have to manage their emotions and clarify our translations.
So, we stop trying to make others understand and we stop talking about it. Eventually when we’re able to distance ourselves from our abusers, we also end up distancing ourselves from our languages.
Over time, we might want to learn our languages again, reconnect with our identities and heritages, regain skills or just no longer be afraid to learn. But if you’re like me, you end up hitting this block and not understanding why it’s so emotionally hard. I see social media account after account of non-native speakers whose entire brand circles around their gap year abroad, and how learning this language is easy. So why is it so hard for me when it’s my own mother tongue?
Once again, we’re feeling like we have to translate our trauma to those who don’t understand. Forgetting languages doesn’t mean you forget trauma. When the two are so deeply intertwined, we cannot isolate them or compare ourselves to those who have never experienced it.
Over time, I’ve slowly developed methods to teach myself Mandarin and Cantonese again. Here’s some tips on how to reshape your approach to languages and to give yourself the safe environment you never had.
Let yourself cry
No, seriously.
Let yourself feel, process and release emotions. You’ve had a hard time and it’s okay to feel frustrated, sad and angry that someone ruined your relationship with languages.
It might feel childish to cry about it - but there’s nothing wrong with feeling childish. There is a hurt child inside that stays with us throughout life and needs to be nurtured.
Find what system and environment works for you
Personally, I won’t take in-person classes or online classes with other people, at least for now. I much prefer completely independent learning in my own home. Here, I’m safe, I can go at my own speed and process my emotions safely.
Classes are unlikely to provide the mental support I need and I don’t want to dissociate or have flashbacks during classes and then have to explain myself. If I’m learning the word for “orange” and for some reason that sets off a memory for me, let me process it in the privacy of my bedroom.
Learn how to learn
School doesn’t teach you to learn. It teaches you to memorise and then recite in the right way. The system is set to get as many people as possible through school and uses the easiest but far from the best way to measure “progress”.
So how do you actually absorb and apply information without working towards grades?
I highly recommend this free course on Coursera* (https://www.coursera.org/learn/learning-how-to-learn ) by Professor Barbara Oakley, who is an absolute badass (at one point, she casually mentions she worked at the South Pole Station in Antartica, has learnt Russian, holds two degrees and a Masters in Electrical and Computer Engineering. I think she definitely knows how to learn).
It’s a very well structured course, applicable for anything you’re learning and Professor Oakley is a very gentle and encouraging online tutor. Informed by neuroscience and studies on social behaviours, it’s really helped me unpack and understand behaviours, approaches to learning and find ways to make knowledge actually make sense.
*not sponsored! It’s just a very useful course.
Start by learning a neighbouring language
Oftentimes, learning our mother tongue is entangled with childhood, bad memories and trauma. By starting all over again with a new neighbouring language, it allows you the freedom to begin from scratch and provides a different entry into your mother tongue.
When I started learning Korean, I was surprised and delighted to learn some words sound like Cantonese. For example, “time” in Korean is 시간 (sigan) which sounds like 时间 ([si4] [gaan3]). It was like walking with a new friend, bumping into someone I hadn’t seen for a while and realising we have mutual friends.
It also forces your brain to approach meaning in a different way. Normally, we learn a word in our mother tongue and find its equivalent in English. Introducing a neighbouring language means you find parallels in your mother tongue alongside the English equivalent. This shifts you away from just translating to understanding.
When learning languages, we want to move away from just translating. Very young children learn language by naming meaning or objects. So when we study a language, we want to move away from New Language translated to Main Language to get the meaning. We want to get from New Language to meaning immediately.
Praise yourself for the bare minimum
Have you ever been praised for the bare minimum? Or have you only ever punished for being close to perfect?
For me, perfect was expected and mistakes were intolerable. As a result I still find myself only honing in on mistakes, rather than celebrating the whole.
If you look at a block of text and all you can read is one word - congratulate yourself! If being hard on yourself worked, it would have already.
I like to literally give myself a little round of applause, much in the way we clap for babies when they do a simple action. I want to replace the awful sounds of criticism and memories of anger in my head with an innocent, happy one.
Stopping and starting is better than permanently giving up
Go as slow as you want. You have no tests, no deadlines, nothing to prove any more. Take your time to work through the materials and process the emotions and memories it brings up.
Do little bursts of learning that are as short as you want. If you leave months between 10 minute lessons, it’s better than never doing it.
In fact, it’s called spaced repetition - letting yourself review past lessons after weeks or months.
It’s natural to forget things you’ve learnt, and with mental illness it can affect your memory even more, so be kind to yourself.
Reviewing or even relearning strengthens the connections in your brain. There’s no rush.
Approach learning new things like you’re a child
There is no shame for having the reading comprehension of a 3 year old in your mother tongue.
As a poet, writer and someone who works with words on a complex level on a daily basis, it’s intensely frustrating to suddenly feel illiterate. I find myself staring at a dim sum menu for 10 minutes, when I could simply glance at it if it was in English.
When we learn new things, we approach it with nothing. We are all newborns before what we do not understand.
It was unrealistic and unfair that we were expected to be at the level of an experienced adult immediately. Mistakes are how we learn - this isn’t a cliche that applies for other people and you have to be perfect immediately. This is true for you too.
Use grounding techniques
It’s incredibly easy to get swept up in past trauma when we’re directly handling triggers. I use a lot of different methods at the same time to keep myself anchored. The main thing is to engage your senses:
Scents are a fantastic way to stay in your present self. Scented candles, diffusers, or even just dabbing a little essential oil on your wrists and palms to have a sniff now and then are very powerful.
Play background noise; whether it’s instrumental music, ambience soundscapes on YouTube - or both on hard days.
Fidget toys - yes, crack out those fight spinners! My anxiety can manifest as scratching my body or face, so having something to keep my hands occupied is crucial.
Have a snack. Cut yourself some fruit for once! Taste is an amazing way to ground yourself. You don’t have to use food as a reward - you can just have it whilst you learn.
Don’t tell anyone you don’t trust
If you’re still in contact with those who hurt you in your mother tongue, do not tell them you’re learning. It can be so tempting to chase their validation or approval. Don’t do it because you think they’ll be proud of you. Don’t give them a way to destroy the progress you’ve made.
Only tell people who you know will be behind you, who will surround you with encouragement, who will call you a multilingual queen for knowing two phrases. We’ve had so much discouragement - why not allow absolute celebration for once?
It’s been a long journey. I know at some point, it’s going to get easier and everything I’ve learnt will make sense as complete whole. I’ve been stitching and pricking my fingers, and one day I’ll be able to look up and find I’ve made a whole tapestry.
Until then, I’ll be eating breadsticks at 11pm, clicking away on Duolingo whilst “Witchy Coffee Shop Ambience” (https://youtu.be/xeMdp4wqrTw ) plays on YouTube.
They may have taken my childhood, but they can’t take away my languages too.
Christy Ku is a London based poet, performer, photographer and workshop facilitator. She’s worked with organisations such as the BBC, Sky Arts, Apples & Snakes and the Barbican on projects including poetry films, spoken word tracks and theatre shows. Christy is the founder of BESEA Poets.