I’m taking an Irish literature course this semester and I am learning a lot, honestly. The history and the literature of Ireland is truly fascinating and typically ignored, in my experience, so I really am glad I took it. It truly is a crime that we’re taught so many of these authors from a British lens, if we’re even taught them at all. Recently, we were discussing the Gaelic Society and William Butler Yeats, and conversations about authenticity came up. Can you really be Irish and rep your Irishness in your artwork if you don’t speak Irish? Especially when you’re descended (presumably) from the class of Protestant ascendants?
Of course, the conversation isn’t that simple, as accessibility and connection to the language also becomes an issue, especially when your country is colonized and assimilation ideologies and programs are instituted in order to strip you of your mother tongue. Yeats had no connection to Irish as an Irishman so he never learned it. He primarily relied on the translations of Lady Gregory. Contemporarily, for the modern Irish artist, the conversation also changes drastically, despite the bare bones of the situation.
That being said, I am not Irish enough to really weigh in on this conversation in any significant way. However, when we were discussing this, the concept really struck a cord with me. As a Chicano, as a person descended of people who have been colonized, the idea of the loss of a mother language is significant for me. The forced establishment of language in Irish history reminded me heavily of the US policies that forced Mexicans and Mexican-Americans to learn and speak English—a forced assimilation that was traditionally done in schools and was also heavily based on white supremacist and eugenicist ideologies. Kids in schools would be forced to speak English else they’d be punished. They would be considered and labeled stupid or “un-American” if they spoke Spanish.1 This trauma left its mark as many people who were ashamed of speaking Spanish never taught their children their mother tongue.
We see the effect of this to this day. Many Spanish-speaking parents don’t and/or can’t teach their children Spanish for many reasons, but among them are a deep-seated shame. Also, many working class parents don’t have the time to teach Spanish to their primarily-English speaking children, so eventually the English language just takes over due to sheer practicality and lack of exposure. This is how we get the so-called “no sabo” kids, who get critiqued for something that really isn’t their fault.2
This forced assimilation also applies to Nahuatl, one of the languages of the indigenous folks of North America. This language was stripped from the survivors of colonization and replaced with Spanish. Now, while there are still many speakers of the language left, stories about grandparents who were too ashamed of speaking an “indio” language refused to teach it to their children. Their children grew up speaking Spanish and there’s a good chance that those children, if in the US, refused to teach their children Spanish and such, we have a double linguistic colonization.
I was writing a poem the other day and I had a bit of Spanish in it. As I considered the line, I thought about translating it to Nahuatl, instead, as it would make more contextual sense within the poem. There’s only one problem:
My Nahuatl is not good. In fact, I don’t speak or write Nahuatl.
As a baby Chicano, I cut my teeth on some more radical and reappropriated indigenous ideologies, meaning indigenous ideas that were taken by Chicanos and reapplied. Some of these helped, but some of these hindered. Even now, I have to be very careful to fact-check my own knowledge when it comes to certain facts and references I had been told about.
During this time, I attended some Nahuatl language classes; they were casual, not college-credited or even endorsed, but they were fun regardless. Of course, I never became fluent and I certainly cannot read the language with any degree of clarity. The most I can do is pronounce some words and identify some meanings of a few words. Which, to be fair, is more than the average person, but still. It’s not much.
There’s much I don’t know. I was told there’s no yodelling in Nahuatl, but a lot of native and taught speakers I have run into online pronounce the “-tl” at the end of words, instead of letting it be silent, like I was taught.3 I was told the “x” was the same as the “ch,” so that meant that we use “Xicano” and “Chicano” interchangeably—it seems, like no, we can’t.4 I was informed of some connotative definitions that trumped literal definitions. And this was an experience that I shared with people who didn’t attend the same classes, did not know the same people, or even the same college—this confusion moves away from the personal, in some aspects.
To be fair, much of this can be attributed to things like the evolution of language, as Classical Nahuatl is bound to be different from Contemporary Nahuatl. Wild things can happen when you turn a pictographic language into a lettered alphabet and the people translating and doing the work think its demonic and are working with heavy cultural and racial biases. It can also be regional as different people are speaking the language differently, too. We can also be experiencing knowledge with previous gaps that have been filled in by sources that we might never be able to trace. The problem is that I simply do not know and finding out is harder than one might think.
At the same time, I was also taught that this was my language and the acts of colonization that my ancestors and my community have endured stripped it away from me. That if it was not for Spanish greed, I would be speaking it fluently, probably with something else as my secondary language. Obviously, assertions like these condense the realities of Mexican colonization and immigration into rather simplistic terms and experiences; in that same vein, it also relies on the upkeep of mestizaje (and its ideologies) as its primary proof. It’s complex and, in many ways, can be problematic.
All of this was running through my mind as I tried to translate some of this English and Spanish into Nahuatl, with the help of online translators. It was partially an accessibility issue but also an authenticity issue. I identify as Chicano, and I am deeply Mexican. But I would need to unfurl the leaves of my family tree at least a few generations to even find someone who may have spoken Nahuatl. So should I be using it?5
Different people would have different answers for me, and that’s forever an incredibly complicated question. Because I don’t speak Nahuatl, and I have a funky Spanish, due to it being relegated to my secondary language. My tongue has been colonized in ways that I am still trying to unravel and as much as I would love to undertake a study of Nahuatl right now, I don’t have the time.
So as much as I would love to include some Nahuatl in my poem, it truly does not seem to be the move right now, at this moment.
Much of this conversation is tied up in concepts of identity and I don’t have the same issues that Yeats may have had—I am Chicano, I am Mexican, I am American. I am all three and I am adorable as fuck. All of those are realities. Identity is messy and complex and all of the anxieties and questions I have are as valid as my assertions regarding my identity. So while I may be holding off on the Nahuatl for now, it’s not a statement for always. Later, once I am able to connect with myself, my roots, and with the language a bit more, I’ll start using it in my art. I will.
Totazque, readers.
Eugenics and the criminalization and othering of Mexicans played a big role here—many Mexican-American kids, children of immigrants, were prime targets for Eugenicists in the early 20th century, in Los Angeles. I’m currently trying to track down some of the scholarly research so I can review it! I’ll write it up when I have a chance.
One day, I might explore this concept a little more: the way that Spanish functions as a marker of culture, beyond simple communication in Mexican-American/Chicano spaces and the way we accidentally exclude people while blaming them for their own exclusion.
To this day, I can’t find a concrete answer for this?? If someone can direct me to this information, I would love to be directed, plsssss.
To my knowledge, there is a subtle difference between the two terms, too! “Xicana/o” refers to an individual who is more connected to their ancestral roots that someone who is “Chicana/o.” While both terms identify the user as having indigenous roots, “Xicana/o” is more hardcore about it.
This is a rhetorical question, btw. I know what I’m about.