Personal Narrative: My Bilingual Education

In my first year of preschool (I’d just turned three), I remember reading BOB books and writing complete sentences by myself while my classmates would be counting beads or trying to see if a ball of foil or a rectangle of foil would float better in a tub of water. I really enjoyed all the other activities, but every time I’d take an activity box out of its cubby, a teacher would gently guide me back to my little table, back to my books and pencils. Looking back now, I realize that she had noticed potential in me and had been gently pushing me to embrace my abilities.

I remember going with my mother to Barnes & Noble in the Pittsburgh snow to read, though I was really only doing so for the cheese pretzel she’d inevitably buy me from the cafe

Moving to America as an eight month-old caused my bilingual upbringing. By the time I was four, I could speak both languages well.

Relocating to California’s Silicon Valley at the age of five was accompanied by a large push to connect back with my roots further.

My family befriended many others who spoke the same language as we did, among other Indian languages, so I was constantly in an environment with many languages floating in and out of my ears, which is one of the ways I picked up other Indian languages, like Malayalam and Telugu, which are languages my mother and father respectively grew up speaking (simultaneously with Tamil).

Due to the large Indian population here, there were also many Indian language classes in the area. My parents sent me to Hindi classes in first grade as in India, many students learned Hindi as a second or even third language. For some reason, unfortunately, the class was catered toward native speakers, which I am not. My parents pulled me out of the class in a couple of weeks as a

I actually did end up learning Hindi, but I did not need a separate Hindi class in order to do so. Watching films, listening to music, and hearing others speak it on a daily basis helped me connect words to their meanings using their Sanskrit roots, and now I can speak it at a decent level. My Malayalam and Telugu have also improved in this way. Additionally, Sanskrit and Hindi use the same script, which means by learning how to read and write in Sanskrit, I also learned to read and write in Hindi.

I have been learning Bharatanatyam, a classical dance form, for twelve years now. The songs that accompany the items are of various languages, and my knowledge of Sanskrit and Tamil helped me connect lyric meanings to my expressions easily. This kicked off a snowball effect. Dance helped me appreciate language more, and my appreciation for language helped me love dance more.

These experiences helped shape my way of learning, helping me connect words in English to their respective roots to help me with spelling. Spanish with its Latin roots and Moor influences was enjoyable and interesting for me from the start while many of my classmates saw it as a chore they had to do in order to meet credit requirements. I noticed similar words between Spanish and Sanskrit, something none of my classmates had been able to