Search for My Tongue Language and Communication Quotes

We're guessing that the "you" in this poem has never heard of "tongue" being used to represent a language. Sure, you could say "I lost my language," but would it have the same effect as saying "I've lost my tongue"?

By the speaker's reckoning, knowing two languages is the worst of both worlds. Firstly, you have to make do with a foreign language that you can never truly "know," or connect with. What's worse, though, is that using the foreign language puts the native language at risk of being forgotten. What do you make of that concern? Is she right or not?

It's got to be confusing—thinking in one language, talking in another. At times, those wires cross and what results is something of a language mash-up. Tex-Mex, or Spanglish, is a good example of this, where words and phrases from both English and Spanish are used together. Apparently, though, that's not an option for our speaker.

This seems like a legitimate fear. Languages are a lot like muscles. If you don't use them, you tend to lose them. Without the opportunity to speak in your home tongue, it could be possible that you would lose fluency over time. What's worse for our speaker is that doing so would separate her from an important connection to her sense of self.

Here we have a kind of survival of the fittest. We can just imagine the native tongue saying, "This mouth ain't big enough for the both of us." Is that how language really works, though? It sure seems to in our speaker's estimation.

This final image is a hopeful one. Maybe it's harder to lose your native tongue than the speaker fears. Or maybe, because this is only really happening while she dreams, our speaker is simply fantasizing here. It's never made clear, but we'd like to think that our speaker keeps her connection to her home language, since it's obviously so important to her.