From my academic research, I concluded that bilingualism and multilingualism in second and third generation Indian children in America is a product of parents and/or grandparents passing down the language to the next generation. However, monolingualism increases in each successive generation due to the prevalence of English in America and in the Indian education system. Everyone has their own personal experience with language (Reich). Being able to speak in one's parents' or grandparents' native tongue(s), though, can increase the strength of familial and intragenerational relationships and cultural identity, a conclusion drawn from research and the survey, but also result in code-switching. Code-switching is "typically defined in linguistics as a mixing of languages and speech patterns in conversation" (Mujumdar).  

Survey

A survey was conducted on 41 anonymous people from ages 14-22 years old. 25 (61%) were multilingual and 16 (39%) were monolingual. There was a wide range of backgrounds and mother tongues. One way all multilingual children in the sample learned the language was through family members. There was a wide range of responses as to why monolingual Indians did not learn their parents or grandparents’ native tongue(s). However, half report that they did not start early enough. 

At the start of the survey, background information was collected to identify any factors influencing whether or not they learned the language. For other questions, the respondents were asked to answer on a numerical scale of 1-5. 1 was the lowest and 5 was the highest. The result of the survey is communicated through the images below and in the conclusion section.

What have you learned about your culture or identity based on conversations in the language?

Aarya - “I feel like knowing your language really has nothing to do with knowing your culture. Because my sister, she’s very cultured and she doesn’t know Gujarati. She like understands it, but she can’t speak it. But I don’t think that could stop you from learning anything about your culture." 

How has not knowing the language impacted your life?

Trisha expresses that when she is “with other Indian families and…the children can like talk to the parents,” “I just feel kind of left out of the conversation.” 

I tracked my progress in learning Telugu through videos. There are 8 videos in all, ranging from 3 to 6:30 minutes, and the first seven have a different theme or set of vocabulary and grammar that I learned. All of the videos show my progression in learning Telugu and how I tried to find different methods to teach myself. (The videos have better quality when put in full screen!) 

• Vlog 1: Beginning the Process

• Vlog 2: More Conversation Words

• Vlog 3: Food and Cooking

• Vlog 4: Health and Emergency

• Vlog 5: Nature

• Vlog 6: Travel

• Vlog 7: Activities

• Vlog 8: Conversation with grandmother

During the first time Avva and I had a conversation (not discussed in website), it was a small conversation and occurred when I was half-way through my learning process. Though my dad still helped me with certain sentences, the conversation was not surface-level. One moment I will always remember is all of us laughing when Avva jokingly blamed my dad for never teaching me. The next conversation (the only one shown in the vlogs) was the long 10-minute conversation, and I sometimes struggled to find the right words to say in Telugu, but I understood most of what she was speaking. The conversation was natural, and the topics flowed from health to food to activities. It was special to be able to finally communicate with my grandmother, and I feel that the language barrier is finally coming down in my family. 

Though it is important to learn languages to understand your identity within your culture and family, people with a personal connection should not be the only ones learning these languages. Multilingualism can maintain language-speaking populations while providing a global perspective to speakers and encouraging more understanding through cross-cultural relationships.  

Advice on Capstones

• Choose a topic that genuinely interests you and that you want to learn more about

• Develop a research question and sub-questions that you want to answer so that you can efficiently collect information for your project

• Have time-management skills—organize yourself and create a reasonable schedule that you can stick to

• Be creative with your product!