The Icelandic Canadian - 01.04.2001, Síða 25

Vol. 56 #2
THE ICELANDIC CANADIAN
63
Recovering My Mother Tongue
by Lillian Vilborg
When you lose your language, you
lose the sound, the rhythm, the forms of
your unconscious. Deep memories,
resonances, sounds of childhood come
through the mother tongue - when these
are missing the brain cuts off
connections.1
Mine was the generation that gave up its
mother tongue. It opted for unilingualism, for
the dominant Canadian language, English. As
a result, we were separated from our parents
and grandparents and aunts and uncles who
settled comfortably into intimate conversation
which excluded us, but for the odd word or
phrase. When they spoke Icelandic they
sounded sure, the language lilted musically to
our ears, they were softer, quieter, funnier.
They smiled and laughed a lot. The language
was them, they were the language.
On my first trip to Iceland in 1971 I was
amazed and chagrined to see and hear the
extent of multilingual capability amongst my
extended family there. At a dinner party in
Reykjavik people slipped from Icelandic to
Danish to English with ease. We were the
only unilingual people there. It was embar-
rassing. When I had to I spoke very broken
and rudimentary Icelandic to often disastrous
results. I definitely didn't speak the language.
When, in 1979,1 decided to return to uni-
versity to study law, I remember saying to the
Dean, "I don't know why I'm doing this. What
I really want to do is study Icelandic language
and literature." He looked at me as if I had
four eyes. But my desire to learn Icelandic ran
deep. It stayed with me, quietly nagging at
me. Then one day it stared at me insistently.
It had become a necessity. The protagonist in
a book I was writing landed in 19th century
Iceland. Now I had to learn Icelandic, other-
wise how could I do the research necessary to
complete my project. So twenty six years
after I first visited Iceland, I finally deter-
mined to change my unilingual state. I had it
in my mind that I was at least going to learn
to read the language during my nine month
stay. But I hadn't been in Reykjavik long
before the sound of the language enchanted
me, and I longed to learn to speak it. I sensed
that if I re-created the cadence, the rhythm,
the vocabulary, the people and culture would
come alive to me, and I and my history would
open up to me.
One of two fortunate recipients of the
Government of Iceland Scholarship in
1997/98,1 studied the first of a three year pro-
gramme in the University of Iceland's pro-
gramme to teach foreigners Icelandic, Islensk
fyrir erlenda studenta. Besides attending
classes without fail, preparing carefully for
class, doing all the assignments, I exposed
myself as much as possible to the language. I
did all my transactions at the stores and the
bank in Icelandic, no matter how pathetic and
broken my speech. I listened religiously to the
radio—Ras 1, the old fashioned station where
they talk a lot, read stories and whole books
aloud. I found television less satisfactory
(except for the news and a few locally pro-
duced programs) because so much of it is in
English, either British or American, with
Icelandic subtitles. (I did read the subtitles to
see how something was said in English as
compared to the way it is expressed in
Icelandic.) I attended symphonies, plays,
opera. I went to lectures and lectures and lec-
tures, and usually only heard individual
words, not full sentences. I didn’t catch the
complete meaning, and usually didn't under-
stand the context. Except in our classes,
where the professors were skilled at speaking
Icelandic slowly, articulating clearly, using
accessible vocabulary, so that the unaccus-
1. Gerda Lerner, Why History Matters, New York: Oxford UP, 1997, 39.