Fonts teach us what is considered legitimate. Without realizing it, I learned the same hierarchy through language. English is the Times New Roman of the world I grew up in: expected, rewarded, and relied upon. On the other hand, my mother tongue Marathi, no matter how culturally significant, functioned more like a decorative font: beautiful and rich, but optional.
At home, both fonts exist, with Marathi often interjected with English words in between. My parents would speak to me in our mother tongue, correcting my grammar and encouraging me to speak the language as well. Sometimes I would, but within a few weeks, I’d revert right back to English, finding comfort in what the rest of society trusts and rewards.
English was the default setting at school: in-class participation points, summer program applications, and teachers praising “articulate” answers. With Marathi, on the other hand, there was never anything on the line: no grades depended on my fluency, and no friendships formed on the basis of sharing my mother tongue. I cared a lot about Indian culture and our food, but apparently my commitment to the language didn’t match my devotion to the cuisine.
Because understanding spoken Marathi was all I needed to thrive at home, I became only partially fluent, often blending Marathi and English in the same sentence. And although I’m capable of comprehending conversations, jokes, and even arguments, I hesitate when it’s my turn to speak. Not because I don’t care, but because I’ve never felt the real need to practice it, become fluent, and speak with others. Fluency doesn’t follow effort—it follows convenience. You can try to learn a new language. Others can encourage you to use it. Your Spanish teacher can force you to use it in her class. But ultimately, once class ends and you sit down at the cafeteria, you’ve long forgotten about verb conjugations and are probably excited to put off that homework until the day before it’s due. Even after high school and beyond college, you’ll continue to shy away from foreign languages and tug a little tighter on English; you’ll be spending hours agonizing over your long email to your boss or a detailed performance review for a colleague, all while Duolingo spams your inbox.
But none of this is our fault. It’s not your Spanish teachers’ fault, it’s not your parents’ fault, and it’s definitely not your fault. Some might argue that parents should enforce heritage language more, but enforcement only lasts until the moment it’s no longer necessary. You can force a child to use a decorative font for a while, but eventually, they’ll get back to the one that gets them taken seriously—the one that everyone else uses. Times New Roman wins again.
When a system constantly rewards one language and treats all others as simply decorative, losing languages over time becomes inevitable.
Still, acknowledgement of this hierarchy doesn’t mean surrendering to it. Preserving heritage languages means we can’t simply inherit them; we have to learn them, practice them, and speak them with intention. Marie Wilcox, the last fluent speaker of the Wukchumni language, took it upon herself to preserve a cultural heritage that she cherished so deeply. This project took two decades of work alongside her daughters, who had just begun learning Wukchumni. After her death, her daughters continued Wilcox’s revitalization efforts by making new improvements to the dictionary, leading in-person classes, and forming partnerships with other Native American tribes.
In a 2014 op-ed, Wilcox recounts, “I left my [American] Indian language behind after my grandma’s death. I never really needed to speak it again.” Like many heritage speakers, she did not abandon her language because of shame or rejection, but only because she no longer needed it. She communicated with the rest of her family primarily in English, and Wukchumni became a memory that rarely resurfaced.
When the rest of the world is so strongly tied to one language, other languages fade into the background, until they are spoken less and practiced less, and ultimately forgotten. By stepping into her culture once more, Wilcox was not only able to remind herself of the beauty and richness of her language, but also create resources to educate the rest of the world.
Like Wilcox, I want to begin again. I want to learn Marathi beyond just comprehension. I want to help carry my language beyond my generation. And I want to preserve a culture I cherish so deeply. But achieving all this means I have to choose discomfort: awkward sentences, grammatical mistakes, and all. Writing this down feels easier than following through, but noticing what’s missing and choosing to find it again might be a start. What we love cannot survive on its own—it survives when we speak it, practice it, and choose it again.