Maya Field
A child’s will
The thing with learning a language is that you are a child.
A precocious one. You think you know better than the language
and perhaps you could wrestle prepositions and pronunciations
into your will. Of course, you can’t — language is not a child.
The thing with learning a language that not even your great-grandmother knew,
is that it’s partly your fault — or maybe your great-great-grandmother’s fault —
that there is barely anything there. Even if you were a child again, it wouldn’t
be in your tongue — not when it wasn’t in hers.
The thing is, you can pretend you are starting a renaissance
or you are getting back to your roots, but really,
what are your roots? What are you a child of?
Nature? Water? Blood? Words?
You are a child learning words and rules all over again.
A child and you can’t tell if you speak right.
You hope speaking will bring it forward:
willing the speaking back.
Maya Field is a Wellington-based writer. She studies English Literature at Te Herenga Waka Victoria University. Her work can be found in a fine line, The Spinoff, and Salient.