Month: June 2023

On Cities and Bilingualism

It’s now been more than seven months since I moved to Montreal. And recently, I’ve been thinking a lot about how this city is similar to my hometown, Tabriz.

Montreal is well-known as one of the most bilingual cities in the world, and Quebec is famous for its resistance against the Anglophone incursion. Most non-francophones in this city despise this. But for me, it’s all a very familiar and, don’t tell anyone but, welcome environment.

I’m probably one of the most Tabrizi people in the world. My family on both sides is from Tabriz as far up the family tree as we can track them. Most of our extended family live in a couple of neighborhoods in the middle of the city. So of course, I have strong ties with this place, its culture, and its language. It is what my childhood feels like.

Now, Tabriz is the only one of the seven largest cities in Iran that doesn’t speak Persian. The main language here, instead, is Azeri (or as we call it, Turki. Or as linguists call it, Southern Azerbaijani). Despite being the second most spoken language in one of the biggest countries in the world, and the main one of my two native languages, Azeri is still very ambiguous to me. I was never really taught to read or write in Azeri, and all the textbooks and novels I’d read as a kid were in Persian. Although It’s normal for a kid growing up in Tabriz to watch a lot of cartoons in Turkish, which is one of the languages closest to Azeri, but that only helped me learn another language, rather than get more acquainted with my own. So, as I’ve grown older, I’ve begun to sense how much I miss this connection with my language.

Languages in Iran, like in Canada, can be a controversial topic, often mingled with racism. Some Persians accuse Turks, Kurds, and Baluchs of being separationist or racist, and many Turks ridicule Persians as being too fancy and soft. No one is in the right, of course, and it is the system that hurts everyone, as is usually the case. But the fact remains: languages are at the hearts of people. And the heart is a painful place.

So, I understand the Quebecois. I don’t intend to advocate for Bill 96 or any of the language laws that might be considered too harsh. Hell, I don’t even speak enough French to survive in a French-only environment. But that is besides the point. Because this isn’t about advocacy, but love and identity. I understand struggling to keep the existence of your language, the thing you use to think and preserve the soul of what your childhood has felt like. And I don’t think an Anglophone could ever truly understand the feeling of not having access to the world in your true language. Which is fine, of course. No one has to truly understand everything. But I do think that in this war of languages, Anglophones need to shoulder the responsibility of confronting their linguistic entitlement. Because, let’s face it, English is not going anywhere soon. Most other languages, on the other hand, easily could.

Who the Fuck is This Guy

Hello.

Let me be honest with you. I don’t know either.

And I’m not just trying to sound smart. I seriously have no idea who I am, or who I want to be. When I was a kid, I wanted to become an “inventor”. An inventor of what, god knows. Then I wanted to become a software engineer and thought that was my calling. Until I realized life is such a bizarre thing, that codes and computers are just a worthless part of it. Then I wanted to study all the things in college. Philosophy, economics, chemical engineering, English literature, sociology, and god knows what. But I ended up doing computer science. And I don’t quite regret it either, because it meant I could easily move to Montreal after I graduated.

While in college, I fell in with a drug and music-obsessed crowd, which changed me a lot and showed me new things about life. Then I worked a full time software engineering job for a couple of years and realized that that shit is not for me. Now I’m doing research in computer security, in the opposite side of the world, still baffled at the first world calmness. So you tell me. Who the fuck am I?

But. I do know that there are things about me that have been the same since my earliest memories. I can’t pinpoint what they are, but hey, I’m sure you can’t either. So don’t judge me, asshole. Maybe that’s what the blog is all about. Who the fuck knows.

My hope with this blog is that it’ll help me manage this ambiguity a bit better. I don’t mind ambiguity. I love it. It’s healthy. No one knows shit and they are usually little jerks with a tribal mindset if they act like they do. So I don’t mind the ambiguity. However, I do think writing will help direct it to more positive places. At least, that is my hope.

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