A foreigner’s perspective on Identity crisis and Language

Is our identity tied to our language, or are we just used to the personality we have when we speak our mother tongue?

Lately, I’ve been feeling like a part of me is missing. The older I get, the more distant I feel from my roots. It scares me, this slow drifting away from something I can’t quite hold on to, yet deeply long for.

Sometimes, it feels like I’m judging myself harshly, but it’s a necessary harsh judgment. I’ve done everything possible to fit into a culture that’s not mine and speak a language that’s not native to me, while the one language that should live on my tongue has no room.

My parents are from the Luhya ethnic community in Kenya and speak Maragoli. I don’t like calling it a dialect; it isn’t. It’s a language. So they speak Maragoli, Swahili, and English.

I speak Swahili, a beautiful, rich language, and English, but not Maragoli, the one I’d call my true mother tongue. I’ve always wanted to learn it.

Growing up, we only spoke Swahili at home, sometimes mixing in English. But never Maragoli. Every effort was made to sharpen our English, to sound fluent and polished, but no effort was made to preserve what was already ours.

I remember hearing kids my age speak their mother tongues so effortlessly. I wanted that too. But time passed, and even though the desire stayed, I didn’t act on it. Or maybe I tried and gave up too soon.

Now I’m 23, and that same ache is still there, a quiet emptiness that refuses to leave.

Deep down, I know speaking Maragoli would give me something I long for: fulfillment, wholeness, and belonging.

For a while, I asked my parents to speak to me in Maragoli when I was still at home. They would try for a day, and naturally, we would be back to default, Swahili and English.

Sure, these two languages connect me to Kenya. I feel alive when I’m joking, storytelling, and laughing in Swahili with my friends. There’s ease and warmth. Even in English, I can be fully myself.

But that’s on a broad level. Deep down, I belong to a specific people and a specific place.

What aches more is that if at any point I’m to be among people who speak this tongue I hold dear, I risk feeling like an outsider, displaced at the very moment I should feel most at home.

And what about my future children? Living abroad, possible or not, far from my community with no grasp of Maragoli, what will I pass on to them? This ache? This silence?

In Kenya, people look at you differently when you can’t speak your mother tongue. It’s almost like a joke, as if you’re not truly a member of your own community. Because in many ways, language is identity.

It’s more than words. It holds memory, culture, and carves out our personalities. It makes us feel heard.

How can someone be French and not speak French? You see my point.

So in the end, it hits me, I can’t even call myself Maragoli because I don’t speak Maragoli. So who am I, really? Just another random Kenyan?

It’s wild, considering how much effort I’ve put into learning other people’s languages, while my own has stayed untouched, neglected.

It feels like I’ve been slowly cutting off a part of myself painfully, piece by piece. It’s still there, lingering deep inside, and the ache resurfaces from time to time.

If you ever feel like there are gaps in your identity, drop a comment. I’m really curious, does that void ever get better, or do we just pretend not to care? Because honestly, that feels almost impossible.