Struggles of Language

For immigrants, moving into a new country can feel overwhelming but also rewarding. You get to experience the new found opportunities that your new home has to offer and partake in a new culture to discover yourself. This is what we experienced while reading “Call it Sleep”. In the novel, Call It Sleep by Henry Roth, David experiences a language barrier as a young immigrant. Through this Roth narrates the challenges of learning a new language that David goes through while adjusting to his new life in New York City.

As we explore David’s life, we come across moments where he effortlessly talks to his mother in Yiddish. Roth effectively captures this by accurately spelling the Yiddish words in English. However when David speaks to one of the neighborhood kids it’s with broken English with a yiddish accent. David wanted to connect with others in his neighborhood by speaking english. For example when David converses with his mother it would go like “You’d better go. Just for a little while. I’m going to sweep here, you know.”/“I want my calendar first,” he pouted,”(37) in yiddish. In contrast, when David converses with one of the neighborhood kids named Yussie it would go like “So wot makes id?” he asked. In the street David spoke English. “Kentcha see? Id’s coz id’s a machine”(39). This displays the struggles that immigrants face when speaking a new language and the language barrier. David feels more comfortable talking in yiddish than in english 

With keeping the language barrier in mind it can also be a real struggle for immigrants to community with native Americans for basic necessities. Roth takes us through moments where David experiences such a strong miscommunication and misunderstanding. David was lost trying to find his way back to his neighborhood to go home. He approaches a man with a blonde mustache asking him directions for “Bodder Street”. With this starts the misconception between the two. “Bodder Street?” He screwed a tip of his mustache to a tighter pitch and regarded David with an oblique, critical eye. “Bodder Street. Can’t say that I’ve ever— Oh! Heh! Hehl” He exploded good-natured again. “You mean Potter Street. Heh! Heh! Bodder Street”(142). It took them a while to get on the same page. For most immigrants, English is not their first language so when they try to communicate with other natives it feels like they are taking a hard exam but they try their best with what they know. David would also face a similar problem when he would go to school. At the cheder he would observe his new classmates from the side. He watched a boy in his class read out loud in front of the class, “The boy whimpered and went on. He had not uttered more than a few sounds, when again he paused on the awful brink, and as if out of sheer malice, again repeated his error”(298). Because of this David fears that he would be ostracized if he struggled to read out loud. This also causes a miscommunication between him, his classmates and his teachers.

David’s struggle with language also caused him to feel alone and having problems with expressing his emotions. When David was reading recitation in front of Reb Yidel He started to burst into tears at the news he discovered about his mother Genya. He would stutter words like “My-my mother!”/“She—she’s!—”/“That—that’s my aunt!”(505-506). What David was trying to tell Reb was that his mother “died” and that Genya is his aunt. But what David truthfully wanted to say was that his real mother had an affair with another man and that Albert isn’t his real father. This implies that David has trouble communicating his thoughts and emotions to others. 

With the language barrier that David faces it causes him to face alienation, isolation, and miscommunication while trying to communicate with others. David had to overcome barriers of coming from a jewish family and assimilating into an American citizen. This caused a bridge in his identity because not only was he forced into learning a new language, he was also forced into learning the customs and culture of Americans at a young age. Through this he was able to find himself and accept the changes of his new identity. In a way I can relate to David’s struggle with language as a child of immigrant parents. Growing up it was a challenge trying to understand what my parents would say in English and because of that it made me have trouble expressing myself to others.