Speak your Language!! 5 Ways to Preserve Our Language In this day of age its not that cool to speak the language of your parents. Growing up in a traditional Tongan home I was mainly raised by my grandmother so that somewhat forced me to speak Tongan. But with my parents, who were exposed to more English through work, I got away with speaking to them in English. This then raises a few issues...Teachers in Primary Schools and Secondary schools are then faced with having to reteach English and undo some habits that have already been formed by the children. The issue is that children are speaking BROKEN English and BROKEN Tongan (in my case). They don't have either or. Although our parents do have lovely intentions of trying to speak to us in English to get us to practice, or maybe they too are trying to practice for their sake. Personally for me more than anything we need to be sticking to the language we know best and cultivate it so that it becomes rich for our children.
