A single word—or perhaps three—can reveal much about the role language plays in a culture’s value system. Linguists often point to the Hindi pronouns tu, tum, and aap as a prime example. These variations of the English “you” convey intimacy, respect, and hierarchy, dep-ending on who is being addressed.
What gets flattened in English gets fleshed out in culturally significant ways in many languages from India, where vocabulary carries expe-ctations about how to address elders, engage strangers, and fit into a community.
India is known for its rich linguistic diversity. The 22 official languages recognized by the Constitution of India, along with the thousands of regional dialects, have served as more than just means of communication—they have been vital conduits of traditions for thousands of ye-ars.
It is this rich legacy of heritage languages that Indian Americans stand to lose with each passing generation, given not only the transactio-nal importance of English in the U.S., but also its role in the process of assimilation. As more desi families confront the challenge of wheth-er to, and how to, pass down their mother tongue, they are also grappling with a harder truth: what disappears when those languages fall by the wayside?
Evolving Landscape for Indian Languages
In this changing landscape, what does the future hold for Indian languages in the U.S.? First, some good news: Hindi and Telugu are amo-ng the nation’s six fastest-growing languages. With the increasing number of Indian immigrants, many academic institutions have begun offering courses in Indian languages. While this is more common at universities, it is worth noting thatin 2024, two public schools in Cali-fornia piloted programs offering Hindi as a second language.
Brajesh Samarth, a teaching professor of Hindi and Urdu at Emory University, has seen a resurgence of interest in Indian languages amo-ng diasporic youth, especially among college students. After years of trying to assimilate, often these young students discover peers who look like them and begin seeking their roots. India’s growing global stature has helped to accelerate this. “People are proud of what India has done in the last 15 to 20 years. They try to reclaim their heritage.”
15 to 20 years. They try to reclaim their heritage.” Smita Daftardar, an alum of the federally-funded STARTALK Hindi Program, frames this as confidence stemming from lineage. “When a child feels their culture has a glorious history, they understand they are good because of that heritage.” She also points to the U.S. Seal of Biliteracy and speaks of shifting attitudes toward multilingualism. What was once seen as confusing has now been linked to cognitive benefits.
Despite these promising signs, languages other than English are facing significant headwinds inthe U.S. The push from the Trump admini-stration to designate English as the nation’s official language has struck many as unnecessary. This symbolic move, critics argue, was less about administrative efficiency and more about cultural signaling. When English is privileged in this manner, says one educator, “what yo-u’re really doing is sending a message that other languages are lesser, disposable, or even un-American.” For families trying to preserve Telugu, Tamil, Hindi, Gujarati, or any Indian language, that message can quietly erode confidence and accelerate the abandon-ment of those languages.
A Generation at the Threshold of Loss
According to the Pew Research Center, 28 percent of Indian Americans speak only English at home. Among Indian languages, the most co-mmonly spoken are Hindi (18 percent), Telugu (11 percent), Gujarati (10 percent), and Tamil (7 percent). Among U.S.-born Asians more broadly, only 14 percent say they can converse well in their ancestral language. The trajectory is familiar: complete fluency among immig-rants, partial skills among their children, and near disappearance by the third generation.
A Hindi class in session at the Bala Vihar, run by Chinmaya Gurukul, in Cumming, Georgia.
Balavihar teacher Mahalaxmi Kumar has been watching the shift and is concerned about the cultural erosion she anticipates if heritage languages fade. “In one generation, you can lose the language,” she says. “And there goes a complete way of thinking. A way of life is lost.”
She grew up in Mumbai speak- ing Tamil, but cannot read or write it. Still, she strives to preserve and perpetuate her mother tongue by visiting Tamil Nadu with her children, walking them through temples, explaining history, sharing stories, and discussing spiritual texts. “Th-at’s my way of passing down the language,” she says. Yet, her own children, now 26 and 21, speak Tamil with their grandparents, but with her, they slip into English.
Florida resident Rikki Patel and his wife, Brittani (who is not Indian), struggle to teach Gujarati to their two young kids. It has been chall-enging to do so, says Patel, because he himself has lost fluency in his mother tongue. As a child, Patel learned Gujarati before learn-ing English. His younger sister, who was born and raised in the U.S., even had to enroll in English as a Second Language classes because Gujarati is all that she was exposed to at home. The Patel siblings entered first grade without having ever learned English.
Being conversant in Gujarati is inherently tied to Patel’s sense of identity. However, now, he admits his vocabulary and grammar have eroded, and his fluency in Gujarati has diminished.
For the same reason, Trina Chakravarty, who lives in Hawaii with her husband, Anil Punjabi, struggles to teach her daughter and son to speak Bengali. “I would love for them to be fluent, but I know that these days even I’m not.” So, she has settled for less: “Even a mish-mash of what we used to call ‘BEnglish’ (a mix of Bengali and English) would suffice for me.”
When Chakravarty tries to read her children books in Bengali or teach them songs, they often get frustrated and ask her to revert to Eng-lish instead. “I question daily if it’s worth the effort . . . but I keep trying to motivate them to learn in bits and pieces and hope they see why it’s important as they get older.” Conversing in Bengali was a source of comfort for Chakravarty growing up. “I always knew it was a safe way to communicate with my parents and siblings in a world that felt too big when I was small.” She adds, “Speaking it gave me confidence to show up within my own family, extended family, and other Bengalis in the community.”
Brookhaven resident Leena Loungani grew up hearing Kannada but describes her own proficiency as “at the toddler level.” As an adult ra-ising two children, she finds herself passing on a more pan-Indian identity rather than a specifically Kannada one. Her husband speaks Hindi and Sindhi; the family listens to Hindi music, watches Bollywood films, and absorbs a broader cultural mix.
Joy Peyton, program lead for the Coalition of Community-Based Heritage Language Schools, warns that cultural amnesia can occur when children feel embarrassed about their linguistic heritage because those around them don’t respect it. Such embarrassment can sever conn-ections not only with family members but also with inherited worldviews. It can prevent them from developing their language proficiency.
More Than Just Vocabulary: The Cultural Context of Heritage Languages
Although enrollment in heritage-language programs is rising, linguists and educators warn that teaching a language as a mere means of communication risks stripping it of its cultural significance. The rich diversity of Indian languages, they argue, is key to accessing India’s histories, spiritual concepts, family structures, and social codes of belonging, and therefore must be taught by educators trained in these subtleties so that the wealth of heritage they encapsulate is not lost.
Tying language to culture is crucial for Ashok Ojha, a Hindi Language Representative for the Coalition of Community-Based Heritage Lang-uage Schools. He has been nationally recognized for his work directing the STARTALK Hindi Programs, which train teachers nationwide to consider the varied backgrounds of students. For example, teaching Hindi in the U.S. requires different methods than, say, teaching it to a Tamil child raised in Bombay.
Under the Fulbright–Hays Program for cultural exchange, in collaboration with New York University, Ojha has led participants to India to learn about the randeur of its ancient civilizations and also its modern sustainability challenges, such as providing clean water to under-served communities. Such immersive experiences impart cultural nuances far beyond what technological tools like Duolingo can offer.
Kumar notes that tools such as Google Translate or Apple AirPods miss these nuances entirely, treating languages merely as a skill while offering little of the rich worldview they carry. “There’s so much more to language than just a bunch of words forming a vocabulary,” she elaborates.
Technological tools, says Daftardar, also fail to account for the fact that language learners fall into different categories—heritage-language learners, foreign-language learners, and second-language learners—and that each requires a different teaching approach. She also feels that respect, which is deeply embedded in Indian languages, is flattened in English. Her favorite analogy for explaining why heritage matt-ers: “The healthier the tree, the stronger the roots.Your root system is your heritage.”
Why It Is Important to Keep Languages Alive Irrespective of Cultural Continuity
History shows that culture can survive even after a language fades, as it has among Indian descendants in Trinidad and Tobago, where, generations later, rituals, religious festivals, temple culture, and cuisine continue to endure. Samarth observes that Indian descendants in the West Indies still perform “chutney” versions of Hindi songs in a Bhojpuri accent. A thriving Ram-Lee-la tradition lasts nine nights, San-skrit chanting and prayer rooms remain common, and Hindu altars are standard fixtures in homes. Even without a complete linguistic understanding, cultural rhythm endures.
Examples like these give Kumar hope, but she continues to maintain faith in heritage-language institutions such as Balavihar, Marathi Sha-la, and community Hindi programs. Her advice to parents is simple: keep speaking your language even if the child replies in English. Play music. Teach slokas. Encourage conversations with grandparents. “Their stories vanish if the language is lost.”
For Shweta Karthik, a teacher at Big Creek Elementary in Cumming, Georgia, questions of heritage and language surfaced only in adult-hood. Growing up in Delhi, she spoke Tamil and Hindi, but English became dominant—an echo of colonial legacies shaped by Thomas Mac-aulay’s push to elevate English-medium education.
It was only later, as she contemplated identity and spirituality, that she understood what her languages offered her. “When we are talking about abstract things, you first need something tangible to access that,” she says. “Our language provides the means for that.”
Her daughter, Sakshi, learns Tamil informally through songs, conversations with her randmother, and daily exchanges. Asked why learning Tamil matters, Sakshi says, “So we can communicate with people who don’t know how to speak English.”
Karthik introduces slokas, bhajans, and classical Indian music at home. Her goal is not perfect fluency but grounding. “More important to me is the person they are going to be,” she says. “The language itself is not as important as long as they retain the values.”
Daftardar understands why parents like Karthik turn to language to convey spiritual meaning. Some concepts cannot be carried across En-glish without losing their essence—for example, the Hindu idea of puja.
“There is no exact equivalent in English,” she says. In translating it simply to “prayer,” “the meaning and the essence are lost.” Samarth points to Sikh concepts like seva and sangat. Translated merely as “selfless service” and “congregation,” they lose what is inherent in tho-se concepts: compassion, intention, and the idea of forming community in righteous company.
Parents like Kumar, Karthik, and Loungani represent a spectrum of what it means to preserve culture. Some tie it to spirituality. Others to family bonds. Some fear the loss of nuance, while still others embrace an evolving Indian-American identity. What they have in common is a desire to keep alive something that cannot be cleanly translated or replicated by modern technology, no matter how useful it may be. It is rooted in how we relate to one another and how we understand ourselves.
They all seem to realize that if their mother tongue is lost, so are the stories that grandparents tell, the layers of respect encoded in voca-bulary, the spiritual metaphors, the humor of a well-timed proverb, and the emotional ties that bind generations.
Amritha Alladi Joseph is a customer success strategist at Salesforce and a freelance journalist. Besides Khabar, her writing has appeared in Gannett newspapers, The Hindu, CNN-IBN, Lonely Planet, Georgia Trend, Appen Media, and Atlanta Magazine.