TRANSCRIPT

I’m Maggie Smith, and this is The Slowdown.

You know we love language at The Slowdown. We spend time every weekday celebrating the power of words! And language isn’t just a tool for communication or self-expression, it’s a part of who we are.

Language and culture are deeply intertwined. Language connects us to our elders and to previous generations. It connects us to our homeland, no matter how far away it may be. It connects us to our roots.

A heritage language is a language spoken by individuals or families that is not the dominant language of their local community. Even though the United States doesn’t have an official language, in the U.S. this typically refers to any language other than English.

Speaking a heritage language is often a significant part of a person's cultural identity. You might speak English at school or at work but speak Spanish, or Vietnamese, or Somali with family members at home. Being bilingual allows people to keep their cultural identity intact while adapting to local customs where they live.

Conversely, heritage language loss is the gradual or total decline of a mother tongue. It most often happens within immigrant and Indigenous families due to pressure to assimilate, or when receiving an education in a more dominant language. When the words themselves are lost, so much can be lost with it: oral histories, traditions, and unique perspectives.

Today’s poem references Kreyòl, a language that evolved in the Americas in the late 17th and early 18th centuries. Haitian Creole, a French-based vernacular language, developed primarily on the sugarcane plantations of Haiti from contact between French colonists and enslaved Africans. It has been one of Haiti’s official languages since 1987 and is the first language of about 95 percent of Haitians, especially in rural areas. In Florida today, Haitian Creole is the language most spoken after English and Spanish.

bilingual
by Mckendy Fils-Aimé

there’s a video of a teacup breaking
in reverse, its fractured pieces drawn back
into place like a ghost solving a jigsaw.
too bad we can’t push the rewind button

on a lost language, can’t rewrite an alphabet
on the chalk-brushed blackboard of erasure.
best we can do is fill in the fissures
of our vernacular & smooth out the chipping.

listen, pay your teachers no mind 
when they say we speak broken French.
they’ve never had to reassemble the remnants
of their mother tongues after mourning

the remnants of their mothers. 
they don’t know that Kreyòl is a kintsugi cup.
when the buccaneers dropped our dialect
against Ayiti’s shores, we pieced it back together

with whatever was left lying around. 
now each time we open the china drawer 
of our mouths, there’s copper 
more than anything else. so what

if our teacups weren’t glued with gold.
don’t they still shimmer
in the sun? don’t they still hold water?
can’t you still press one to your lips & drink?

“bilingual” by Mckendy Fils-Aimé from SIPÈSTISYON © 2026 Mckendy Fils-Aimé. Used by permission of the poet.