Salar - T

They met in London, a city where accents mix and stories cross paths. During their first conversation, his voice carried the pride of Nzema, the language of home and long conversations that never needed an ending. She embodied the beauty of Salar, the language of storytelling and warmth that wrapped around every word.

They fell in love slowly. Not just with each other, but with each other’s worlds. It wasn’t just two people meeting. It was two cultures learning how to sit side by side.They learned how food tasted different, how humor changed with language, how certain feelings could only be expressed in Nzema words that didn’t exist in English. Love became the bridge between two cultures. They loved teaching each other small things. A word here. A phrase there. The way meaning lived not just in vocabulary, but in tone, laughter, and shared understanding. Love became their common language, the bridge that made everything else possible.

When they talked about having a child, they imagined connection more than anything else. Not perfection. Not fluency. Just closeness. They wanted their child to recognize the sounds of family and feel at home with grandparents, cousins and friends. They imagined a child who could understand the feeling behind a story and know where love came from. To them, language was a way to connect deeply. It was never an academic goal centered on rigid grammar lessons. It was far greater than that. It was the thread that tied generations together. It shaped identity, connection and a feeling of belonging. Language represented home.

Then Amina was born.

At first, they spoke to her the way they spoke to each other–gently, playfully, without thinking too much about it. Nzema and Salar floated through the room as naturally as breathing. They believed that love alone would carry everything forward.

But life has a way of rushing in.

London was loud and fast. English showed up everywhere — at daycare, in books, on screens, in playground conversations. Days moved quickly. Routines took over. Slowly, without any clear moment of decision, English became the language of daily life. Amina understood her parents when they spoke Nzema and Salar. She listened. She smiled. But when she answered, it was always in English. It wasn’t alarming at first. Then it became noticeable. Then it became heavy.

They realized they weren’t worried about perfect accents or grammar rules. What they feared was something quieter — the loss of connection. The missed jokes. The stories that wouldn’t land the same way. The feeling that something meaningful might slip through the cracks. Language loss doesn’t announce itself. It slips in gently. Until the small moments began to matter. One evening, Amina’s grandmother spoke to her, smiling, waiting for a response. Amina looked up, unsure how to answer. Later, someone asked her where she was from, and she shrugged and said, “I’m just from London.”

That was the moment they felt it. What they were losing wasn’t vocabulary. It wasn’t grammar. They were losing connection. They didn’t want pressure or rigid lessons. They didn’t want their home to feel like a classroom. They wanted moments — small, gentle ways to invite Nzema and Salar back into everyday life. What they wanted was simple — to hear their languages in her voice, to feel close to her through the words that had once connected them to everyone they loved. So they started small.They colored together. They pointed to pictures and named things. They repeated words without correcting, without insisting. They let language be soft again. Something shared, not demanded.

Slowly, the house began to change. Amina started recognizing words. Then using them. Then asking what things meant. Not because she had to, but because she wanted to. Because language felt like love again. Nzema returned to laughter at the table. Salar found its way back into bedtime stories. Not perfectly. Not completely. But enough. Enough for Amina to feel connected. Enough for love to move freely between generations.

Amina is growing up knowing that language is more than words. It’s how love travels. It’s how stories stay alive. It’s how family reaches across generations and borders. It’s about parents who cross cultures through love and want their child to feel that same closeness — not through rules or correctness, but through shared moments, warmth, and care. Language is not static, and the way we use language evolves over generations and differs between regions. So, language, at its heart, is about connection. It is always about love finding a way to be shared.