LIFESTYLE: VSL, or How to Not Speak Like a Child

Let's see a show of hands - how many of you brown girls speak your first language as well as you do English? How many of you speak it as well as you did when you were living at home? How many of you speak it as well as a 5-year old? That's what I thought. Guess what - if you are only calling your mom a few times a month and feebly ordering at an ethnic restaurant in your native tongue, you will soon forget the nuances of the language and end up grammatically and vocabularily sounding like you're four years old.
If you ever find yourself at family functions nodding and having a hard time piecing through your cousin's thick northern (or southern) accent, you know what I'm talking about. Keeping that other language up is hard, even if it was your first language and you grew up speaking it. It's even harder if you don't know how to read or write in it. This can become difficult as your parents start giving up on their own English skills, or when traveling back to the native land to visit family you've never met before.
Here are some good tips on how to keep up on that first language:

Call your parents. Like, regularly. Explaining to your mom why you you decided to not meet her friend's son who is a doctor or why you don't want to move in with your cousins in that house in the suburbs will challenge your rhetoric skills. Also, attempt to chat with your siblings a little bit in your native language, especially if you don't want spouses and friends who are around to know what you are talking about.

Learn to read and write. Many brown ladies I know are illiterate in their native language - it's more common than you think, and it's something you can change. There are many books and cds available that can be readily found on Amazon that are designed for those who already speak the language to learn how to write it. Rosetta Stone is effective for pronounciation and phrases, but not so good on actual literacy.

Take a class in your language. You can find foreign language classes of every type nowadays, and some are offered in community centers for a very nominal price.

All in all, it'll remain a huge benefit to you to keep those language skills up, even if you don't end up using it that often. Language is a part of who you are, and how you grew up, and it would be a shame to lose out on it over time.