From Tamil to Cree to Mandarin, these stand-up comedians are using their mother tongue to land punchlines

When Sunthar Vykunthanathan started stand-up comedy well-nigh octad years agone, he performed mostly in english people. But he decided to change it up when he noticed a big portion of his audience was Tamil. 

“The community was coming out for me,” said the Toronto-born comic whose stage name is Sunthar V. “I started using a lot more Tamil words in my comedy and naturally just shifted towards creating more Tamil-focused content.” 

Sharing jokes in Tamil, says Vykunthanathan, allows him to make cultural references — whether it’s quoting a Tamil movie or depicting what it’s like growing up in a Tamil household — that resonate with audiences at home and abroad, as he has observed during his tours in the U.S., Europe and India. 

“[The audience is like], even though [Vykunthanathan] grew up in Toronto, his mom yells at him the same way, or he has the same food or he watched the same movie and thought the same thought.”

In addition to his global tours, Vykunthanathan, who also integrates being queer into his work, has sold out Massey Hall in Toronto, performed at Just for Laughs in Toronto, and will be at the festival again in July in Montreal.

Across Canada, a growing number of comedians are turning to their mother tongues on stage — not just as a stylistic choice, but as a way to tell more honest stories, reclaim histories shaped by migration and colonialism, and introduce audiences to perspectives not often heard.

Vykunthanathan says performing in both Tamil and English reflects how he grew up in Scarborough, Ont., as the child of refugees from Sri Lanka, who fled a decades-long civil war during which Tamil language and culture were policed and punished.

“This is just a way of [using] arts and culture to hold onto one of the oldest languages in the world.”

The power and joy of telling jokes in your mother tongue

As a new comedian finding her voice, Scarlet Chen felt hesitant to weave Mandarin into her sets, worried audiences might not be interested or understand.

Chen, a former filmmaker who moved from Beijing to Gabriola Island, B.C., in 2020, got into comedy through a chance encounter. 

“I love stand-up comedy, but I never thought I would do [it] because I thought, my English is not perfect, and I can't just throw a joke or punchline.”

Now, her comedy draws directly from her own sharp observations as a recent immigrant navigating everyday life, incorporating Mandarin words and phrases that mirror the bilingual rhythm of her thinking and speech. 

“As a comic, you help the audience to see the world through your perspective,” said Chen.  

“Switching languages mid-story brings the audience closer to my real experience than a translation ever could. The goal is always to make the joke land, but the language it lands in matters.” 

“Non-Mandarin speakers may not catch every word, but … the texture of the moment changes. And for anyone in the room who does speak Chinese, it's a small point of connection.” 

Chen has opened for acclaimed American comic Maria Bamford, debuted her first one-woman show Citizen Chen, and is set to perform a 24-show run at the 2026 Edinburgh Festival Fringe in Scotland in August. 

Cheyenna Sapp wanted to become a professor who taught Indigenous issues. But when she saw three Indigenous comedians perform during a campus event in 2019, she knew she could do it, too.

“Once I realized that people who were just like me were doing this … the rest is history,” said Sapp, who was an undergraduate student at the University of Saskatchewan at the time.

“I realized that [stand-up] had a larger platform to be able to reach more people and teach about Indigenous issues in a way that's funny and relatable.”

At the start of each show, Sapp, who is Nehiyaw (Cree), introduces herself in Cree, sharing her name, and that she’s a Plains Cree woman from Little Pine First Nation in Saskatchewan. 

“I'm using my language as a bridge to show people this is who I am, where I'm from,” said Sapp, who goes by the stage name Shy Sapp. “It's to show people that I am not only Indigenous, but I am connected to this land, [and] the land that you are watching me perform on is Indigenous land.” 

Sapp has performed across Canada and the U.S., and also headlined the IndigE-Girl Comedy Showcase in New Zealand. She also stars on the sitcom Acting Good on CTV.

She says she incorporates Cree words and phrases throughout her sets because it builds a sense of camaraderie with audience members who recognize and grew up with “rez slang.” 

Speaking Cree, she says, is also an act of reclamation, restoring what was taken during the colonization of Indigenous peoples, a violent process marked not only by land dispossession but by deliberate efforts to erase culture, including the banning of Indigenous languages and the punishment of those who spoke them. 

“It’s a form of resistance, and it’s a form of resilience on stage.”

To give other Tamil comics the opportunity to perform, Vykunthanathan started a Tamil-language comedy club in London, U.K., New York and plans to start one in Toronto. 

Chen produced numerous comedy shows on Vancouver Island and led a six-week workshop in Nanaimo, B.C., aimed at inspiring immigrant youth to try comedy. 

Similarly, Sapp says it’s about giving the spotlight to others. 

“To be in a role like this, I take it as not just an opportunity for myself, but as an obligation to my people to take up this space, and to share our stories, and to show the next generation of young people that this is available to you.”

Journalist

Interview with Scarlet Chen produced by Annie Bender

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