When a baby is born it is provided with the minimum required arts for survival. The body that kept it safe inside, right from the time of fulfillment of the carnal pleasures of two individuals( the male and the female) resulting in its being, through a long chain of processes till it is brought into the outer world providing all that it needed, is the only thing it can sense right after birth. The warmth which it enjoyed inside the mother, though not fully, is enjoyed by being together with the mother. Here the inborn instinct draws it further to mother for its first food outside the womb through its mouth, breast milk of mother, the divine food saturated with all heavenly and earthly bliss like love, care, pride, happiness, dearness ……Then on the baby starts sensing the new world through its solicitous mother first from her nearness or farness. Slowly it accommodates by developing visual and audio abilities. Mother’s sight makes its face unexplainably radiant with happiness and the lullaby induces the wonderful sleep. It slowly responds to different sounds produced by the mother. These sounds though bear no meanings, form the first interaction between the mother and the child and hence can be taken as a language. There upon whatever the mother speaks, the child responds in some way is the dearest outcome of the infusion of same blood, love and warmth. Here alphabets, words, phrases or sentences slowly come in and this language we refer as mother tongue. This is the language a person has learned from birth or speaks the best and is often the basis for his/her sociolinguistic identity.
Now, parents out of over ambition or blindly following different societies which they consider superior imbibe and get inclined to certain false notions like by speaking their mother tongue the children would not be able to speak English language well. It is a disgrace that we are rearing a generation of children who cannot speak their own language, who cannot pronounce their own names right.
Parent’s mentality is such that they feel it's a symbol of high rank society if children can't speak their native language*. They even pride themselves in such stupidity and foolishness of going even to the extend of saying that their children don’t know their native language*.(*mother tongue is omitted here to avoid disgrace to mothers whom I place next to God) To put in Malayalam the pride comes out as “ korschu korachu malyalettil parayum” To the question “Achan Evide” a clarification ‘You mean dad?’.A generation without or who don’t know Achan!!!
It is regrettable that our languages are on the verge of extinction and is equally shameful that even in communication on posters and other advertisement materials our local languages are not written well both orthographically and grammatically. What do we make out of a society that cannot communicate effectively with its people? Language is the symbol of our identity we must revive it to protect our identity.
Another headache is that the so called English our children are forced to speak is substandard. A new name for it.(MANGLISH) The end result is double, as the children cannot speak correct and proper English while they are already aliens to their mother tongue.Is it taken as the beginning of brain colonization. ( If so, sorry da)We have people who can't speak their mother tongue or the English that they are so proud of Colonial slaves. Language is the number one identification of the culture of a people. Once we lose our language the annihilation of our culture has started.
Even if the only thing we manage to do is to teach small children in their mother tongues, this will be no mean achievement. We will make these children internalise concepts better. We will provide jobs to teachers - and indeed create teachers - of our language. We will give due recognition to our languages. We will give the message that our languages, and by extension our cultures and real selves, are not contemptible. We will perhaps save our languages from the forces of globalisation, neo-imperialism and elitism, which threaten to kill our languages and force us to operate only in elitist language or become marginalized, powerless and contemptible even in our own eyes. Our mother tongue is more than a language, it is the soul that lives inside us. It is an armory of the human mind; an archive of history. We invent our world through language and bring it to life.
This is just in one tiny corner of India. Look at the vast span of this nation and we will figure why, as India asserts itself as one nation, one people, millions of local voices are being silenced. Many of these are tiny voices but they represent the magic and the mystique of India. As these voices die out, so will songs, poetry, folk tales, theatre, local histories, the rich tapestry of sounds and words that make us the amazing nation we are. So it’s not only about languages vanishing. It’s also about histories and cultures disappearing. It is about traditions, never archived, dying out one by one, to leave behind a richer, stronger but lesser India.
Let us love our mother tongue, mother country and her culture which is unique and rich. In the process just neglect or discard the Manglish promoters, they be print, audio or visual media.
Now, parents out of over ambition or blindly following different societies which they consider superior imbibe and get inclined to certain false notions like by speaking their mother tongue the children would not be able to speak English language well. It is a disgrace that we are rearing a generation of children who cannot speak their own language, who cannot pronounce their own names right.
Parent’s mentality is such that they feel it's a symbol of high rank society if children can't speak their native language*. They even pride themselves in such stupidity and foolishness of going even to the extend of saying that their children don’t know their native language*.(*mother tongue is omitted here to avoid disgrace to mothers whom I place next to God) To put in Malayalam the pride comes out as “ korschu korachu malyalettil parayum” To the question “Achan Evide” a clarification ‘You mean dad?’.A generation without or who don’t know Achan!!!
It is regrettable that our languages are on the verge of extinction and is equally shameful that even in communication on posters and other advertisement materials our local languages are not written well both orthographically and grammatically. What do we make out of a society that cannot communicate effectively with its people? Language is the symbol of our identity we must revive it to protect our identity.
Another headache is that the so called English our children are forced to speak is substandard. A new name for it.(MANGLISH) The end result is double, as the children cannot speak correct and proper English while they are already aliens to their mother tongue.Is it taken as the beginning of brain colonization. ( If so, sorry da)We have people who can't speak their mother tongue or the English that they are so proud of Colonial slaves. Language is the number one identification of the culture of a people. Once we lose our language the annihilation of our culture has started.
Even if the only thing we manage to do is to teach small children in their mother tongues, this will be no mean achievement. We will make these children internalise concepts better. We will provide jobs to teachers - and indeed create teachers - of our language. We will give due recognition to our languages. We will give the message that our languages, and by extension our cultures and real selves, are not contemptible. We will perhaps save our languages from the forces of globalisation, neo-imperialism and elitism, which threaten to kill our languages and force us to operate only in elitist language or become marginalized, powerless and contemptible even in our own eyes. Our mother tongue is more than a language, it is the soul that lives inside us. It is an armory of the human mind; an archive of history. We invent our world through language and bring it to life.
This is just in one tiny corner of India. Look at the vast span of this nation and we will figure why, as India asserts itself as one nation, one people, millions of local voices are being silenced. Many of these are tiny voices but they represent the magic and the mystique of India. As these voices die out, so will songs, poetry, folk tales, theatre, local histories, the rich tapestry of sounds and words that make us the amazing nation we are. So it’s not only about languages vanishing. It’s also about histories and cultures disappearing. It is about traditions, never archived, dying out one by one, to leave behind a richer, stronger but lesser India.
Let us love our mother tongue, mother country and her culture which is unique and rich. In the process just neglect or discard the Manglish promoters, they be print, audio or visual media.
No comments:
Post a Comment