07-16-2007, 02:52 AM
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->A Language rant
A long time ago, language meant English or Hindi or French or whatever and had absolutely nothing to do with C, Java or ML. Children spoke their mother tongue at home and English was drilled into their head at school. Although they finally managed to get a grasp on English, their thinking was still in their mother tongue.
But nowadays, I am witnessing a strange phenomena. Possibly such things were happening earlier too, but I am sure I was not exposed to it. On the streets, in the airport, in the malls and parks, you can see young parents with little kids. And invariably, they are conversing in English with their kids. For some reason, I am repulsed by the sight of a small Indian child talking to his parents in English. Mind you, this is Bangalore I am talking about, not some US city with NRIs. The parents converse freely in their mother tongue, but for the child, English is the only language.
I am unable to understand why parents would deliberately alienate the child from his own culture and country. Has the craze for English reached such heights that we are willing to make Englishmen out of our children, who look down upon their vernacular brethen and be unable to communicate with them ? I, like most of the people from the plains speak, understand and write only Hindi and English. Many of my friends from other states are able to speak their non-Hindi mother tongue fluently. The same might not be true a few years hence.
Here in Karnataka, people are protesting and fighting to preserve the Kannada language. It is compulsory for all shops to display the signboard in Kannada too. But these protesters must realise that their fight is not against migrants from other states. The real threat is from those upwardly mobile parents who consider it too "common-place" to talk to their children in Kannada. The Hindi or Tamil speaking people will not lead to the marginalization of Kannada, the obsession with English would. And what goes for Kannada would probably hold true for any other Indian language.
When people make a noise about such issues, it is very easy to dismiss them as chauvinistic and give examples from the past to show that it is a natural process, but one must not forget that language defines the people and their culture. There are many things which are a part of our lives, but we would be hard pressed to explain them in an alien language. When you are in an extremely stressful situation, do you think and speak in English or some other language ? How does on translate a muhavara ? Dhobi ka kutta .... will English ever express what a dhobi is and what a ghat is ?
There are many arguements put forth that knowledge of English is a passport to success in today's world, but shine of gold should not make one forget his identity. People adopt various extreme emotive positions on the issue of language. May it be Hindi vs others or English vs Hindi or Tamil vs Kannada, a balanced approach is needed. Junking English in favour of the mother tongue, as was the case recently in Bengal is short sighted, but the reverse too is not the solution.
http://khabri.blogspot.com/2007/02/language-rant.html<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
A long time ago, language meant English or Hindi or French or whatever and had absolutely nothing to do with C, Java or ML. Children spoke their mother tongue at home and English was drilled into their head at school. Although they finally managed to get a grasp on English, their thinking was still in their mother tongue.
But nowadays, I am witnessing a strange phenomena. Possibly such things were happening earlier too, but I am sure I was not exposed to it. On the streets, in the airport, in the malls and parks, you can see young parents with little kids. And invariably, they are conversing in English with their kids. For some reason, I am repulsed by the sight of a small Indian child talking to his parents in English. Mind you, this is Bangalore I am talking about, not some US city with NRIs. The parents converse freely in their mother tongue, but for the child, English is the only language.
I am unable to understand why parents would deliberately alienate the child from his own culture and country. Has the craze for English reached such heights that we are willing to make Englishmen out of our children, who look down upon their vernacular brethen and be unable to communicate with them ? I, like most of the people from the plains speak, understand and write only Hindi and English. Many of my friends from other states are able to speak their non-Hindi mother tongue fluently. The same might not be true a few years hence.
Here in Karnataka, people are protesting and fighting to preserve the Kannada language. It is compulsory for all shops to display the signboard in Kannada too. But these protesters must realise that their fight is not against migrants from other states. The real threat is from those upwardly mobile parents who consider it too "common-place" to talk to their children in Kannada. The Hindi or Tamil speaking people will not lead to the marginalization of Kannada, the obsession with English would. And what goes for Kannada would probably hold true for any other Indian language.
When people make a noise about such issues, it is very easy to dismiss them as chauvinistic and give examples from the past to show that it is a natural process, but one must not forget that language defines the people and their culture. There are many things which are a part of our lives, but we would be hard pressed to explain them in an alien language. When you are in an extremely stressful situation, do you think and speak in English or some other language ? How does on translate a muhavara ? Dhobi ka kutta .... will English ever express what a dhobi is and what a ghat is ?
There are many arguements put forth that knowledge of English is a passport to success in today's world, but shine of gold should not make one forget his identity. People adopt various extreme emotive positions on the issue of language. May it be Hindi vs others or English vs Hindi or Tamil vs Kannada, a balanced approach is needed. Junking English in favour of the mother tongue, as was the case recently in Bengal is short sighted, but the reverse too is not the solution.
http://khabri.blogspot.com/2007/02/language-rant.html<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->