Miscellaneous - This Day That Age   

dated April 7, 1957: Need to learn languages

Prime Minister Nehru has stressed the need for people to know several languages, Indian and foreign, to keep pace with a changing revolutionary world. Inaugurating in New Delhi on April 5 the second literary forum organised by AIR, he said litterateurs should keep the windows of their minds open to know intimately the fast changing world. The three-day forum is being attended by poets, writers and dramatists from different parts of India, representing 13 national languages. Mr. Nehru said different languages should grow and there should be no conflict between them. The history of Europe for the last 400 years had shown how languages like English, French, German and Spanish had flowered and grown side by side. At one time all these languages were dominated by Greek and Latin, but later they freed themselves from the shadow of these two languages. Even to-day literary journals and magazines published in these languages did not confine themselves to works in the language in which they were published but devoted space to the literary works in other languages. A well-educated man in Europe easily knew a number of European languages. In India also this practice should be followed of people learning several languages and literary journals in one language writing about literary works in other languages. But this could be done only when the litterateurs knew more languages and were in a position to appreciate and assimilate what was good in other works. The Prime Minister referred to the recent visit of a well-known brain specialist from Canada to India, and said this specialist had explained that children had great aptitude for learning languages, and that a child up to the age of 10 had a special corner in its brain for learning languages. There were special cells in its brain which helped a child to learn several languages.

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