Features: Magazine | Literary Review | Life | Metro Plus | Open Page | Education Plus | Book Review | Business | SciTech | Entertainment | Young World | Property Plus | Quest | Folio |

Are we tongue-tied?

Have we severed the umbilical cord that binds us to our mother tongue? On the eve of World Mother Tongue Day it is for us to find out if we have simply changed the way we interface with it

A THOUGHT For the mother tongue

Tomorrow is World Mother Tongue Day and as good a time as any to work out if we are the richer or poorer for losing touch with our mother tongue. In school when life was simple (and more confused), one of the first questions one would ask a new boy or girl would be: "What's your mother tongue?"

The smart aleck would reply pink with the accompanying rude gesture, while the better-behaved child would give the right answer.

Language of the heart

"First of all it is not mother tongue," says renowned writer Shashi Deshpande. "It is the tongue of the father. I would say my mother tongue is the language my emotional being is close to. I use different languages for different purposes — English to write in, Marathi to express emotions and Kannada for functionality." A view reminiscent of poet A. K. Ramanujan who spoke English upstairs with his father, Tamil in the kitchen where his mother and aunts spent time and Kannada on the streets where he played with friends.

Ajit V. Bhide, Head of Department of Psychiatry, St Martha's Hospital, defines mother tongue as "the language that most naturally comes to one." The mother tongue is not so much the language of the mother as the language one learns first, at home before formal education.

With the invasion from the skies and the global village, English has become the language of choice, of power and industry and the one to suffer in the process has been the mother tongue. "I find the decline of bilingualism or multilingualism unfortunate," says historian Ramchander Guha. "This is happening among a certain class of people, primarily the urban middle class. Multilingualism is important simply because each language you learn opens up a whole artistic, moral, cultural universe."

"I agree that it is the middle class that is losing touch with the mother tongue," says Shashi.

"But it is not something I would hold against them. It is not that they are lesser beings for not being able to speak in the mother tongue. When parents are from different linguistic backgrounds like mine, then what do you consider as the mother tongue? Parents should make the effort to speak the language at home so the child is exposed to one Indian language at home."

Like Ramesh, a chartered accountant who is from Karnataka while his wife, Parul, is from Andhra Pradesh. Their four-year-old son, Ved, speaks to his mother in Telugu and his father in Kannada. "It was not a conscious thing but I have noticed when Ved speaks to me or my parents, it would be in Kannada and then he translates what he is saying into Telugu for Parul," says Ramesh.

An innate ability

Dr. Bhide says: "There is an innate ability to learn more than one language, but the faculty can vary in degrees from one individual to another. It is a gift to be able to speak many languages and a rarer one to master a few."

"It is important to teach the mother tongue in schools," says Kannada writer Baraguru Ramachandrappa. "In an increasingly global lifestyle, we need to retain our roots. Also by knowing one's mother tongue, it is easy to gain insights into culture." A. Giridhar Rao of the Indian Esperanto Federation concurs. "There is plenty of evidence both from our own societies and from research worldwide that mother tongue medium (MTM) education is not only the most effective medium for instruction, but that effective MTM education actually helps in the rapid acquisition of other languages."

But Guha would also warn against the exclusion of English when he says: "Linguistic chauvinism exposes children to a kind of suppression. We should renew our attachment to our mother tongue. But at the same time, to turn one's back on English in this day and age is foolish."

A richer individual

Says Shashi: "A person who is bilingual is a richer individual. If I stay in Bangalore and do not know Kannada, I would feel a certain degree of alienation."

On the other hand, there is Bipin, a software professional, who believes that "language is for communication and as long as you can communicate, it does not matter which language you do it in. I am from Kerala and can speak Malayalam. Since I studied here, I can read and write Kannada. But that has not opened any doors of culture for me. All I know of Malayalee culture is kalari payattu, which I studied in Alliance Française, which is all about spreading French culture and language, so go figure!"

"There are phrases from Malayalam that I use in English because they are so cool like the one about the stoned rooster," says Meenakshi yet another divorced-from-roots Malayalee. Languages should be dynamic and the Bangalorean that blithely comments solpa adjust maadi is by default articulating a culture of laissez faire.

So make a pact with yourself tomorrow to incorporate a word, or a phrase from your mother tongue into your first language. Tumba thanks only!

MINI ANTHIKAD-CHHIBBER

Printer friendly page  
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail