Maniam PS [Guru] Reward Points : 140200 Member Since : Wednesday, March 18, 2009
India attained her independence from the British more than 60 years ago but regret to note that to this day the Indians prefer to use English as their spoken language rather then their mother tongue and this is very much so in Tamil Nadu. Most of the Tamilians whether educated or otherwise, either converse among themselves in English or Tamil adultered with 60% of English words. It is very difficult to find two Tamilians conversing to each other completely in Tamil. This is a phenomenon which I observe only in Tamil Nadu. Maybe, they feel that by conversing in English they look much more educated but I feel it is a shame if Tamilians cannot speak their own mother tongue fluently. If this trend is allowed to be continued, the Tamil language will slowly and steadily be forgotten by the next generation and eventually wiped out from this world. In order to avoid this from happening, the Tamil Nadu Government has to take the necessary steps to stop the deterioration of the Tamil language. They have to put in the required legislation to arrest the problem now or it will be too late.
Posted On : 3/31/2009 11:50:56 PM
Indravadan Modi Reward Points : 23300 Member Since : Saturday, January 10, 2009
True Even i watch the same thing in Delhi. the young generations are least bothered to speak in Fluent Hindi .. Hindi now a day has been reshaped as a strange mixture of English and Hindi. Half of the terms are coined mercilessly. Certainly this is the big time adverse effect of globalization what say
While the government pays lip service to the idea of teaching and learning in the mother tongue, the truth is that most students have to know English to do well in higher education. I agree with educationists that the child understands better in the mother tongue, but they don t do well later. As a counterpoint, some people will say that people from Bihar, who are taught in Hindi, do well in the civil services examinations. But the exception cannot be taken as the rule. While a student may perform well in a Hindi medium school, he or she may be at a disadvantage later. In the Jawaharlal Nehru University, a sociology student will learn Subaltern Studies. In Rajasthan, even the teachers wouldn t have heard of the subject. Students learning in regional languages do not have the kind of resources they need, as English books are not translated into their mother tongue. Knowledge is available only to those who understand English, and initiatives have not come from regional languages for translation. While some higher education courses are available in regional languages, the demand for these is less. For instance, there is B Ed Bachelor of Education in Hindi and in English. Students who have done the course in English get jobs easily, but not those who have studied in Hindi. The lack of translation of texts is also a major problem. In the late 1950s, the Government of India kept aside a fund of one crore rupees in each state for translation but it s not known how that fund was used. There is no grant for translating textbooks or literature. Central Government is seriously considering a recommendation of the National Knowledge Commission, a body constituted to sharpen India s knowledge edge , to set up a National Translation Mission. There has been a significant rise in the use of English in each discipline in the last 50 years. Most advanced countries have invested tremendously in ensuring that this knowledge is available in their regional languages too. That this is a lesson India would do well to emulate is clear from the high drop-out rates in Urdu-medium schools. Take the situation in Hyderabad, for instance. The Nizams spent a lot of money in nurturing Urdu as a medium. Translations of Urdu monographs are available in the Osmania University, where even a post-graduate course could be done in Urdu at one time. But instead of making use of that, Urdu as a language was neglected. In Urdu-medium schools, vacancies of teachers are not filled and textbooks don t reach on time.
Posted On : 4/10/2009 2:31:41 AM
Manpreet Bharara Reward Points : 30900 Member Since : Wednesday, April 08, 2009
Given the multitude of problems and the diversity of languages, the medium of instruction remains a topic of impassioned debate. Language is seen as a factor fuelling nationalistic pride in Tamilnadu, for instance, the government introduced a rule in 2000 saying the mother tongue should be the sole medium of instruction, which the high court later struck down. Despite governments trying to kindle linguistic pride, the fact remains that many parents still see English as the language that could help their wards find employment. The tendency to dismiss other languages is worrying experts, who are unsure about the success of multilingualism in India. Common questions include whether the mother tongue is being neglected and English unduly favoured whether the literature and culture in regional languages are being forgotten in schools and whether today s students lack strong foundations in at least one language, be it English or a regional language. Such questions cannot be tackled in isolation for, as experts point out, better knowledge of a language can come only with better teachers and teaching methods.
Posted On : 4/10/2009 2:34:50 AM
Albert D souza Reward Points : 33200 Member Since : Sunday, February 24, 2008
The government may soon be considering a proposal that would require all schools to teach primary classes, in the mother tongue. And if you are worried that your kids will not be learning English, rest assured. The schools will be teaching English as a subject in the early years. The suggestion is given by a sub-committee of the Central Advisory Board of Education CABE as part of their proposed free and compulsory education bill. If accepted as part of the bill, all schools across the country government and private will have to move to a mother-tongue-based teaching during the formative years. In fact, several reputed schools in the capital, Sardar Patel Vidyalaya for instance, have been following this system for years. For the first four years, students are taught in Hindi while English is just another subject. According to Ms Kusum Warikoo, the principal of Sardar Patel Vidyalaya, such a plan could work wonders for the children. Communicating in the mother tongue lends for happier and more confident children. Speaking in the mother tongue comes naturally to kids, they dont have to think in an alien language before they communicate. Besides which at an early age children have a much larger capacity of learning languages, she says. The question, however, is which Indian language will be the medium of instruction in schools where there is no clear dominant linguistic group. The sub-committee has proposed that the mother tongue of the largest number of children will be the language of instruction. Additional provisions will have to be made for instruction through other Indian languages as well. This is perhaps where the proposal runs out of steam. Experts feel that such a situation could lead to a fragmentation of the class, and even if such a situation were acceptable, it would not be viable option in majority of schools. The proposal is bound to face stiff resistance. Experts say that schools would have apprehensions about whether such a system would work. Given that till date, an English-medium school label is considered an important selling point for schools and a requirement for parents, resistance to erode this system is likely to be strong. It wouldnt just the schools, which may oppose this move. Parents would be worried if their children would have adequate grasp of the English language, if their early education is in an Indian language
Posted On : 4/10/2009 5:44:17 AM
Vikas Chaturvedi Reward Points : 14100 Member Since : Thursday, December 20, 2007
On March 7, 2001, H.Y.Sharada Prasad, Press Advisor to Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, wrote in his column, All in All, in The Asian Age about a Census enumerator who visited his house. His wife told him that her mother tongue was Telugu and mine was Kannada but that our children had only a mother but no mother-tongue, having been born in Delhi and gone to school here without any opportunities to study either of the parents language. His the census enumerator s response was that since they must be speaking Hindi, that would be deemed to be their mother tongue . This story is not new. Most Indians who earn their livelihood outside their own linguistic province face this problem every ten years.
Posted On : 4/11/2009 2:47:30 AM
Anju Malhotra Reward Points : 61200 Member Since : Tuesday, March 31, 2009
The census officials for over hundred years and more have faced this problem heroically. Enumerating and recording faithfully and correctly the language information from Indian citizens is a great challenge. Caste names, names of clans, names of professions, names of religious sects, names of speech or language not currently in use, names of villages, regions or provinces, names of animals and birds, and a host of other names may be offered as the name of the language of the individual being counted under the census Only the so-called educated persons, living in their own world of knowledge, wisdom and cynicism, think that every individual in India knows the name of the language he or she speaks. With almost every major Indian language having its own quota of dialects, it is often difficult for the common people in many states to be really sure as to the correct name of the speech they speak. While the official intention is to faithfully record what the citizen says, and for this adequate and explicit instructions and training are imparted meticulously to the field enumerators, yet some enumerators interpret the data given by the citizen as they see fit Fortunately for us the Census of India, over the decades, has built a professional team of language experts who could see through the data and make some really significant findings out of the data collected. The linguistic demography brought out by the 1961 Census of India is still a monumental research work. This Census listed 1652 mother tongues, and a few hundred languages around 400 languages or so , all neatly classified under the four major language families of India Indo-Aryan, Dravidian, Austric, and Tibeto-Burman . Over the decades, however, there appears to be some attempt at rationalization of the names of the mother tongues recorded in the census. There is also some complacency, and an unwillingness to recognize the possibility of the diversity of responses.
Posted On : 4/11/2009 2:59:02 AM
Albert D souza Reward Points : 33200 Member Since : Sunday, February 24, 2008
Mother tongue is a concept that we all appear to understand very well and take for granted. Mother tongue is a very important concept or construct within the Constitution of India. Several important provisions within the Indian Constitution revolve around this concept or construct. Decisions regarding the medium of instruction and other official language policies depend on the interpretation of this concept or construct. More often than not, mother tongue becomes more a political idea than a linguistic construct or concept. Mother tongues are elevated to some superhuman and divine status, and are worshipped literally. For example, students in all the schools run with government aid in Tamilnadu usually sing in praise of Mother Tamil in their school activities. Similar activities are noticed in Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka, to mention only a few states. Just like we personify the nation as Bharata Mata, provinces and mother tongues are also personified and adored. Mother tongue becomes a rallying point for groups of people to unite and express their solidarity more as a political entity. 1. Father and mother speak Tamil among themselves but they speak in English to their child. What is the mother tongue of the child? 2. Though father and mother are native speakers of a variety of Tamil, tney prefer to talk to each other using Kannada. But they speak to their child in that variety of Tamil sometimes, and speak in Kannada at other times. What is the mother tongue of the child? 3. Father speaks Bengali. Mother speaks Tamil. Parents use their respective languages to speak to the child. The child picks up both the languages simultaneously. Can there be more than one mother tongue for an individual. 4. Father and mother are of Tamil origin. But they do not know Tamil. They use the language of the area to speak to the child and the child acquires that language only. And yet the child claims Tamil as his mother tongue for reasons of maintaining his identity, etc. Can one have a mother tongue which is not known to him at all? 5. Father and mother speak Telugu at home, but Tamil outside. Both speak to the child in Telugu and the child acquires also the language of the environment, namely, Tamil. Can there be more than one mother tongue? 6. The child acquires Tamil at home but soon its use is so restricted that his competence in another language is greater than the competence in Tamil. Can one have different mother tongues for different stages of his age and/or career? 7. Some living persons claim a classical language, which is not widely used currently at the spoken level, as their mother tongue. Should a language be spoken necessarily for it to be claimed as a mother tongue by individuals? 8. Several Muslim families with Tamil or Malayalam background may claim Urdu as their mother tongue because of religios considerations. Can mother tongue be decided or chosen for nonlinguistic reasons, such as caste, religion, region, profession and so on? In spite of the difficulties we face in narrowly defining what mother tongue is, most of us, even in India, appear to have only one mother tongue. It appears that no definition of mother tongue is going to cover all aspects of the use of the concept. The linguistic and political aspects of the concept will continue to engage our attention for a long time to come.
Posted On : 4/11/2009 3:02:44 AM
Maniam PS [Guru] Reward Points : 140200 Member Since : Wednesday, March 18, 2009
Posted By : Albert D souza Posted On : 4/11/2009 3:02:44 AM Go
Mother tongue is a concept that we all appear to understand very well and take for granted. Mother t..
Your point noted Albert. Anyway a point of clarification, Mother tongue means, the language spoken by one s mother. It doesn t have to be the language of a specific ethnic group. As long as a child can speak the language of the mother, that what counts.
Mother Tongue
