What is your Mother Tongue? By Mr. Plastino D'Costa
We Indians, including Goans are very obsessive about ones own mother tongue, and at the top of the list would be Indians from the South. However, when the mother tongue gains precedence over the national language or an international business language, it becomes crucial to deliberate the pros and cons of the issue of languages, to decide which language should be the preferred mode of communication for our Generation Next. Agreed, the mother tongue is the first language we learn when we start talking, hence the name, but how much significance should the mother tongue have, given the changing dynamics of the new integrated world, where already there exists so much miscommunication, even when two humans talk the same language. An ideal situation would be for all Indians to speak one language, so that we all are on the same page, but that seems difficult in this new political reality of pleasing narrow coalitions and even narrower vote banks. Once in a while our Goan politicians understandably rake up the mother tongue issue to get political benefit; after all they need to recycle some issue. But has anyone thought, that in our arrogance of promoting different mother tongues our Generation Next is now subject to learning 3 or 4 languages, that too with different scripts, and that changing the medium of instruction in the middle of their schooling years is taking a toll on their quality of education. Definitely, learning the mother tongue gives us a sense of community belonging, but spare a thought for the Generation Next, they need to learn minimum three languages to please the World, Nation and State All languages have their own importance, but to arrogantly defend one's mother tongue superiority over the other is merely becoming an ego inflating exercise. People in position of power and who sway public opinion should look at ones conscious before making unreasonable demands on the Generation Next to learn so many languages. Although learning 3 or more languages have its advantages, we should be aware of the pitfalls also. We are preparing the Generation Next Goans (Indians) to learn 3 languages, little knowing that their vocabulary will be compromised by more than a third, than those for example, who knows one language thoroughly. No wonder Indian diplomats can never do a good job when negotiating with other countries, be it nuclear deals, trade negotiations, extradition treaties etc. After all people listen to legitimate points only if they are expressed in proper language and in the right vocabulary, or else they are mostly lost in translation. In our quest to learn as many regional languages as possible, we have not been able to perfect a single language. Some out of focus Konkani Stage Artists, have been aligning with politicians for the mother tongue cause, when actually their job should be composing quality Konkani compositions, which will promote the language. If the compositions are good, eventually that will be a good service to the language they have been composed. Chris Perry (Konkani), or the comedian Dada Kondke (Marathi), always made sure their audience get quality compositions in their shows, plays, or films and people seem to have accepted them irrespective of what they were composed in. These gentlemen never arrogantly thrust the language on us and yet made a positive impact on their respective languages. Goans even accepted the Lambada, Macarena, LaBamba etc without even knowing what language their lyrics were written. With the Chinese forcing English in their syllabus have not made them anti-Chinese, then why should we Indians be so insecure about our mother tongue? Goan politicians recently in their elections campaign mostly gave speeches in the Konkani Language, which we assumed we understood, and yet after two months we are confused what they actually meant in these speeches. A survey of how many politician offspring get their education in English Medium Schools should prove their hypocritical effort of enforcing the rest of the population to educate in the mother tongue medium. We Indians and Goans must make up our mind as to which language should get priority, so that our Generation Next Indians or Goans are better focused in the language they speak among themselves or to the rest of the world. We don't want to repeat the situation we faced not so long ago, when we had a Prime Minister who did not know the national language and had to address the parliament in English which also had to be translated into English. Above Article first appeared on Herald - Goa on 16th September 2007
