My love for the English language was instilled in me as a child by my mother who had to deal with her convent-educated cousins who spoke among themselves in the “royal language”, leaving my mother irritated and wondering whether they were speaking about her and her siblings, who were equally ignorant of the language. So we four siblings were sent to single-sex convent schools. Our school was a place full of sincere women — not trained postgraduates or PhDs — who had only one interest: to teach the children whatever little they knew.
However, our Papa believed the “foreign language” should be restricted to school and was very clear that it shouldn’t cross the threshold of our home and invade our family life. We spoke our mother tongue Konkani at home. This also helped us maintain a close relationship with our community.
Today the extreme interest in promoting the English language has reached such a monstrous level that we find spoken Enlgish training centres, books and CDs raking in oodles of money.
Strangely enough even regional language channels are so full of anchors, RJs and VJs who speak regional languages with a foreign-accent, interspersed liberally with English words, either to show off their superiority or to prove they are new to the regional languages they are trying to speak! It always leaves the audience wondering whether it’s a regional language programme or an English one. Of course, we have gone too far adopting and adapting to the English language that our children will have a completely new language some decades from now.
This pseudo-English has sometimes rather comic results. At elite gatherings, some people hardly accustomed to speaking in English insist on speaking in that language and botch up the speech, leaving the audience laughing on the sly.
Rendering a speech in a newly-acquired language can often lead to strange situations. About 25 years back, a young district collector from north India began her speech, “Nine malgavaga ondhu ganda, elevaga, elu ganda! (I slept with one husband and got up with seven husbands). What she had wanted to say was she slept at ondhu ghante ( 1 0’clock) and got up at elu ghante ( 7 0’ clock).
As in every thing in life, one should be proud of one’s mother tongue and speak in that language whenever it is needed. We have gone too far in this direction and it is for parents to make their children take pride in their mother tongue and love the language, culture and roots and lay the base for a socially healthy surrounding.
paisuman@yahoo.co.in