A language is lost every two weeks, according to UNESCO. Cultural and linguistic diversity is of utmost importance to build sustainable societies. Every country realises how preserving and nurturing the mother language of their people is vital to their holistic psycho-intellectual development. In fact, it’s the most important cultural asset around which the identity and salience of a community is built.
Since 2000, UNESCO has been celebrating International Mother Language Day every year on February 21. It serves to remind us of the importance of language as a cultural asset. This date was not chosen at random though. It was a tribute to the Bangladeshis’ (former East Pakistan) battle and the sacrifices they made for their mother tongue in 1952 when Pakistan imposed on them Urdu as the official language of the country.
Director General of UNESCO Audrey Azoulay highlighted how four out of 10 children worldwide do not have access to education in the language they speak or understand best, meaning the foundation for their learning is more fragile. “Using technology for multilingual learning: Challenges and opportunities” is the theme for 2022. This year’s theme is to advance multilingual education based on the potential role of technology and support the development of quality teaching and learning for all.
The language we use has evolved over centuries. It’s a product of development and cross-pollination from its lateral languages through voluntary or involuntary infusions. Languages like so many things have their typical lifecycle. They evolve, develop, stagnate and die. Many languages in the past reached their peak and are not in use now. A rich language like Sanskrit, which influenced several others, is now in the archives. This shows that languages evolve and get enriched when masses use them across various layers of application and it dies when not used or it becomes the preserve of a privileged few. Language extinction is real and its consequences befall the society responsible for it.
Is our Odia language endangered? Are we aware of it? Are we allowing the demise of our mother language due to our complacency? Or, are we doing it out of callousness that makes it look as if it is by design? Let us see the state of our language in comparison to the global and national trends and evaluate what, where, when and how we need to intervene to stop its extinction and instead make its evolution enriching.
Of the 6,000 languages in the world, 2580 (43%) are estimated to be endangered. Only 10 languages account for over 4.8 billion (60%) speakers of the 7.9 billion global population. Look at the dominance of the top 3 languages: English 1.13 billion (native 379, non-native 753); Mandarin 1.11 billion (native 918, non-native 199) and Hindi 0.61 billion (native 341, non-native 274). This shows that few languages are growing at an exponential rate over the demise of many. Let us see the national trend. From 1991 to 2011 Hindi speakers as a percentage of the Indian population grew from 39.29% to 43.63% whereas Bengali and other Indian languages remained flat. The percentage of Odia speakers dropped from 3.35% to 3.10%. What are the factors behind this trend of rising popularity of English and Hindi?
Globally, English has positioned itself as the bridge language for most non-natives. For the last few centuries it has been the language that gave people access to higher economic opportunities. Electronic communication, that has shrunk the world into a global village, rode on the internet which was in English. Content is available in different languages on the web, but the signages on highways and even lanes are in English. IT has reduced personal communication to structured and mechanical business languages for easy processing and unambiguous facilitation by the service providers. The need for creating subtle expressions has been shunted out and the participants are encouraged to choose keywords that allow easy numerical evaluation at the processing level. Spellcheck, grammarchecker, predictive texting, autofill, emoticons and GIFs are helping people to use this language and meet bulk of their needs without going through the grind of mastering it. In ease of adoption lies its popularity.
The growth of Hindi in India owes a bit to the IT industry, which has since 1990 fuelled massive migration both at the national and international levels. English has always been practiced by the privileged few and remained aspirational for many. The latter cohort, which was not very comfortable with English because of their medium of education and exposure, adopted Hindi as the bridge language. The soft power of Hindi movies and easy availability of entertainment content influenced the new generation. Kids nowadays are as much at ease with Hindi as with their mother language. Hindi now enjoys the same fashion quotient which English enjoyed four or five decades back. This multilingual trend has a negative side too. It has given rise to a hybrid language, a mix of Odia sentences peppered with subaltern Hindi expressions which is a pain to the ears of practitioners of classic forms of our mother tongue.
Despite the depressing trends of most languages, multilingualism does exist and is thriving. Noted translator and academic Prof Jatindra Kumar Nayak says there hardly is a profession or sector in which one can survive with proficiency over only one language. He rues that education is the only sector that has callously neglected our mother language from primary through post-graduation. Be it in terms of improving the quality of language teachers, empowering them with newer tools to encourage students for creative expression, both in its spoken or written forms, the slide has been worryingly steady.
Further, is the role of a language limited to communication between two entities? Or, is it a tool of learning about our past?
Anil Dhir a leading conservationist of the state, feels that at the community level exists invaluable knowledge which gets passed orally from generation to generation. But the recent trend of migration and remaining detached from one’s society is doing irreversible damage to the knowledge base which is mot documented. It will gradually die. As migration for economic betterment is unstoppable, Dhir says many tribal dialects need help to develop their alphabets and lexicons. And with the advancement of AI technology that is very much possible. But it requires support from a compassionate state and sponsor. That will help them document those pieces of knowledge for future generations. Loss of this knowledge is a loss for humanity.
Think of the time when the rock edicts of Ashoka had not been deciphered because no person was available to read them. The world would have been so poor without knowing anything about Ashoka and the political life of his time. The same might happen soon in our state when the contribution and sacrifice made by our forefathers who could carve out a state based on the languages we speak will be lost because the texts documenting the past will be incomprehensible to most of the younger generation. Who will be the loser? Not them but we as the society for sure.
Study shows that usage of mother language for reading and writing is now limited to senior citizens. Some of those aged between 14 years and 64 years have no practicing contact with the language. Many of them can speak and not write well. Most of them either don’t read at all or read only newspapers. While the practicing population aged above 65 years is 5.3% of total population, the 14-64 years age group that comprises 63.6% of the total population practice Odia haphazardly. The ones below 14 years, which are 28.6% of the populace going by census figures, stand to see no better scene. Imagine a society where 92% of its population are disconnected from its heritage and literature as there is no need for this either in their daily life or profession. It is neither fashionable nor does it assure any reward or career advancement.
We connect with our past through our heritage and literature and the only way to get it is through mastery over our mother language.
By not familiarising ourselves with our past, we don’t acquire a sense of our socio-political identity, gain no knowledge of the major milestones in the past as no book talks about the history of our state. We hardly know of the cultural processes our ancestors have gone through. What do you call such an ignoramus community? And what would keep them bound together in the future?
It’s said, never erase your past. It shapes who you are today and will help you to be the person you’ll be tomorrow. We learn from yesterday, live for today, hope for tomorrow.
Preservation of mother tongue should be as important as our instinct for self-preservation. Where have we lost our humanity? That leaves everyone in some position of privilege with a set of very uncomfortable questions:
How safe is our future in the hands of such people?
Is economic development the only sign of sustainable development of a society?
Can we risk such a scenario in the future?
What are we doing to prevent it?
How big should be our effort?
What is going to be the role of the state, the society and the individual?
