Sorry, My Kids Don’t Know Odia!

Every time Odia parents staying outside Odisha sheepishly (and sometimes proudly!) admit or declare that their children don’t know how to speak in their mother tongue – my eyebrows are raised in a mix of annoyance and mock surprise. Seriously? They don’t know how to speak Odia or they have never been taught to speak in Odia? Also, shouldn’t such parents be feeling ashamed rather than embarrassed or proud about this fact?

Sorry, I am not being unnecessary critical, holier than thou or impinging on personal choices, but rather feeling sad and sorry for a growing practice, or rather a trend which has sounded the death knell on several such precious and rich mother languages. Forget about reading and writing, many children are not taught even to speak their mother tongues.

I often come across children of my Odia cousins, friends and relatives residing outside Odisha speaking only in Hindi or English. And when I openly wonder at this, the children seem indifferent or look towards their parents for an answer while their parents explain that their children ‘don’t know’ how to speak. Rather than revealing that the children have never been encouraged to speak in their mother language in the first place.

In fact, several children who don’t know their mother language grow up either learning another regional language in India or a foreign language of another country. A cousin who recently visited Odisha announced proudly that his 8-year-old can speak fluent Danish now. To which another cousin quickly retorted, “But he still can’t converse with his own grandparents in his mother tongue!”

Even parents who have not been taught in English themselves and have grown up speaking, writing and reading in their mother language while achieving a good degree of social and professional success as adults, also hesitate to teach their mother tongue to their children. Somehow, the native language is considered to be low in prestige and status as compared to English and Hindi in India and other foreign languages of another country. The usefulness, glamour and global appeal of communicating in a universal or a foreign language seems to be much more as compared to say Odia, Tamil or Assamese.

Home is the first school for children where they learn to speak their first words. Then comes the extended circle of friends and acquaintances and school. As children grow up, the world becomes complex and they develop their own understanding of embracing a language or resisting it. For teenagers for example, the choice of language may be linked to larger social factors like their choice of identity or belongingness.

Most of the children residing outside their states/country grow up speaking, writing, reading and listening to Hindi, English or the dominant regional/national language of that particular state/country. Majority of kids and their parents in India today pride themselves in speaking English both at school and home. It’s always good to learn English but not when it’s the only medium of communication and certainly not at the cost of one’s own mother tongue.

Most first-generation immigrants tend to think that their native language will not be useful in a new country and they may avoid teaching it to their children. They feel pressurised to abandon their mother tongue and heritage which sometimes causes racist, ethnic and other discrimination.

Very few of these parents take the time and effort to teach and insist their children speak in their mother tongue at home. In fact, there are many countries like China, Japan, Korea, Spain and France that give enormous importance to preserving their local language and they take pride in speaking their language.

Instead of rejecting the mother language parents must empower their children and encourage speaking the language at home.  Children should feel pride in knowing their mother tongue, not embarrassment or shame. They should be able to stand up when ridiculed for their use of the language. Our mother language strengthens not just family ties and cultural roots but also connects us strongly to our background.

Unfortunately, one of the main causes of language death in India is the lack of education in them. Regional languages or the first languages are losing their relevance and importance in schools as it is optional in many of the English medium schools. While some students do opt for their mother language, others prefer to choose Hindi or Sanskrit.

There have been some efforts recently to promote regional languages in schools. The newly formulated National Education Policy (NEP) 2023 states that wherever possible, students till Class 5 in schools should be taught in mother tongue/regional language/local language drawing from various studies that show young children best understand things in their mother tongue. The idea behind mother-tongue teaching is not to stop or hinder English-medium teaching, but to encourage bi-lingual teaching.

Regional languages not only lend a unique flavour and distinctiveness to each culture, but is also a valuable channel to connect, express and continue our socio-cultural legacies. When children learn their own language and its unique identity and importance, they also learn to respect the language of others. They better appreciate the distinctiveness of languages and cultures of the world once they learn their own mother tongue. Moreover, learning multiple languages is beneficial for children. Children who are multi-lingual have better memory and attention as compared to monolingual learners.

Sadly however, the rate at which regional languages and mother languages are getting obliterated, it won’t be long when the world population will be communicating in only a few selected languages. India as one of the most linguistically diverse countries is fast losing many of its mother tongues.

Strangely, the loss of mother tongue hardly seems to be a matter of concern for many parents and it’s not just restricted to NRI children alone. It is common to find children in India who aren’t functional or comfortable in their mother tongue. Many children today are slowly and steadily losing touch with their mother tongue. While parents are happy that their kids are functional in English, Grandparents lament the lack of communication and connection with their grandchildren.

For me, the loss of a mother tongue is a lifetime loss, a loss of our unique cultural roots and identity. And when children grow up bereft of their mother tongue, it’s in some way is a loss of connection, familial ties and sense and cultural identity.

Says writer and computer scientist Anil Menon while narrating ‘What we lose when we lose our Mother Tongue,’ – “The handicap is experienced in many ways; through family members with whom one cannot converse; in jokes, stories, poems, music, and art one cannot understand; in becoming estranged from a culture which was once a birth right.

Menon who has been an advocate of mother languages says further, “Languages are much more than just collections of words. Each represents a way of loving this wonderful universe of ours. To lose your mother tongue is to lose a mode of appreciation. But perhaps the strangest consequence is that sometimes it leaves you unable to see there has been a loss at all. You can see this in people who are visibly proud their children don’t speak their mother tongue.”

All languages are unique and help to identify who we are as people and as individuals and we as their inheritors have an obligation that they continue to flourish. As Nelson Mandela had truly said, “If you talk to man in a language he understands, that goes to his head. If you talk to him in his language, that goes to his heart.”