Kaps from Sambharmafia has this poem which he has sent for a contest – this post is triggered by the discussion on that on his blog.
The gist of his poem is ‘Tamilians have progressed far, while Tamil has been left behind’… I responded to this on his blog with a question – if the Tamilian had clung on to Tamil, would he have progressed this far?
Where I come from is the perspective of widening one’s horizons – not clinging to but moving on – but that does not mean necessarily leaving behind your roots – in this case, language. Kap’s point is about how
1. people find it unfashionable to speak in Tamil
2. children in schools do not even need to learn Tamil as a second ior third laguage
The two are different things – and I think the concern is about the former – I did not, for instance learn Tamil in school – not for one single year in all my school life in Madras – but I speak, read and write the language very well…
As for the other bit, I see this happening all around me – this is not just one language or about one state – ‘vernac’ is just not cool – sure, it is more uncool in some places than others, but there it is.
On the other hand, there is this evolving language of *lish – any local language married with English – Hinglish, Tamlish, whatever… This is more often than not, lingua franca among the young in age and heart…
So where is this post leading? To another related thought I have about how Tamil is coping with this ‘neglect’. I use Tamil here as an example; this discussion is not limited to that language alone…
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Mainstream media has resolved to stick to its guns and maintain the language in all its grammatical sanctity – which, like this sentence means, most people have no clue about what a newsreader is saying on a Tamil news program or a writer in a Tamil weekly. Very often, I (remember I prided myself on knowing Tamil very well) find Tamil news going way above my head.
duh, whajijasay?
The message is clear. Chaste Tamil is where it is at. An ‘exclusive’ strategy.
On the other hand is the language used by presenters of entertainment programs – they bear no resemblance to any language one knows. I strain to listen and understand and find traces of a language I know – but so mutilated in form that it is not easy to even accept it as Tamil – all for the sake of sounding cool and in tune with the times. An ‘inclusive’ strategy.
What is happening here? Is this language schizophrenic? Can any language be, for that matter?
Or is this society’s (as represented by main-stream media) way of coping with seeming erosion in usage of a language? Is this happening with any other Indian langauges as well?
I did some research on the net and found this – Dodson and Jones (1984) document peoples’ emotional involvement behind the maintenance of threatened languages, such as Welsh, “highlighting the assumption that media provision in a minority language will stem the decline in the number of users of that languages” (ibid) Kuo (1984) discussing Mandarin in Singapore shows “the conscious use of television in promoting an additional national languages, which is not used outside the official spheres, to serve as an ethnic and cultural marker of national identity”. (ibid)
Is that why English is becoming less and less formal – with increased usage, the language (and its speakers) do not feel threatened in any way – and it needs to be flexible and friendly enough to welcome and retain all new speakers…
Many rambling thoughts – and many questions, as usual…
Being a bengali, and also one who can read, write and speak it pretty well, I was very surprised that I found that I was subconsciously reading english subtitles while watching Bengali oldies…
Of course, the sound quality of oldies is poor and specially worse when modulated through the signals of DD7…but still, i was reading every line in the subtitles as a natural response…
Well mostly the non-vernac obsession is due to misplaced notions of social mobility, but may be sometimes its an innate response when you have to live most of your waking hours with English in your workplace and cosmopolitan neighbourhoods.
Hi Charu
My wife went to a English only school in Madras (Rosary) and she never learned Tamil formally (she learned English, Hindi, and French). She does not read Tamil very well (I doubt she could read a newspaper in Tamil). She regrets that. And, of course, she can only read the great body of Tamil literature in translation.
I told my wife that she should talk to our son in Tamil so that he would pick it up, but she was not disciplined about that. As a result, he may never learn Tamil, which I think is a pity.
A few rambling thoughts of mine…..
My own Tamil is terrible, but listening to what I hear on TV (or even generally spoken in Chennai), I felt my Tamil was spectacular. However, I don’t read and write it very well….but hope to rectify that.
I grew up in Bangalore, where things are worse. Most people cannot talk Kannada. I took the trouble of paying attention in my third language class (Kannada was my third), so i speak it well, and read and write it competently (enough to read a newspaper), since I figured I should learn the language. I don’t think any one I knew shared my sentiments (it’s not cool, ESPECIALLY in Bangalore, where kids are more westernized than the west is).
I more recently discovered something else. Most of my Bengali friends, even if they have studied in English (debatable, listening to them :-)) are very comfortable in Bengali, and read Bengali books or newspapers. I didn’t see that anywhere in the South except perhaps Kerala.
Why?
Charu,
Thanks for bringing up this issue. Instead of posting a lengthy comment, i have made a separate post on my blog. You can read it here –
http://sambharmafia.blogspot.com/2005/07/language-debate.html
I am equally concerned about the 2 points you have raised here. Even if one does not learn the mother tongue at school, it is important to learn it at home. Even though you didn’t learn Tamil in school, you managed to learn it outside school. In today’s world I see lot of people who don’t know read or write the language and they say this with lot of pride. How will this language be passed on to future generations…..it currently exists in the Tanglish form and god knows what form will emerge next. Although it is important to know how to speak, it is equally important to know how to read and write.
I think most of the analysis covers only a small fraction of the urban population. While the percentage of the English medium schools have been increasing and the students who take English as their first language is increasing, there are plenty more across any given state who learn to read and write in their mother tongue well. So it is not apocalypse yet.
The problems I see are as follows:
1. There are very few bilingual readers. Once someone is proficient in English she completely ditches mother tongue.
2. The bilingual writer is dead. Thus, only those who cannot write well in English (in media that is), end up writing for Tamil media. In a recent presentation I made to some editors of language portal, they felt that the situation was quite different in Kannada. But I guess in the large, the vernacular writing is pathetic – both in content and style, as good ones end up writing for English media, or writing books in English. This results in lower quality content available in vernacular language. This results in readers who seek quality content moving to reading English, and only English. This is a massive spiral.
Solution:
Must encourage bilingual writing. Good writers and thinkers must make it a point to write in their respective vernacular languages as well. Even if it does not give them enough money. Then there will be more and more bilingual readers. Then there will be sensible development of vernacular language all across. Those who are proficient only in the vernacular language will not feel left alone. Then, they won’t feel inferior.
Badri,
Agree with you on the lack of quality writers in vernacular languages. You might know the situation quite well as you are a publisher and a prominent Tamil blogger.
Could it also be on account of the fact that the vernacular writing / literature is not so lucrative?
Charu,
sorry for occupying airtime 🙂
I had written about this here http://ecophilo.blogspot.com/2005/06/will-world-speak-single-language.html and here http://ecophilo.blogspot.com/2005/07/which-language-to-teach.html and of the dichotomy in between.
We find it fashionable ( and practical perhaps) to learn foreign languges rather than our own, so thats how it will be, I guess. Our languages will become dialects in some time.
hi charu… i hesitated to comment on this post because my own tamil is so poor..but i have often felt that the language of the tamil news channels is unrecognisable to me. schizophrenic is a good word for it because i can never seem to recognise any of the words in the tamil we speak at home…
All the argument about TV’s bastardisation/purification Tamil is if you ask me stupid. There has always been and always will be two forms of the language minimum – the Spoken/Vernacular and the Written/Official.
For example, in most tamil household, the spoken word for “learn” is “kathuko” but we write it as “katrukol” – Tamil has always recognized that a language will get corrupted as more and more people speak and there exists two forms of it to handle the problem. Besides, tamil has some 5-6 major dialects and quite a few non major. – Coimbatore/Kongu Tamil, Nellai Tamil, Iyer tamil and so on – it just shows you the versatility of the language and its relevance
Shivaji, I understand what you mean – I find myself, more often than not, thinking in English – even when I am speaking in Hindi or Tamil… but it is definitely not a function of “coolness”!
Michael, I feel the same way – not being comfortable in one’s own language means losing out on all the great literature of that – translations are just not the same, you agree, I am sure 🙂
Sunil yes, I see that ‘pride’ in bengalis – but it is just not there in tamilians – or too many other communities. wonder why? I have Sindhi friends who do not know even a single word of Sindhi…
Badri, you are right that this discussion is mostly relevant to urban centres – but the problem of vernac = uncool exists everywhere – which is why we see kids from rural / non English backgrounds struggling when it comes to higher education in a more ‘mixed bag – mostly urban’ situation….
as for writers, I guess many feel there is just no market for writing in local languages… but as your business shows, that is clearly not the case!
kaps, read your post – I agree, it is important for future generations to be entirey familiar with their own language… if only to keep literature alive…
Neelakantan, will read your posts – and yes, I guess it is more practical, as you say, to learn English or other foreign languages… but sad that this comes at the cost of another local language…
Uma, I remembered you talking about Tamil news – in fact that is why I asked what you felt about this post – spoken tamil is so different from the written/formal language… and this is not just about you – I have spent the first twenty years of my life in Madras – and I still struggle with the formal languae often…
Ravages, it is not true that all languages have two forms – the written and spoken (or the formal and informal) – or that this difference is so stark that people who follow the informal spoken language do not follow the other…. take Hindi, the spoken version is much like the written and more formal form – except maybe in literature…
in fact, any media research that I do throws up the fact that people evaluate tv news channels on ease of understanding – or simplicity of language used in news presentation – which effectively removes all formal / archaic words…
and Ravages, I would be wary of using a word like ‘stupid’ on other blogs – such a word makes me classify the comment and commentor into the “unwarranted rudeness” category – which I do not associate with you at all 🙂
Charu, only tamil to my knowledge has that split – one archaic/official written version and the more adaptable, more corruptible spoken version.
would be wary of using a word like ’stupid’ on other blogs
Oh that! Well, to me the argument was not really valid. As I mentioned, Tamil has the two styles – and for whatever reasons, our channels use the more rigid, written version. I don’t see anything wrong in that
Oh BTW – I do apologise for being unintentionally rude
Going through the list of books in Book Tag last month,very few Bloggers possesed Varnac books & only 2-3 had listed Varnac Books in their fovourite list. Has problem started with almost univarsal acceptance of English as medium of instruction in India.With the use of Hindi in day to day life in all sitations, as it is understood by people from different background- liguistic,social & economical-people(Esp. children) dont feel need to learn and speak langages other than English & Hindi.There is another point,one may learn a language in scool or in class but unless its used in daily life, its soon forgotten.My kids have learned French,Marathi in school and were good at it, but in a year or so they lost it.My daughter picked up spoken Marathi when she started working in Municipal Hospital in Mumbai.BTW my mother tongue is Guju and i have studied with Gujrati as MOI but today I find v v difficult to write letter to my relatives in Guju!!Though i read Guju newspaper,stories and watch guju channel on tv. Its difficult problem.
“What is happening here?Is this language schizophrenic? Can any language be, for that matter?”
Yes, it can be (loosely). This phenomenon is known to linguists as “Diglossia”, and Tamil is one of the very few diglossic languages in the world today (perhaps the only one where diglossia is still acute). Crudely, diglossia is born out of and maintained through highly stratified social conditions. For a more learned exposition on dilossia, you can refer to this paper by Harold Schiffman of UPenn’s Center for South Asian Studies:
http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/~haroldfs/540/handouts/indiapol/
‘Tanglish’, however, is merely a reflection of the middle-classes’ schizophrenic sense of identitiy, progress, culture, etc. The identification of these must-haves with the Tamil language is very weak in their (divided) minds.
Partisan
Thanks Partisan, for this excellent link… I dont know however in case of Tamil, it is the result of a conscious policy decision or it just came about… worth thinking about, i guess. haven’t gone thru the paper in detail, only had a brief look at it so far…
PK, my feling about the book tag is that people wanted to share their experience with English books alone so everyone reading the blog would be at the same level… am not sure if it was entirely about ‘vernac’.. but you are right, one needs to be speaking / ‘practising’ all the time to be comfortable with a language…