Words are not the quintessence of communication.A broad smile , the little finger raised or a cold stare can covey more than words.But there are so many languages with umpteen number of dialects and scripts.
When I was a kid I wondered ..Why are we asked to learn three languages in school.And what in languages fancy people that they learn so many of them.Of course to understand a culture , history or some literature mastering their language is essential.And probably kids are better equiped to learn these quickly.
But in my case these have simply left me confused is my language ? I really wonder when I think of my half baked proficiency in each of them.Lets start with Tamil.My mother toungue.Till the age of 5 everything was taught to me in tamil.At home by my grandmom and mom.In the school tamil was my "second language" in both LKG and UKG and hindi was the "third language".
Then at the gae of 5 tamil was discarded.I was sent to a defense area KV.Here the primary spoken language in school was Hindi followed by Tamil course English was the primary medium of instruction . But many concepts in primary school was also explained in Hindi and Tamil.The biggest blooper was teaching Social science in Hindi.
Karka Vrith and Makar Vrith . Thats the tropic of cancer and capricon.
vayu Dab.Thats Air pressure
Atheth.Thats history.
And many more such strange hindi terms to learn SST when hindi was no where near mother tongue.
Then of course there was a little more spice . Sanskrit taught in english.From Class 5 to 9. I distinctly enjoyed Sanskrit more than Hindi . But the school did not allow me to take a board exam in it ..
After 10th standard .. No more "2nd languages"
In between there were some petty attempts to teach me Tamil. Home tutored by grandma. All that I can manage to read my is news paper headlines.It needs lots of patience and practice and drive.The kisu kisu in the kumudams and aananda vikatans were absolutely no drive to make be continue my tamil self tuition.
My odyssey ends with just 4 incomplete knowledges.Many of my friends have rubbed shoulders with 5/6 including a foreign language ...
But the biggest void I feel is when I cant read or write Tamil ppl say is a brilliant language and its literature is very vast and rich.But I am crippled till date due to lack of interest and drive to read tamil.Especially when something is to be written about our lives or the Indian life or culture I believe all language but the regional one fails.
Another confusion is the language in which we talk to ourselves and to the god .In what language am I to address myself in ? Tamil . I am non proficient.English is too alien. Hindi is not my favorite is Deva Bhasha ..Much beyond my comprehension.
I believe that mother tongue should be the language of communication and the medium of instruction in primary education.But offlate both the first language and medium of language in school converges at english.
5 comments:
Nice post! I have a confession to make :-(. I learnt to read Tamil solely by looking at film titles and Ananda Vikatan jokes. The good thing about Tamil movie titles is that first the English one comes and then the tamil one, enabling us to compare and decode. Slowly slowly, I learnt how to write ka..ma..l, ha..sa..n, ra..ji..ni..ka..n..th etc etc. As for this SST thing, I also hated to study in in Hindi. Cant forget ooshm jalvayu and visham jalvayu. Luckily, we changed to English in 9th std.
good one!!.. but hav u ever tried to find the language our sub-concious uses?.. i am talking abt the language with which our thought process work. It is believed that, which ever language one learns in, it is the mother tongue, with which one understands and assimilates, and ppl who dont start their learning in their mother tongue, usually struggle later on.
u do mix up all languages dont u..
u know...strangely enough..most of my subconcous thought process is in english...odd...
my sub conscious thought process is also in english.. :)..
and speakin about langs our latest "aim" is makin sangudu talk in tamil.. !! hahah
i like your thoughts on mother tongue... when we study in an engglih medium school/hindi medium school , the mother tongue ..tamil gets relegated to the last spot. i had kannada as my third language, hindi was my second language ...and so i can only read tamil very slowly now. the kindergarten stage is very important one for languages and if we miss that stage ,we have a difficult task ahead. the tamil language is quite difficult to decipher with the same letter for different sounds.
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