Mother tongue v/s English: A mid-way
Read the text in the above image. Does it sound sane? Do we get the real meaning behind this? No! It’s not supposed for English or any other language Nazi. It’s neither a language sarcasm nor it’s demeaning any particular language. It simply is a conversation between two people: A local language speaker and an Englishman. We generally tend to make fun of those who speak broken English. We even expect young children to converse in English just for the fact that they are enrolled in an English medium school. Does that sound good? Why do we, as parents or teachers, forget that the child has a family background and a mother tongue too with which it has grown up? They will always specialize and love to converse in their mother tongue. Yes! They will sometime later learn a foreign language but would never replace it for their mother tongue. Mother tongue is virgin and it holds a special value in a child’s life and we really need to understand that. Never discourage a child if he/she doesn’t always speak up in English or speaks incorrect English, Make spelling errors or forgets vowel sounds. Kindly understand that it’s not intrinsic to them. The language learnt at school is extrinsic. They might master it but don’t expect them to do that too soon and often. A learner who has learnt how to write and speak in English can way better speak English than the person whose mother tongue is English and the same can be seen in the above image. The reason for distortion is clear. We take our mother tongue casually. Have you ever seen a Hindi speaker carry a Hindi dictionary? No! For sure, But you will certainly see them carry an English Dictionary with them. Hilarious! If my mother tongue is Hindi, is that possible that I know all of it with perfection. Certainly not! I might speak English in a manner as if I never knew Hindi ever. The point behind this discussion is just to say that never be at discomfort of a language that you have not mastered. Respect your mother tongue too. Learn it to make it even better. English is a link language that is most spoken throughout the world. Do not make this fact create a pressure around you. You cannot master everything but a bit of English is necessary just to make it possible that the communication flow is not hindered. Apart from that, if you know English, no one is going to tell you to write a book. The world is also not hearing you deliver a speech. Do not be shameful of minor or major errors you make in English. It’s not your mother tongue. You can in no way master it completely. Make English a resource language. Keep your mother tongue at a stature where it is. I feel and I am strictly against the policy of kindergarten schools to penalize children if they speak a word in any language other than English. Never carry language learning as a burden to carry and do not press the little child to carry that burden. There is ample child for a nursery kid to learn to speak in English. Let them adjust to the environment and let the learning happen naturally. 20 years later, when they go to work, they will learn enough of language required to earn a decent living. Let’s not create such a simple process a herculean task to think.
Abraham Lincoln once stated, “Never make fun of someone, who speaks broken English. It means they know another language”.
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