English Medium or Vernacular?

 This thought has been very well dealt with in the movie English Vinglish directed by Gauri Shinde. The whole idea of knowing languages and learning in your own mother tongue becomes much more useful to which the person can relate to life long.

The craze of studying English and knowing English as a universal language has been dumped on us by Britishers and we still are obligated to them for this misfortune.

I strongly believe that even if you know English as a primary language all literature that is written in your mother tongue is much more authentic and sensitive and captures the imagination and knowledge of the reader.

Yes, one advantage of English being the mother tongue of the world has its own advantages of standardized inputs and data.

However, human beings are born with the ability to capture and grasp multiple languages and the more they know the more fulfilled they feel with themselves.

Knowledge of foreign languages is forced into the curriculum of many schools' syllabi. However, there are schools that do not offer Sanskrit, Hindi, Gujarati, or Marathi as second languages.

All the mythological text and religious literature are written in the mother tongue and then translated into different foreign languages.

So what is the harm or why do people run away or feel it is not necessary to teach their child their mother tongue?

It’s also the new generation attitude that has internalized the coding of the west and against the coding of the homeland.

So learning French, Italian, Chinese or Japanese becomes much more important than Sanskrit Hindi, or Gujarati.

Our own Prime Minister proudly speaks the mother tongue very fluently. However, there are people in authority and significantly govern posts who are placed in the rural sector but cannot speak the language of that region. So he will become a big British babu of the region which does not understand him or relate to him or feel inferior to him just because he is English boss.

Why do people feel inferior when you do not know English especially if your context is not so full of resources or facilities or institutions which only teach English.

Author:-Dr. Nayana Shah (Ph.D.)

           Director, Manthan

             Ahmedabad  

Comments

  1. Sudeshna bhojiaMarch 16, 2022 at 1:03 AM

    This is a long standing issue of debate.
    Mired in the system and socialisation patterns.

    ReplyDelete

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