Mother Tongue
Today I overheard a curator jokingly referring to English as our father tongue right about the same time I was reading what Herr Stresemann said in his first speech before the League of Nations – “The mother-tongue is the sanctuary of the soul.” I was saddened at the realization that it didn’t really apply to me.
I simply cannot express myself in my mother tongue - Hindi any more. The book that I was reading – The Medieval Scene by G.C Coulton - went on to say that even learned men in the Middle ‘Dark’ ages thought their most intimate thoughts in the mother tongue. Even that doesn’t hold any ground for me. My daily prayers (intimate thoughts no doubt) have undergone a linguistic shift as well and are increasingly being recited in my father tongue now.
I was not so pleasantly surprised to see that in almost all government offices, a blackboard adorns the lobby that seeks to teach the Hindi substitute for an English word to the staff everyday. Shouldn’t it be the other way round??
This brings me to one of my perennial sources of frustration since God knows when- Linguistic bias in public. Nothing bugs me more than when people start talking in their native language knowing pretty well that others can’t understand a word they use their precious energy to speak out. Having been at the receiving end of this utter disregard (for humanity), I pray that bi- and multilinguals (monolinguals are duly forgiven) would in the future be a wee bit considerate next time they are in a social gathering.
In spite of my outright pessimism in this regard, what Charles Darwin brought out in his 1872 classic, ‘The Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals’, offers a respite. He was the first to highlight the fact that emotions form a part of our evolutionary inheritance. Their universality in man and the rest of the animal kingdom served as proof for the same. He also found that emotions cut across time and communities to convey the same state of mind like happiness and surprise across different cultures.
As for me, what Johann Busch, a distinguished churchman of the fifteenth century says in his Little Book of Eternal Wisdom, provides an excuse that I can put forth in my defense. He tells us that he writes his mystical thoughts in German, since it was in German that God revealed them to him. Thus, the fact that the only time I read Hindi in the last seven years was to appear in an exam last year goes to show that God had stopped talking with me in Hindi a long, long time ago.
I simply cannot express myself in my mother tongue - Hindi any more. The book that I was reading – The Medieval Scene by G.C Coulton - went on to say that even learned men in the Middle ‘Dark’ ages thought their most intimate thoughts in the mother tongue. Even that doesn’t hold any ground for me. My daily prayers (intimate thoughts no doubt) have undergone a linguistic shift as well and are increasingly being recited in my father tongue now.
I was not so pleasantly surprised to see that in almost all government offices, a blackboard adorns the lobby that seeks to teach the Hindi substitute for an English word to the staff everyday. Shouldn’t it be the other way round??
This brings me to one of my perennial sources of frustration since God knows when- Linguistic bias in public. Nothing bugs me more than when people start talking in their native language knowing pretty well that others can’t understand a word they use their precious energy to speak out. Having been at the receiving end of this utter disregard (for humanity), I pray that bi- and multilinguals (monolinguals are duly forgiven) would in the future be a wee bit considerate next time they are in a social gathering.
In spite of my outright pessimism in this regard, what Charles Darwin brought out in his 1872 classic, ‘The Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals’, offers a respite. He was the first to highlight the fact that emotions form a part of our evolutionary inheritance. Their universality in man and the rest of the animal kingdom served as proof for the same. He also found that emotions cut across time and communities to convey the same state of mind like happiness and surprise across different cultures.
As for me, what Johann Busch, a distinguished churchman of the fifteenth century says in his Little Book of Eternal Wisdom, provides an excuse that I can put forth in my defense. He tells us that he writes his mystical thoughts in German, since it was in German that God revealed them to him. Thus, the fact that the only time I read Hindi in the last seven years was to appear in an exam last year goes to show that God had stopped talking with me in Hindi a long, long time ago.
posted by optimism at 1:48 PM
1 Comments:
Couldn't agree with you more. Having been at the receiving end of this mistreatment for sometime... I thought it was common courtesy to include all parties in the conversation. Apparently its not!
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