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Linguistic hegemony in Nagaland </h1>
<p class="gmail-postmeta"><span class="gmail-gabfire_meta gmail-gabfiremeta_bydate"><time class="gmail-published gmail-updated" datetime="March 27, 2018T11:02 pm">March 27, 2018</time></span></p> </div>
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<div class="entry-content"><p><span style="text-decoration:underline"><strong>Nikay Besa Konyak</strong></span><br>
<strong>Kohima</strong></p>
<p>English is one of the world’s widespread languages. The global total
number of English speakers around the world is estimated to be about 1.5
billion approximately, and the only language with official status in
over 60 nations of the world. English is also the dominant language in
scientific communication with 70-80% academic publications in the
language. The language is also the de-facto official and the working
language in most of the international organizations. It is also the most
taught second foreign language across the world. These observations
corroborate the reported place of English in international politics,
relations, education, intercultural communication, and consequently,
endorsing its dominance and global influence. And India is one nation
that recognizes English as one of the official languages encouraging
greater communication. Therefore, technically being a part of India,
Naga people are also obliged to use this prominent language along with
the existence of different Naga languages. Even though the English was
officially recognized as the official language and the medium of
education in the year 1967 by the Nagaland Assembly, we still cannot
proclaim this language as the language of the masses but it does reveal
mass attitudinal support and seen as an important factor on gaining
prestige thus has become a professional necessity. The language has
become a standing ovation in our society and people who are competent in
this language get places to go and platforms to shine.</p>
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<p>It is very true that our society cannot live without the existence of
this language because of numerous reasons. The existence of English
language in our society has connected us to the global world impacting
the society in many ways. Despite the claim that it is not the language
of the public, the hegemony of English language over Naga languages is
speedily becoming more visible. And as its dominance becomes more
apparent, one must consciously ponder how the dominance of this language
is affecting our society. As far as the observations are concerned,
dominance of English language within our society seems to be
uncritically acceptable for many researchers, governments and
institutions owing to the fact that it impacts the society more on the
positive side. However, in a multilingual state like ours in prevalence
of many indigenous languages, one should always cross check the balance
between the existing languages to avoid linguistic discriminations.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>If we are to argue the increasing dominance of English language over
Naga languages, we will see that its supremacy is somewhat contributing
inferior and superior distinctions within the society by empowering the
already powerful and learned people but leaving the disadvantaged
further behind which is an issue that needs attention. In a way the
dominance seems to be forcing an unfamiliar pedagogical and social
culture to its learners. Socio-psychologically and linguistically, it
also puts our society in danger of losing our first language, cultures,
literatures, identities, contributing to the devaluation of local
knowledge and cultures. We are known to have rich oral traditions, oral
histories and stories passed down from one generation to another
generation, but there is an alarming probability that the coming
generations might lose the culture lore because the present generation
is more engrossed in writing singing, reading and speaking only through
the medium of English. It is a linguistically proven fact that even
though we use the Roman alphabet to write our language, we cannot employ
the exact writing system, sound system and rules of English language in
Naga languages; however, without knowing the fact, we force ourselves
to document all our literatures and traditions in English language
risking originalities. For global understanding we do need to write in
English but our language should be utilized as well because it is
important. It is true about the critique that documentation of anything
about Naga people is always manipulated because we embrace the foreign
language and believes that it is superior to our local languages. It
seems we give too much importance to the foreign language at the expense
of our own languages. The blind glorification of the English language
by the Naga people and the defective state policy on Language has
conspired to sabotage the importance of local languages and rob them of
their importance in State development drive. In the recent times, the
multilingual nature of Naga Society has become one of the greatest
challenges where we will witness no adequate language policy; successive
government’s inability to pick any of the local languages as State
language; non-codification of many local dialects making them vulnerable
to extinction; no avenues for local writers and local language
researchers which are all serious issues the society needs to be looked
upon yet neglects incredibly. In Naga Society, English is sometimes
overwhelmingly given too much importance than needed where we will come
across people carrying around inferior complexities just because they
are unable to speak or write English competently like the others despite
having profound knowledge within them. Likewise, we will also witness
some people bragging unnecessarily everywhere without any substance on
their speech just because they can speak English better than the others.
And basing on a difference in the use of English, we automatically form
judgements, about the person’s education, social status, character or
other traits which may then lead to the unjustifiable treatment of the
individual. Since English is a prestigious language in Naga society, we
will also see people tagged as primitive for speaking English with
strong local accents or with grammatical errors but nobody cares whether
the persons speaks with correct accent or grammar in their own native
language.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>As it has been already stated that we cannot live without the use of
English, we will continue to embrace this language and be benefited in
all ways. However, we must be mindful that alongside the prestigious
English, we have mother tongues and many indigenous languages which need
to be safeguarded and valued by taking up urgent remedial steps not
just by the government but also by the local people. The blind love
towards English should be rectified to avoid stigmatization towards the
local languages and also for the people who are not competent in
English. We must rectify the false notion that if a person masters in
English while neglecting his mother tongue, it would usher the person
into paradise and upgrade him to civilisation. We should rather give
equal importance to both English and Naga languages in order to upgrade
ourselves to civilisation. Government must also remember that failing to
re-ignite the love of Mother tongues in the hearts of the people while
giving too much importance to the foreign language will defeat the
purpose of fighting for the political freedom. Everyone in the state
must asks, “Which local language is in a position to be our national
language? Or are we still going to imply on this colonised language?”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>State Governments and Naga society in general should give due
attention to local language teachers, researchers and scholars in order
to safeguard the local languages which are slowly dying. Subjects
concerning Local languages and Linguistics should be introduced at all
levels of schoolings, higher academic institutions and universities.
Funds and projects should be allotted to Local language researches,
local writers and local translators in order to come up with extensive
researches, proper documentations, good books written in local languages
or translation of different literatures, academic text books like
Maths, science and grammars etc to promote local languages and better
learning ground which will ultimately benefit the society.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Government must dig out the old defective Language Policy and
formulate a new egalitarian Language Policy to promote local language in
education policy better than the existing policy; to avoid linguistic
discrimination and to safeguard the local languages from various
dangers.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>And summing up, we cannot let our dear languages to die with our eyes
open while we love the foreign language blindly. If our languages die
then our libraries of rich original oral traditions, cultures, stories
and history will die with them. We will be left only with manipulated
researches and facts owing a huge burden for the next generations. We
must also remember that there are certain people who learn better in
mother tongues than in English. We must also remember that somebody
holds back his wisdom because he does not know English. It’s time for us
to speak, sing, write and share in our own language because if not us,
then who will speak, write and share in our languages? Let us swallow
the English but let us not let English to swallow our languages.</p>
<p> </p>
<p style="text-align:right"><em>[This article is written according to
the writer’s opinion and observations with clear intention of
safeguarding Naga languages and to cater attention for equal treatment
to all languages prevalent in Nagaland. It is not written in any manner
to discriminate the English language or the users, the learners or the
researchers of the English language.]</em></p></div></article></section>
<br clear="all"><br>-- <br><div class="gmail_signature" data-smartmail="gmail_signature">=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+<br><br> Harold F. Schiffman<br><br>Professor Emeritus of <br> Dravidian Linguistics and Culture <br>Dept. of South Asia Studies <br>University of Pennsylvania<br>Philadelphia, PA 19104-6305<br><br>Phone: (215) 898-7475<br>Fax: (215) 573-2138 <br><br>Email: <a href="mailto:haroldfs@gmail.com" target="_blank">haroldfs@gmail.com</a><br><a href="http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/~haroldfs/" target="_blank">http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/~haroldfs/</a> <br><br>-------------------------------------------------</div>
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