VYAKARAN: South Asian Languages and Linguistics Net
Editors: Tej K. Bhatia, Syracuse University, New York
John Peterson, University of Osnabrueck, Germany
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<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial">In societies like South Asia where many
languages abound, it would be interesting to construct, for each region, a
pyramid of languages arranged in order of worldly status, with the
highest status one being at the apex of the pyramid. </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Evidently in Pakistan, English has been at the top with Urdu just below
it. The base of the pyramid would be the mother tongues/ dialects such as
Seraiki, Multani etc with literary mother tongues/ languages such as
Punjabi, Sindhi etc occupying intermediate levels. </DIV>
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<DIV>The current trend toward English seems to want to flatten
the pyramid somewhat. Is this solely attributable to globalization? What is
likely to be the ultimate effect of this flattening
trend? </DIV></BLOCKQUOTE>
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<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>In 500 years, the whole earth will be speaking
English. What else is possible?</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>And I find it ironic that the original author
seemed to want to blame "the generals who rule Pakistan" of "</FONT>selling
every last item of the family silver to London and Washington." <FONT face=Arial
size=2>If my experience in South Asia has shown me anything, it is that this is
what "the people" want (as the original author acknowledges elsewhere). "The
general" just clever enough to have understood this. </FONT></DIV>
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<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>For goodness sake, even those who are involved in
language development are sending their children to English medium schools (c.f.
Winter 1993:311 as quoted in Saxena & Borin 2006:3):</FONT></DIV>
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<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>"What is to be observed in both cases [of the
Hualapai language revivalist and schoolteacher, who spoke English with her
children at home, and the Bantawa couple who worked actively to promote
Bantawa in various ways, but communicated with each other and their children
in Nepali and English] is a conflict between wanting to do something for the
language and wanting to improve the chances of the children to succeed in the
macrosociety of which they're apart... does one have a right to blame the
parents?"</FONT></DIV></BLOCKQUOTE>
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<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>Don't get angry! Speak your mother-tongue to your
children!</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>Bob</FONT></DIV>
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