Karnataka: The convoluted language question

[Harold F. Schiffman]

http://www.thehindu.com/2008/02/20/stories/2008022060250300.htm
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Karnataka - Bangalore

The convoluted language question

Bageshree S.

In a globalised city like Bangalore, where does ones mother tongue figure?

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English is the dominant language of the job market

IT boom blamed for uneven language growth in Bangalore


Learning a language: What, for instance, is the mother tongue of children
whose parents speak different languages, a common phenomenon in cities?

BANGALORE: A.K. Ramanujan once famously said that he grew up with three
languages: Tamil, spoken in kitchen and interior home, Kannada, the lingua
franca on the streets, and English, constantly used in his fathers office
upstairs. One wonders what the late poet and translators language
atmosphere would have been like had he lived in present-day Bangalore. The
metropolis bursting at the seams is characterised by multiplicity of
tongues on the street. English is the dominant language of the job market
and all economic spaces that matter to ones livelihood. English seems to
be fast making inroads into the interior home too. Though we may speak a
version of our mother tongue at home, with generous sprinkling of English,
it is now largely restricted to the routine. English which represents
technology, knowledge and modernity as a whole is the language of
education of children in upper middle-class homes.

Typical teen

Vandana Venkatachala, a home maker who lives in Jayanagar III Block,
points out that her teenage daughter typically switches to English for any
serious argument or debate. It worries her that she speaks less of her
mother tongue and in fewer spaces (because her college friends speak
English) with every passing day. Who then continues to speak and learn in
his or her mother tongue? The poor, who have no access to English
education and the investment that accompanies it. Even as the mother
tongue (Kannada in our specific context) remains the official language,
the fact that government jobs are not only losing charm but also shrinking
in numbers makes English an essential qualification in most job spaces.

In a city like Bangalore where migration and thereby multiplicity of
languages dates back centuries, it is the IT boom in the post-economic
globalisation scenario that has made the uneven language growth most
visible and created worlds that do not interact.

Lingamma, who irons clothes on a pushcart in Banashankari III State and
sends her son to an English-medium school paying a feel she cannot really
afford, says: You need English or Hindi even to become a doorkeeper in a
big shop.

Therefore, a debate on mother tongue cannot be viewed in isolation from
the questions of livelihood. The anxiety expressed by language groups
about erosion of spaces for them and the arguments about outsiders taking
over jobs and land cannot be delinked from this. Invariably, this anxiety
holds great potential for exploitation by interest groups as the recent
incidents in Mumbai illustrated. Bangalore too has a history of the
language issue leading to antagonism and violence.

Confused arguments


K.V. Narayan, linguist and former Vice-Chancellor of the Hampi Kannada
University, points out that most of our arguments about mother tongue and
identity are confused. We never seem to know whether we are speaking about
the language per se, the community speaking the language or a geographical
location, he says.

Agitation


The recent agitation about job opportunities in railways, though
articulated as a language issue, was really about a specific section of
the community who are unemployed.

Dr. Narayan also believes that our anxiety about the death of mother
tongue is not always well-founded. He says that we need to relook at our
very notion of mother tongue in the changing context where their domains
and definitions are shifting.

FM channels


What, for instance, is the mother tongue of children whose parents speak
different languages, a common phenomenon in cities? Even as mother tongue
is disappearing in some spaces, can we discount its reappearance on FM
channels and as mobile ring tones?

Purists may have quarrels with the way language is used by a radio jockey,
but it is still the same language with altered lexical and grammatical
rules.

When we begin to look at specific strands of the question of mother
tongue, we begin to see how complex it is, says Dr. Narayan.

Dr. Narayan foresees that many Indian languages, including Kannada, may
become more languages of the tongue and the ear rather than script over a
period of time.

He adds that the tradition of the script, a recent entrant to the long
language tradition, is not essential to the survival of a language, though
it is bound to restrict the domain.

Is it regression and a loss that can have no compensation? Or is it only a
phase in the long history of our languages?

Like all questions of language, there can be endless debates on this one
as well.

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