[lg policy] India: Linguistic hegemony in Nagaland

Wed Mar 28 14:26:24 UTC 2018

 Linguistic hegemony in Nagaland

March 27, 2018
<http://www.facebook.com/sharer.php?u=http://morungexpress.com/linguistic-hegemony-in-nagaland/&t=Linguistic
hegemony in Nagaland> <http://twitter.com/home?status=Linguistic hegemony
in Nagaland => http://morungexpress.com/linguistic-hegemony-in-nagaland/>
<https://plus.google.com/share?url=http://morungexpress.com/linguistic-hegemony-in-nagaland/>
<http://www.linkedin.com/shareArticle?mini=true&url=http://morungexpress.com/linguistic-hegemony-in-nagaland/&title=Linguistic
hegemony in Nagaland&summary=&source=The Morung Express>
<?mailto:?subject=The%20Morung%20Express%20%3A%20&body=I%20recommend%20this%20page%3A%20.%0AYou%20can%20read%20it%20on%3A%20http%3A%2F%2Fmorungexpress.com%2Flinguistic-hegemony-in-nagaland%2F>

*Nikay Besa Konyak*
*Kohima*

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.

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.

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.

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?”

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.

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.

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.

*[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.]*

-- 
=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+

 Harold F. Schiffman

Professor Emeritus of
 Dravidian Linguistics and Culture
Dept. of South Asia Studies
University of Pennsylvania
Philadelphia, PA 19104-6305

Phone:  (215) 898-7475
Fax:  (215) 573-2138

Email:  haroldfs at gmail.com
http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/~haroldfs/

-------------------------------------------------
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/lgpolicy-list/attachments/20180328/830f0c5e/attachment.htm>
-------------- next part --------------
_______________________________________________
This message came to you by way of the lgpolicy-list mailing list
lgpolicy-list at groups.sas.upenn.edu
To manage your subscription unsubscribe, or arrange digest format: https://groups.sas.upenn.edu/mailman/listinfo/lgpolicy-list