Mind your language!

Which languages should a child learn, asks NOEL G DESOUZA

The answer to the question “Which languages should a child learn?” depends on where (country or state) the child lives. Basic education requires that the child learn English in Australia and the regional language in India.

Well-to-do parents in India often send their children to English medium schools where the state language is also taught, and they thus become bilingual. In Uttar Pradesh, the Chief Minister, realising that disadvantaged children do not learn English, has made English compulsory at all school levels.

In Australia there is no obligation to learn a second language. French and German were once popular and, for time, so were Japanese and Indonesian. Indonesian has the attraction of using the roman script and it was encouraged in the Northern Territory. Some ethnic languages are now being taught at higher school level such as Italian, Greek and Hindi.

Advani pointed out that English “gives an advantage which no other language gives. …” but cautioned against “surrendering to English mentality”

Protagonists of English in India were recently given a boost when the BJP leader Lal Krishna Advani counselled that it was “imperative that people have mastery over English.” He was speaking at the first World Konkani Cultural Convention in Mangalore.

Noting that India will eventually emerge as the world’s largest English-speaking nation, Advani pointed out that English “gives an advantage which no other language gives. …” but cautioned against “surrendering to English mentality”.

Advani was at home amongst the Konkani people. In pre-partition times in Karachi, he had studied at St Patrick High School, then a stronghold of Konkani-speaking Goans. Konkani and Sindhi (Advani’s mother-tongue) are very much home languages in India. Konkani is being kept alive in its small but widespread diaspora through the roman script. Perhaps other languages like Hindi could emulate this method.

“Love your mother-tongue!” was Advani’s emotional message. Every Indian state has linguistic minorities. One school of thought believes that the mother-tongue is the best medium of education; this unproven doctrine was used to push regional languages upto the university level, but this has caused considerable divisiveness.

The importance of English is re-emerging in this age of globalisation in India, side-by-side with the state languages. The Yashwantrao Chavan Open University in Maharashtra runs a basic course in English and in computing for the thousands of “dabbawallas” who carry meals for office workers. This enables them to read text messages from their clients.

India is becoming a big market (incidentally larger than Britain or Australia!) for English books. The English author Ken Follett was recently in Delhi to launch his Indian-published new trilogy, The Fall of Giants to India’s growing English-speaking population that is now estimated to be 89 million. Several Indian authors have become household names in the English-speaking world.

Australia has a large number of migrant mother-tongues, some of which are likely to fade within a few generations. Some Asian languages though, such as Mandarin, Cantonese, Korean, Japanese, Indonesian/Malaysian, Thai and Hindi, are expected to grow in importance.

Putting doctrines aside, a child’s most important language is that language in which the child can best express himself or herself in speech or writing.

Putting doctrines aside, a child’s most important language is that language in which the child can best express himself or herself in speech or writing. It is not necessarily the mother-tongue, unless that language has also been the child’s medium of instruction.

The Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) asked two types of questions regarding the language spoken at home.  The census question 1201 is restricted to persons who speak English at home. Those who speak another home language are asked how well they speak English. Strangely, there is no question which ascertains the proficiency of the home language or the “mother-tongue” which can range from a smattering of phrases to a read-and-write level.

The English language still dominates in Australia. According to the ABS, 95% of women in Victoria speak English at home. Within the remaining 5% ethnic languages, Italian tops the list. Italian has a specific slot in the census form so that all those hailing from Italy mark that slot. There is no self-declared level of proficiency. The Italian spoken may not be standard Italian, as several other languages and dialects exist within the country. For example, Sicilian is a distinct language and Calabria, from where Australia has a large number of migrants, has several dialects.

The other languages that the ABS asked respondents to tick are Greek, Arabic, Cantonese, Mandarin and Vietnamese. As no levels of proficiency are declared, an erroneous impression is given that Australia has large numbers of competent speakers in those languages.

A child should be taught those languages which best serve its practical requirements to survive and to succeed in the society in which it lives.  The old three-language formula in India often required a child to learn three scripts. The ability to speak two and three languages is common in India. In Australia, the widespread ability to speak a second language well is still a dream.