Languages bind and bound us. Do you need to learn English or Hindi if you have a different mother tongue in India? War of Words are plenty and today I will tell you how Bengali, English, and Hindi helped me.
How great is your mother tongue? How useful is it to teach you stuff? Should learning be only in regional languages? Do all subjects have quality educational material in local languages? Are all regional boards at par with the Central Board of education?
A long-time back, I studied in West Bengal board for my class tens and twelves. The school was English medium, I still had Bengali as my first language and English as my second language. That was the standard protocol. Thankfully our school taught English, at a level much above that needed for my second language boards. Studying at Carmel High School was a big blessing.
Hindi was a third language in which I had some trouble learning to read and write. The good news is I did well on my board in my languages too, which helped me score well. But then came a problem which had nothing to do with languages and everything to do with the board.
JEE followed the higher secondary board roughly, back then. It wasn’t a replica, but not as diverse as the All India Pre-medical entrance syllabus.
The native tongue would be a barrier if I studied only in Bengali as my hubby did. But with determination and help that can be surmounted.
The problem of Higher education in regional language
The language is also a problem when you start studying Medical books, technical books. They are not written in any regional dialect for national level colleges. If you lack fluency in understanding the language, there’s a problem of registration and understanding. Application, after all, will be a function of all this making up your memory.
An egoistic debate of regional language supremacy is useless, if you don’t make efforts to write professional courses in that language. While we interact with all strata of society as a doctor, we speak many languages.
Nonverbal communication skills and empathy needs to be high in all caregivers. But education needs to be above language and region politics. Learning languages is fun and great for your brain. It’s also essential you include those which give you and the children the best chance to be financially independent in the future.
Education needs to be holistic and also should help you earn. One without the other becomes a problem for the individual and society as a whole.
Blogchatter started an interesting conversation on twitter about regional language and blogging; you can check that out.
Are regional languages fading in India? This was a question #Blogchatter asked on a twitter chat. This made me think hard about this.
With such a diversity in culture and language, are the regional languages fading in India?
Languages bind us. They also limit us. The limit of your knowledge is often a function of how many lingoes you know. That’s always a problem for individual growth and also grow as a nation.
E.g., Without knowing English, I would be unable even to be a Doctor. All medical books in English. Without knowing Bengali (West Bengal)or Hindi (Delhi and other places), I would be unable to practice and even earn. Speaking the language people understand is essential.
The literature of each dialect, the wisdom of ages. Exactly. It is a good thing to learn words. It’s great for our brains. The tricky part of it causes surprising neural connections to happen
Does globalization hurt our regional languages?
A difficult question with a complicated answer. For me globalization is opportunity. It’s an opportunity to take our languages to the world. To read beautiful stories from various cultures is a boon because shared wisdom compounds in value.
Human resource is valuable when they are educated and aware. If learning only one language limits you, learn another.
The decline is maybe a failure of genuinely thinking about education holistically. It’s not just learning. It’s learning, doing, creating, teaching taking it forward. The system needs to be sustainable; maybe the policymakers will think about this. It’s also a choice and about what helps you.
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