Language is the key to express human feelings. Irrespective cast creed or religion, every human being is closely attached to their mother tongue. Maybe a child born to an English speaking family naturally speaks in the English Language. Likewise Chinese, Japanese, French, German or Italian speak in their mother tongue.
In India, there are forty or fifty languages including Tamil, Malayalam and Telugu. Sri Lanka, another sovereign country in the Indian Ocean, is home to Sinhalese, Tamil, English speaking Burghers, and Tamil speaking Muslims. English is a link language. Students are taught Tamil to Sinhala Students and vice versa. Hindi is the official language in India.
There are televisions and radio in Sinhala, Tamil and English in Sri Lanka. Instead of unity, there is diversity. The influence of English language is of a priority owing to the Portuguese, Dutch and the British invasions for over four hundred years.
In New Zealand, Maurine is considered the natives and it seems their language is also given the official status. Apart from that, NZ has become home for immigrants consisting of Chinese, Japanese, Vietnamese, Philippines, Fijians, Sri Lankans and Indians. The Indian community consists of Tamil, Malayali, Hindi and Gujarati. Even among Sri Lankans, there are Sinhala and Tamil ethnic groups.
So all of these communities’ next generations are NZ born, English speaking children! According to the observations, their families speak in mother tongue at home.
Their children speak and answer in English with a mix of mother lounge. They know some Mauri words and poems too. Would their native identities become of some NZ origin? When discussed this matter with several parents, they have no clear vision for the future. What they expect are good men and women who respect the wellbeing of the society.
This is a matter to think over by all responsible parties and the cultural authorities. The native languages are fading away or they are cut off from the roots itself. Their identity vanishes!
In Sri Lanka, there is a term “Shad Bhasha Parameshwara” which means ‘specialist in six languages’. It is a necessity in the study of languages. English scholars must know Latin. Today, languages are always developing from link languages. Indo-Aryan languages are influenced by Pali and Sanskrit languages, Sinhala, Tamil and Malayali languages have common similarities. Even the Oxford Dictionary has a Sinhala term called Asveddumize.
There are so many words from Portuguese and Dutch languages included in the Sinhala vocabulary. The influence of Tamil is the same with Sinhala.
There was a news item from UNESCO that there is a ‘language museum’ of some sort for the ‘fading’ or vanishing languages. In Sri Lanka once a University Professor of Sinhala proclaimed that our Language is facing the same fate within another five decades. As the imperialist rule brought so many disasters to fade away the ‘national identity’ of the natives, language may be a prime identity to get rid of…! Sometimes they may call it a natural death!
Language Trivia
= About 7102 languages are spoken around the world.
= English is the official language for international flight crew and air traffic controllers.
= Five languages are spoken by one-third of all people: Mandarin Chinese, Spanish, English, Hindi and Arabic.
= Early humans thought to have communicated by making sounds and hand gestures.
= It is observed that humans first used words as part of a formal language, may have happened one hundred thousand years ago.
= English Language had a big influence on developing countries as these countries have been captured by the British who ruled them as their colonies.
= Latin is responsible for the English alphabet as known today.
= A Dictionary of the English Language was first published in 1755.
= Almost one thousand words are added to the Oxford Dictionary every year.
= Written Word was invented around 3500 BC
= The average English-speaking adults know about 20,000 to 35,000 words.
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