No language is inferior, it is a battle of vocabulary, and the winner steals the show! Here is a glaring elucidation of this conundrum. Adoration of a language depends on how gracefully it is spoken. To speak a language elegantly one needs a great vocabulary. To build that library of vocabulary, one needs a passion to pick it up as they grow in their life. Even in English speaking countries, some people with poor vocabulary speak such crummy English, you would wonder can English language be so deplorable?
When the British came to India, most were rich, educated and spoke good English. However, even during those bad times, poets, writers, and the elite exuded great vocabulary of their native languages. If you compare such eloquence with a bad English, of course, native languages would excel!
During the British era, poverty had reduced our rich native languages to mere words for survival. Poverty also conceived dingy vocabulary because of resentment further lowering its stance. Unquestionably English ruled the land. Now and then we see frustration among fanatics espousing local languages. The sad truth is you can’t compete with another language without an effort to build a pleasant vocabulary. Such fanatic endeavours will take us nowhere. Our languages never challenged the English language. We just gave up. Can we speak in native language as elegantly as English? Of course, we can. As the standard of living is increasing in India, we have another chance to go at it. But would we? Let’s look at some of the challenges.
English is the international language today, although for us it is a language of oppression. It came to us in an unjust way, but it came anyway. Even if it had not come to us, we would have learnt it inevitably to be part of global economy. China is already introducing English in a big way in all their schools. In ten years, they will beat India in English literacy. For any developing country, English plays a vital role in global trade. The Indian software industry is thriving on this language pedestal. English represents a pathway to success. By knowing English, you will win half the battle in global competition.
For India, English is also a language that binds many linguistic states. Just to give you an example to illustrate its deeps roots, after independence, Indian constitution declared Hindi as the official language of the country and declared it would replace English as the official language after 15 years that is after 1965. However, this idea of changeover was met with violent protests from the non-Hindi speaking states and eventually, it became a subsidiary official language in addition to Hindi.
In the course of time, we developed a love-hate relationship with the English language. We hate it because it is foreign, but we love it because it is spoken in most developed countries! We hate it because it is oppressive, but we love it because it unites all linguistic states! We hate it because it is not our mother tongue, but we love it because it is a gateway to the world of science and technology.
The bottom line is, we can’t uproot English from India for sure. There is no reason to develop animosity against a language that is giving us global exposure. However, we can compete with it, by attempting to speak our native language gracefully and making an attempt to avoid squalid words. Let’s learn better words each day, build our vocabulary as we grow and make our language elegant! This would be a great gift to our next generation who would build it further up and one day the English language enigma would become a folk tale!
(The writer is a software engineer, committed to climate advocacy employing Artificial Intelligence)
