By Bhavana Kumari
Language is the most important tool which breaks the barrier between two different culture, society, people and civilization. It is the mode of communication which is very important for any social structure system. There are 6,900 spoken languages in the world only few of them have their dominance over the rest. Chinese, English, Hindi, Urdu, Spanish, Arabic, Portuguese, Russian, Bengali and Punjabi are the top largely spoken language in the world. If we observe carefully then we can find that five out of ten above stated languages are spoken in India. But English is the most dominant language in India and also in the entire world.
The root of the reason why English has dominance over the rest of languages can be traced back during colonization period. The native speakers of English, Spanish, and Portuguese are just a fraction of their total no. of speaking population. This became possible only because of rule of colonization. Ruling language subjugated the local language of the colonial nation and the rulers put their culture, language, social structure into the psyche of the local people.
Even after seventy years of independence India is not able to overcome from this issue. On the contrary, the issue is becoming more serious day by day and years after years. English is the second official language of India. Although it was done for connecting the diverse culture of India in one thread. There was not one language which was spoken commonly in every state of India except English. The initial idea of taking help of a foreign language making it official was good but not the best. India lacked that uniformity in language across the country or even the attempt which was made to spread Hindi in the entire nation was not that successful. China on the other hand successfully nationalized Mandarin language. Though there are other dialects like Cantonese, Hakka, Wu, Minbei (Fuzhou), Xiang and Gan.
Inside India the growing influence of Hindi is also for some extend undermining the other regional languages. As per data, only 41% of Indian population has Hindi as their mother tongue. But other regional language like Bhojpuri, Magahi, Angika, Awadhi are also considered dialects of Hindi language. Including these languages the speaking population of Hindi increases to somewhat more the 50%. Few years back Maithili was also considered as a dialect of Hindi language but later in 2002 it was included in the 8th schedule of the constitution.
My mother tongue is Maithili. Maithili belongs to Indo- Aryan language family group spoken in the Mithilanchal region of Bihar situated in northern and eastern region of Bihar and a few districts of the Nepal Tarai. The significance and glory of any language is reflected with the no. of the native speakers of that particular language. Today, the no. of people speaking Maithili is decreasing and the Hindi is now more accepted language among the Maithili speaking population. This has happened basically post independence. Younger generations have stopped using their mother tongue, instead they are more comfortable in using Hindi and English as their mode of communication. This might result in extinction of one of the significant language of India.
Even after seventy years of independence India is not able to overcome from this issue. On the contrary, the issue is becoming more serious day by day and years after years. English is the second official language of India. Although it was done for connecting the diverse culture of India in one thread. There was not one language which was spoken commonly in every state of India except English. The initial idea of taking help of a foreign language making it official was good but not the best. India lacked that uniformity in language across the country or even the attempt which was made to spread Hindi in the entire nation was not that successful. China on the other hand successfully nationalized Mandarin language. Though there are other dialects like Cantonese, Hakka, Wu, Minbei (Fuzhou), Xiang and Gan.
Inside India the growing influence of Hindi is also for some extend undermining the other regional languages. As per data, only 41% of Indian population has Hindi as their mother tongue. But other regional language like Bhojpuri, Magahi, Angika, Awadhi are also considered dialects of Hindi language. Including these languages the speaking population of Hindi increases to somewhat more the 50%. Few years back Maithili was also considered as a dialect of Hindi language but later in 2002 it was included in the 8th schedule of the constitution.
My mother tongue is Maithili. Maithili belongs to Indo- Aryan language family group spoken in the Mithilanchal region of Bihar situated in northern and eastern region of Bihar and a few districts of the Nepal Tarai. The significance and glory of any language is reflected with the no. of the native speakers of that particular language. Today, the no. of people speaking Maithili is decreasing and the Hindi is now more accepted language among the Maithili speaking population. This has happened basically post independence. Younger generations have stopped using their mother tongue, instead they are more comfortable in using Hindi and English as their mode of communication. This might result in extinction of one of the significant language of India.
Writer Bhavana Kumari is Chinese and English Language and Translation Intern at Modlingua, India's No1. certified translation and Language service providers based in New Delhi
