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By: Aditi Adhikari

“Once you lose a language, you lose a culture. Language transmits culture. It forms the basis for identity”

(Richard Littlebear, college President, Chief Dull Knife College in Lame Deer)

While most of us have thought about losing our diversity we have in terms of diversity of wildlife or plants, diversity of languages and cultures doesn’t strike us as particularly important. The truth is that much of what makes the world a beautiful place is its people: the languages they speak, the customs they follow, and the different ways in which different groups live. Another aspect of the truth is that with globalization, we’re losing this diversity.

I’m not saying globalization is a bad thing. It’s a totally amazing thing; it’s bringing people together and allowing for the exchange of ideas. It’s hard to take sides; you can’t quite say losing cultural diversity is good, nor can you say globalization is bad. For this time, I’m going to be content with being a fence-sitter. I’m going to be content with just talking about the problem and suggesting things, not quite attainable, to balance the two.

As the world is becoming smaller with the advent of information technology and the invention of things like the internet, we are learning more and more of each other’s cultures. But more people are also forgetting their own cultures. More and more people are learning prevalent languages like English, French, Spanish, and other mostly European languages, but more people, especially in Asia and the Middle Eastern countries, are now unable to speak languages that their parents spoke with ease- their mother’s mother-tongues.

But culture is something that is hard to define, “the customs, arts, social institutions, etc of a particular group or nation.” according to the Oxford Advanced Learner’s dictionary, culture can vary between and within small groups of people. We can make statements about large groups of people, but there are some norms that can be applied to only a small group of people. So while we often make statements like “Age-hierarchy is less prominent in Westerner society than in Eastern society,” culture is mostly not as simple as saying “East” and “West”. There are differences in the festivals celebrated in the ‘terai’ (plains) of Nepal, and those celebrated in the hills. Often, a person will be a part of more than one culture; for example, a Nepali Hindu man of the working class, or a Nepali woman who follows Tibetan Buddhism and lives in her small village cannot be defined only by his/her religion or nationality. Perhaps through their own combinations, each village, or each family even has their unique cultures.

As people’s lifestyles change with development and change in living conditions, cultures are bound to change. As people learn about foreign arts and start experimenting with them, cultures are bound to change. Language also evolves through time, but not as fast. By forgetting our languages, or losing parts of our culture, we are not just denying ourselves the cultural identity that we have a right to. The “criminal” generation will hardly realize what’s missing, they will struggle all their lives to make ends meet, to develop their careers, to give their children the best. Maybe even the next generations will not realize, except maybe when people ask “Can you speak your mother tongue?” and they have to answer “Yes, but not very well,” or “No, but I understand,” or with just a “no”.

I read an article about a year back about a woman in a village in Nepal who was the only person alive who could speak Dura,her language. And then I felt a chill down my spine. My mother tongue is Nepali, but I can write English better than Nepali, and my spoken Nepali too, is only as good as my spoken English. I already speak in a mix of Nepali and English; even though I don’t like it, it slips. What if, when I have kids, I (unconsciously) don’t speak much Nepali with them and they never learn to speak the language well? More information and world-class literature from all over the world is available in English than in languages like Nepali, so it is beneficial if we have a good command of the English language. Still, I am afraid that as more people learn to speak English, it will be less necessary for them to know their own languages to communicate with each other. I’m scared about Nepali because it is my language, but many languages face far more dangers of
extinction

“Whose language
has not been the oppressor’s tongue?
Which language
truly meant to murder someone?
And how does it happen
that after the torture,
after the soul has been cropped
with the long scythe swooping out
of the conqueror’s face –
the unborn grandchildren
grow to love that strange language?”

(From “A Different History”, by Sujata Bhatt)

I know English doesn’t mean to murder my language, just as my language never meant to murder the many whose extinction it played a hand in. But as a translator, I also know that language pretty much defines culture. There are so many concepts that are native to one culture and cannot be translated into another language. And when a language dies, so do those elements of culture. Usually, we learn the languages of the “superior”, those who have power, or those who have access to knowledge, mostly because it paves way for opportunities. And yet, after the initial discomfort, and how we have no choice we grow to love that language. We should accept and love what is foreign to us. But we should also continue to love what is our own.

In multi-cultural societies like Nepal, it is very complex to include mother tongues into regional curriculums because there are so many ethnic groups and so many languages. Parents should help (not anybody else, but themselves and their children) by teaching their children their mother tongue. Other languages, the child can learn later. It is said that children who acquire good skills in one language, can learn those skills in any language, while children who are taught the broken form of a foreign (or their own) language don’t acquire good skills in any language. Teachers should start language classes, and children should not be ashamed to study their own languages.

The world is globalizing, but when we lose language, we lose what it took our ancestors thousands of years to come up with, and not just for ourselves. We lose it for generations to come. (What are the chances that your children will learn to speak your mother tongue if YOU can’t speak it? Who will they learn from? ) We lose more than we gain by learning another language, because with our endangered languages, our identities are at stake.

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