Thinking about Languages
We all know languages, not one but several. They help us communicate, to cooperate. Some we have born with, others we acquire as we age. Many years ago, I wrote the manuscript of a small book for children entitled Messages Through Ages, here I just quote a few lines from the manuscript which was never printed but has been accessed by over 70,000 on the Internet:
We all know how to cry or smile from the moment of our birth. A newborn child cries whenever it needs feed or is uncomfortable. As soon as it feels the reassuring pat of its mother when placed closed to her breast it stops crying. Indeed, besides gesturing like smiling and nodding, it is easiest to tell or to know through sounds. To tell and know is to communicate; through sounds it is oral/audio communication. It developed with the discovery of language, a shared code of sounds. A language is something spoken or written. It is an organized set of a number of sounds. These sounds convey a meaning from the mind of the speaker to the mind of the hearer, and thus connect them to each other.
I started thinking about it in the context of disintegrating humanity rather then helping it to integrate further. We all have a language that we learned earliest at home, it is known as mother tongue. My mother tongue is Hindi, I can speak it very comfortably, but to write it is a different matter. I write best in English, a language I learned much later, but a language that helps me reach millions across the oceans, across the continents, though I have learned and still learning several others.
According to article on Wikipedia, the most popular online encyclopaedia, "there are more than a 100 individual languages as having more than 1 million native speakers (0.1%) to less than 10,000 (.001%) of total population of native speakers."
Several states of the Republic of India, have been divided on the basis of language, and many others, like Telengana, are protesting for such a bifurcation. I wonder, whether it was/will be useful indeed.
I think, such movements are not restricted to India only, this should be the trend in many more countries. People are much more comfortable in communicating in their native language, they do not like another language forced on them, through education. Is that parochialism?
Can there ever be a global language, that can be spoken or used for writing? if yes will it be English only or its offspring? Will that beneficial for most people?
I am thinking for an answer to such a question, I do not have an answer yet, I do not know if there ever be one.
Rakesh Mohan Hallen