Whither native language… will it wither away?

I’ve been fascinated by languages for years, and more so recently with our work on Schools 4.0 Lanka (e.g. why would a Sinhala speaking child want to learn Tamil and vice versa, because there’s no point forcing a child to learn something s/he doesn’t want to), so when I saw this meme I felt compelled to respond:

Fears that our language will die out are not unfounded: I don’t know if the decline is due to the obvious functional benefits of learning English or something else. For example, Sri Lankan consumer law requires that packaged food and beverages be labelled in at least 2 of Sinhalese, Tamil and English…and when “Garlic Butter” says “ගාලික් බටර්” (transliteration instead of translation) it suggests that we’ve not only long lost our Sinhalese word for “butter” (වෙඬරු), we’re also losing the word for “garlic”. And nobody asks for a පළනුරු යුෂ anymore, it’s all ෆෲට් ජූස් now. I don’t know if we ever had a term for “fried rice” but even that is now abbreviated to just “රයිස්”. While the situation is similar with spoken Tamil, it’s written form is more robust — if only because the script lacks the syllables.

But, at an individual level, that fear isn’t something that will motivate a child to learn a language, nor is it a good reason for an adult to speak it with (not “to”) their child, especially if those adults are not using it in conversation with other adults. Of course, if they are using it with other adults and are avoiding it only with their children because they want the child to learn English, I would ask them why they would not want to their child to enjoy the same benefits of multilingualism that they do.

However, advocating for retaining a language only for its functional benefits — to have conversations with other people — is rather pointless; individually and collectively, we’d be much better off just learning English instead…

The most important reason why we should preserve our native languages is because it is the gateway to our culture. Without it, we not only lose the opportunity to enjoy the art that those before us have created with it (art here is not only cinema, teledrama, theatre, novels, short stories, poems, speeches and songs, but also proverbs, jokes, riddles, memes, graffiti, innuendo and even swear words), we also lose the opportunity of using it for our own artistic expressions. And in Sri Lanka, this is an important reason to know both local languages — so we can access more of the cultural capital of our country. (On a personal note, when I was young I spoke English and Tamil; as I grew up, there was a functional need to learn Sinhala and I ended up neglecting Tamil — if I’d been exposed to Tamil art rather than being told I needed it to be able to speak to my relatives, maybe I’d have retained it.)

Anyway, if you are an adult who wants children to learn Sinhala / Tamil, patronize its art and artistes: demonstrate to them that you genuinely enjoy the art created with that language, and, as much as possible, enjoy it with them.

You may also be interested in my other writing on Education, Politics/Power, Ethics/Philosophy/Humanism, Parenting and “Lost in Translation”