I have been writing about mother languages on the International Mother Language Day every year for the past seven years. Last year, I wrote about mother languages in cyberspace and artificial intelligence. This year I wish to draw attention to multilingualism and pidgin.
We are celebrating International Mother Language Day, on February 21. Our mother language simultaneously gives us a sense of belonging and erects a barrier around us, keeping others who are using their own mother tongue away from us. The language identity alienates others living in the same geographically or politically identified region, where International Mother Language Day has to be celebrated separately by each group.
We may never know when man began to use speech for communications, and what the proto-language or languages would have been. As man spread out and formed individual communities, their languages would have developed separately, creating a language identity, thus giving rise to many mother languages. Such different languages resulted in multilingualism, because these individual groups needed to communicate with each other, for trade, social interactions, administration, religious communications and literature.
Over 4,000 years ago, there would have been bilinguals among the Assyrians and the Egyptians if their rulers and traders interacted. Emperor Ashoka would have needed his ministers to learn Greek or Roman to carry the message of Ashoka Dhamma. Alexander would have needed people who knew Aramaic, Kharosthi and Brahmi to communicate with the people in the lands he invaded. Ven. Buddhaghosa Thera would have learned Sinhala to be able to translate Buddhist literature into Pali. They would all have been bilingual or trilingual.
Missionaries and SA languages
The Christian missionaries had to learn the South Asian languages, in addition to their European mother tongue and Latin. An example of the effort the British took to learn Sinhala is seen in the Sinhala-English dictionaries published by Rev. B. Clough (1892) and Rev. Charles Carter (1924). Since then, except for one online dictionary, a comprehensive Sinhala-English dictionary has not been compiled. Until 1912, when Wilhelm Geiger translated the Mahavamsa, many Sri Lankans had not read the Pali original.
The Italian Jesuit priest Fr. Vitto Perniola who had studied Buddhism, Pali and Sanskrit wrote a Pali Grammar. His protege, Fr. Aloysius Peiris, who received his PhD on Buddhist philosophy, is a true polyglot, who studied, in addition to Latin, Hebrew and Greek, Pali and Sanskrit. Ven S. Mahinda Thera who had Tibetan or Sikkhim as his mother language mastered Sinhala to be accepted as a leading Sinhala poet.
Evidently then, multilingualism has been a skill developed by many people around the world. The motivation to learn languages other than their mother language would have been varied.
Pidgin could be a compromise for multilingual ability. Present day audio-visual media unashamedly use pidgin. Today, pidgin is found even in our universities. Perhaps, Lingua Franca is a more dignified term for pidgin today. In India, we have Hinglish, of Hindi and English. Singlish is found in Singapore, (a mix of English with many Asian languages), while in Sri Lanka, it is English and Sinhala. However, what we really need is Tamisinglish that would pave the way for us to accept we are a trilingual country.
In our part of the world, we also have a different form of English literacy. Prof. J. B. Disanayaka often says that an Englishman walking into the Colombo University would be able to understand the conversations in Sinhala by our students. It is because they use so many English words in their conversation.
Reasons for learning other languages
Some of the reasons for learning other languages have remained unchanged, like the desire to trade, propagate religious doctrines or the curiosity to learn of other people and cultures. With the growth of literary activities, there are those who are curious to read works in other languages, in their original languages.
However, today, two major incentives to learn other languages are to seek employment in greener pastures or pursue higher education. Currently, students seeking to enter universities in other countries are motivated to study the languages of those countries, sometimes sacrificing one year of their youth to learn such a language, without which they would not be able to complete their education. Unfortunately, these newly acquired language skills are often forgotten after they return to their motherland.
In our country, for the G.C.E. Ordinary Level examination, in addition to Sinhala, Tamil and English, students can offer Pali, Sanskrit, French, German, Hindi, Japanese, Arabic, Korean, and Chinese. Latin which was also included earlier had been dropped at some stage. For the Advanced Level, languages offered are Pali, Sanskrit, German, French, Arabic, Malay, Chinese, Hindi, Korean, Russian, and Japanese.
Languages for many reasons
It is apparent that affluent countries, for political or other reasons, have begun to promote the teaching of their major languages in less affluent countries, often sending out teachers and establishing language teaching institutes. However, most of the languages of our neighbours are not included in our education. Especially, two languages that are close to us with many similar words; Bangla the language of many great literary works, and Odia which is considered as the origin of Sinhala, are ignored in our education system. The same can be said of Divehi, Urdu, Nepali, Tibetan and Dzonka.
Yet, there are also those who believe we are burdened with too many languages. Indonesia is reported to have 700 languages spoken in the country, out of the 6,000 languages used around the world. Although attempts were made to introduce a common ‘Bhasa Indonesia’, many preferred their own mother language.
While we love and respect our own mother language, let us respect and try to understand the mother languages of our neighbours and friends till someday we develop a global mother language for all children of Mother Earth.
