JOIN USThe Central Institute of Indian Languages (CIIL), Mysuru, celebrated the International Mother Language Day recently. Several cultural events, representing different mother tongues of India, were organised to mark the occasion.
B N Patnaik, former professor of Linguistics, IIT Kanpur, inaugurated the programme. He equated a mother tongue to a bridge between different generations and a channel for the transmission of knowledge from generation to generation. He expressed his disappointment over the underrepresentation of mother tongues in the verbal repertoire of people and said, “Our own languages are becoming endangered in the capital cities of India.”
Vikram K Das, retired senior professor of Linguistics, spoke on the role of mother tongues in a diasporic context while V Giridhar Rao of Ajim Premji University, Bengaluru, delivered a lecture on ‘Esparanto as a Home Language’.
After the inaugural session of the programme, 14 books, representing various mother tongues and different facets of language studies, were released. D G Rao, Director, CIIL, presided over the session. He said, most of the eminent scholars, who have contributed to this country in various fields have received their early education in their respective mother tongues.
He added that numerous studies have found that information and knowledge imparted in a mother tongue of the receiver is far more likely to be remembered by him/her than in a second or a foreign language. However, for the impactful propagation of mother tongues, support of language and information technology applications is required. A linguistic campaign is also needed to create positive attitudes among the people towards their respective mother tongue, he said.
P Umarani, Deputy Director, CIIL, briefed about her previous research experience of working with speakers of the minority languages of Tibeto-Burman family and expressed concern over the state of endangerment of those languages. She said, “We all should love and respect every language on the planet to give an effective meaning for the celebration of International Mother Language Day.”
L Ramamoorthy, Officer in-charge LDC-IL, G Prabhakar, Pankaj Dwivedi, Sujoy Sarkar, Aleendra Bramha, Prem Kumar, Tariq Khan and B M Lingaraj were present.