Inspire Kids To Be Polyglot

Parmeshwar Devkota

The purpose of this write-up is to share two types of ideas. First, recognise the contributions made to societies by Gorkhapatra. Second, do not hinder your children from learning second or third language; rather, promote them.    

Gorkhapatra Corporation celebrated its 124 year of publication by Gorkhapatra daily on the 24th of Baishkha, and on the same day the Language Day is also marked. Gorkhpatra has been publishing news and views of the indigenous people in over 40 languages in turn for fifteen years now. It is among a few newspaper in the world committed to promoting and preserving the indigenous languages, dialects, and their creativity. Its commitment is laudable because it promotes considers news, cognitive and discursive values that a newspaper is supposed to carry. Therefore, the daily is worthy of winning prizes of high prestige, especially conferred by the West.  It is because the journalistic institutions are bias towards media outlets operating in the third world. 

Second point is that though we can express our ideas clearly in the mother tongue, most of the mother tongues lack dictions and interpretations on complex technical and scientific terms. To express new things and ideas around us, we have to take the help of second or non-native words. In this regard, Stuart Berg Flexner, an American lexicographer, says that a normal person may have command over 20,000 words and uses about 1,500 to 2,000 words in normal conversations. In our context, some languages and dialects that we have been using may not have required number of words to articulate our ideas, forcing us to loan the words from other languages. 

But, the problem is with the old mindset of people and our leaders. Some people of certain language groups consider their languages to be god-gifted, so they should not be shared and taught to outsiders. This mentality has constricted the horizon of the languages and hampered their adaptability. The sort-sighted politicians, who focus their attention on certain language community votes, vow to provide education to their children in their own languages and dialects.  This approach may hamper the linguistic and intellectual growth of children. 

As for example, Bell Devyatkina of Russia, who speaks eight languages at the age of seven, has developed remarkable ability through self-study. She is winning prizes of various kinds from around the world. If a Russian girl can learn eight major languages, why not our children? If a child is confined to his/her mother tongue only, his/her progress will stop for good. 

Therefore, today's students of various castes, creeds and language groups must gather courage to ignore the diktat of even their parents to confine them to their own native language and culture, and strive hard to learn many languages by which they can rise to national and international stage, and the politicians who use jingoistic tones should be ignored. So, children and youths should share the idea expressed long ago by Emperor Charles V of England: "I speak Spanish to God, Italian to women, and French to men, and German to my horse."