The more time I spend in Kathmandu the more evident it becomes to me that kids from Kathmandu speak one-and-a-half languages. They grew up speaking Nepali, but by middle school had surrounded themselves with Nepali “Sirs” and “Misses” who would reprimand them if they were to communicate in Nepali with their Nepali friends on the “English-only” school grounds of, ironically enough, Nepal. They grew up hearing local celebrities and adults throw phrases in English. And they watched a lot of Star TV. The message was clear – the more English you speak the better you are. And, in a country where most everyone is pressured to be a thulo manche it is expected that we drop our Nepali like it’s a shame.
As such, pure unadulterated Nepali, spoken by a Kathmandu 20-something, is such a rarity that when I do overhear it I feel compelled to pin a blue ribbon upon their chest. They’ve passed the test of time and trends, it seems.
English, after all, is just a phase. Once upon a time the Ranas in Kathmandu spoke Hindi to distinguish themselves from the common folk. And at another point in time the Russians spoke French for exactly the same reason. So, I really mean it when I say Pax Americana will soon pass, not in our lifetime, but in some future generation’s lifetime. Maybe it will be replaced with Thakali or maybe with Cantonese, who knows?
So, I find the craze to learn English, to “have forgotten” Nepali after having been born and bred in Kathmandu because of four short years spent in America, and to fake that Western accent something worth pondering.
A few years ago I came to Nepal as an awkwardly labeled “exchange student” with my non-machine readable green passport and the kids I met commented on my choice of words, keetab, kalam, kaiyo. Some laughed at my utterance of these words and informed me that I could just say book, pencil and comb. I could, but how could it hurt me to be fluent in both?
For the record, I am not a staunch culturalist (if that’s even the word) looking to enforce a 2011 Muluki Ain where every non-Nepali language is banned and publications such as Republica burnt on the grounds that it promotes all things foreign, alien and a threat to national security. No, I am simply making a remark about every kid who has grown up in Kathmandu and (some with pride, I think) informing me of scoring “higher marks in English than Nepali”. How that’s supposed to be commendable, I don’t know.
If Canadians are bi-lingual, Northeasterners of India tri-lingual and Europeans multilingual, must we be so anti-lingual?
Like I said, one of my friends is comfortable, fluent and academic in four European languages and looking to add our Indo-Aryan to her list. My other friend, I conveniently failed to mention earlier, is looking to improve her English. And, why wouldn´t she? It is, after all, the lingua franca of our world, of this era anyhow.
English is a language that is truly beautiful. Each sub-group can make it their own. With “she’ll cal you ni” and “coming re” it is instantly made the own of each district language group. But, more than that it is afforded the added luxury of riding the waves of what Arjun Appaduari terms mediascapes, ethnoscapeas and ideoscapeas – of the world becoming smaller because we have found a common medium of communication.
Esperanto it turns out was too forced and never picked off as it was intended. But, English, well English is uttered in the most remote parts of our country itself. Make that trip, go, go beyond Lumbini, Chitwan and Pokhara and you will meet second-graders in the far-flung villages eager to make small talk, “didi didi, what is your name?... didi didi, where are you from?”. Second graders, I tell you. These kids speak Tharu at home, Nepali in the bazaars and are learning English at school. They may have been spared the painful lesson that they best adopt an awkward “foreign” accent, and I pray that one day they will be a testament to Kathmandu’s privileged, that we may indeed speak more than a language-and-a-half.
I applaud those who have maintained their Newari or Nepali, picked up English and are in the Goethe Institute learning German. Languages, I believe, give you access to multiple dimensions, frames and worlds. It’s true, you learn words, acquire an understanding and a unique perception with each additional language. It’s about expanding your world. “The aim of language”, in the words of Sartre himself, “is to communicate...to impart to others the results one has obtained...As I talk, I reveal the situation...I reveal it to myself and to others …” With each language there is an entirely new revelation.
Did you read about the Mandarin learnt fervently along our mountainous regions, courtesy of the Middle Kingdom? Or did you see the advertisement where adorable rural Chinese children are reciting a, aa, ii, iee, o, ou, um? They get it. Why don’t we?
I’m not one to suggest we speak Nepali, eat dhindo or make the chou bandi cholo the rule. Culture changes, but it is through these three forms that they are expressed. I appreciate the expression for the wisdom it offers and the perception it grants. Nepali ukhans are becoming increasingly more difficult to decipher for us Kathmandu kids, but I hope that with due time it becomes “cool”, because that’s what it will take for us to articulate and be literate in the multiple languages of Nepal, from Bhojpuri to Gurung to Tharu to Khas.
After all it is entirely possible for us to be familiar with more than one-and-a-half. If Canadians are bi-lingual, Northeasterners of India tri-lingual and Europeans multilingual, must we be so anti-lingual? Unless I’m mistaken, a crucial component of Government of Nepal’s “Education for All” campaign heralded classes of different areas’ dominant mother tongues be offered in primary schools, Khas Nepali being the norm otherwise and a foreign language, presumably English, introduced at the secondary level. Once you know three, Korean and French, will definitely come off more easily.
Writer admits she too speaks just that one-and-a-half language fluently, but she’s working on changing that
sradda.thapa@gmail.com
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