This trend is particularly marked among those schooled in English style schools, where speaking in Nepali is discouraged. They are now losing their roots with the language; and their speech has become a cocktail of English and Nepali difficult for many to comprehend the meaning.
All the while, today´s youth have found a middle path by mixing up Nepali with English or vice versa in speech or writing. Any word could literally be translated into this middle path.
For example, bharnu (to fill) could easily be said bharo-sing or janu (leave) could be jao-sing. Anything could mean anything as long as you make sense of the expression adding the ´sing´ or just ´ing´ in the end and, yet, everyone understands it.
Twenty-one-year-old Prashansha Bista, who was educated in an English medium school in Kathmandu, finds it difficult to read Nepali numbers. She gets nervous at times when people speak heavy Nepali diction. She prefers to use the middle path whenever possible.
“It´s easy for me to use these slang because I don´t know the appropriate words or the full word, so, mixing Nepali and English makes it easier for me and for my friends too,” she says.
So is the case with Yubraj Dhakal, a student at Kathmandu University. He says, “It´s not only easier to utter the slang and then understand it but it also has become something like a trend and everybody is using it.”
However, Jagan Nath Koirala, Nepali teacher at Don Bosco School in Koteshwor, says the youth are completely losing touch with the language. He blames this to schools and parents. “While schools encourage English language and prohibit speaking in Nepali except in Nepali classes, parents think that their children are learning more if they speak in English which is not the case,” he opines.
“Westernization has hit us hard, and since we´re still a developing country, we quickly adopt things, and so is the case with the Nepali-English mixed diction,” he says, adding, “Whatever language we use must be correct and not a mixed-up.”
“Slang just make life easier,” says Ritesh Jajodia, who was almost entirely schooled in an English medium school in the capital. Use of Nepali language in the premises was banned by the school. He adds, “I don´t think anyone should have a problem with our slang because it´s easy going and as long as people understand it, I don´t see where the problem lies.”
True that the people will understand what they are talking about but where the boundary between the use of formal English and perfect Nepali lies is another ticklish matter.
“Nepali language is not yet under threat but the schools need to make their students speak in Nepali too,” he suggests, adding, “May be the youth can speak in English for four days a week and Nepali for the rest of the days.”
However, Laxmi Prasad Gurung, an English teacher at Nobel Academy Higher Secondary School, argues that the students have the rights to use Nepali slang but not to such an extent that they lose touch with both the languages. “It´s not fair that the students are being imposed to speak English in schools,” he says, adding, “It´s become a fashion, a trend, and the young ones quickly adopt it.”
A slang expression may sound music to one´s ears and to some extent it might be hip and happening, but the users of such slang need to understand that they would not want to be habituated with the dictions making it difficult for them to use, either Nepali or English in a formal way.
“It would be very difficult to actually speak formally in Nepali or English if you get used to using the slang so one needs to control the use of such words and, may be, incline more towards speaking formally,” concludes Gurung.
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