Increasing globalization and modernization has exponentially increased the use of English language across the world, and Nepal is no exception. For most Nepali students who attend private schools, learning Nepali is harder than getting their heads around English, the indisputable language of global communication. Growing up, these children are fed on steady dose of videogames, computer and online apps, television shows and movies, all using English to get across to the end users.
Still, even though they might find chandrabindu and aakar and ookar hard to master, nearly half the population with Nepali as their mother tongue is adept at employing it as a means of communication. And yet Nepali struggles for relevance in the Anglophile world. If the Nepali language that has enjoyed exclusive state patronage and has been actively promoted, often at the cost of other languages, is now under pressure, one can imagine the uphill struggle for existence for other less-spoken national languages in Nepal. [break]
But why bother preserving minority languages like Bantawa and Chamling, at considerable cost to the cash-strapped exchequer, which have very limited use? Isn’t it better to invest in improving students’ English language skills and make them more compatible for global marketplace? Indeed, the importance of languages with limited speakers is easy to overlook. But linguists caution against such cavalier outlook. First, a language is not just a means of communication; each language incorporates a range of ideas and concepts that might not be expressible in other languages.
This is the reason each language borrows from the others; none is complete in itself. For a country like Nepal which takes great pride in its cultural diversity, losing some of its 123 living languages (according to 2011 census), most of them endangered, will be a national tragedy. The extinction of indigenous languages like Waling and Kusunda represent a loss of entire ways of life, something that cannot be replaced.
There is also a growing body of research suggesting that a firm grasp of mother tongue allows children to better understand new concepts and ideas as well as to learn other languages faster. One of the reasons only seven out of ten children enrolled in grade one reach grade five (and more than five of out of ten leave school before reaching lower secondary level) is that students from Indigenious Populations (IPs) like Bankaria, Hayu, Kisan and Kusunda find it very hard to understand instructions in Nepali or English. Most children from these communities don’t even enroll in schools for the same reason.
There have been some meaningful interventions. The pilot Mother-tongue-based Multilingual Education (MTB-MLE) program launched by the Department of Education in 2004 was successful in promoting eight mother tongues in seven schools in different districts. In 2007, it was scaled up to 21 schools and the plan is to cover 7,500 schools by 2015.
The government has introduced a two-tier policy of teaching mother tongues as optional subjects up to the higher secondary level and using mother tongues as a medium of instruction to increase school enrollment and cut dropout rate. The problem is that the zeal for action has often overtaken actual implementation of even the most well-intentioned language policies in Nepal. Unless there is strong political will to implement these programs, we are sure to lose more of our indigenous languages in the days ahead. It will deprive a large section of the population of their right to education, and come at great cost to Nepal’s image as a multilingual and multicultural melting pot.
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