Language learning is an ongoing process and starts as soon as we are born. How does it happen, have you ever considered how did you come to speak the first word? Right after our birth we are exposed to cooing and baby talk by our parents and other family members. Most probably the first language that we are exposed to is our mother tongue. But of late there is a growing trend among parents to drop off their mother tongue as the first preferred language and accept English as their preferred language. I haven’t really done a survey or poll to know what other people think about it but to me it is not the best thing to do. 

Personally, I believe it is best to learn as many languages as possible. At least we should know how to speak a particular language. In a multilingual country like India, learning more than one language is not that difficult and comes naturally to most of us. For example, since I am Bengali by birth, I know how to speak this language, but since I was born and brought up in Orissa I know how to speak, write, and read in Oriya. Same goes for Hindi and English language, both were taught in school, hence I know these languages too.

But I now feel lost owing to the fact that my lack of proficiency in Bengali is limiting my choice of reading fiction only in English. Not only that, there must be a Bengali term for certain words, but for me it does not exist. I feel pity that today most parents feel a sense of pride that their kids talk in English but are not proficient in their mother tongue. Parents fail to understand the importance of one’s mother tongue. No doubt only good proficiency in English will land us with good and lucrative jobs, since English is an international language. However, since lack of our knowledge in various regional languages has led to the over use of English. Using English in addition to our respective regional languages is a good thing. For example, if I happen to visit any place say Hyderabad, and imagine everything is written only in Telgu, I would go crazy. But thanks to our government making use of all the languages English, Hindi, and the respective regional language on all the places required, which helps in easy routing of tourists and people who come from all over.

Mixing two languages together not only makes our vocabulary limited but also doesn’t sound appropriate. We have a term for mixing two or more languages which is known as code mixing. There is this other term called code switching, which happens only when a person is adept in two or more languages and the other person is equally proficient with both the languages used in a conversation. We frequently hear English phrases being used in Hindi Bollywood songs and Hindi phrases in Bengali songs. Code mixing is not bad and you really can’t control it sometimes since lack of vocabulary in a particular language makes us do code mix. For instance we really don’t have a word for computer, table, scooter, in our native languages, do we? But, here I am trying to say that code mixing pollutes and degrades the quality of both the languages used. For example, when I say “is lock ka key nehi mil raha” how does it sound? Can’t I say the entire sentence in either Hindi or English? Are we trying to give rise to more languages like Hinglish (Hindi+English) and so on? I don’t really see a need for such language to be used but we end up doing so either intentionally or unintentionally. I know that mixing one’s native language with English makes you look trendy and smart but in turn we are degrading the quality of both or many languages in question. Think about it.