Konjam Tamil Konjam English http://www.thehindu.com/mp/2004/02/21/stories/2004022100060100.htm ANXIOUS VOICES cry out that the Tamil language will cease to exist in another five years or so, unless immediate steps are taken (so says a UNESCO finding). What is your view on the influence of English over your mother tongue

Have you met someone who speaks English as if he is speaking Punjabi or Bengali or Bhojpuri or Telugu? There, you have the dreaded mother tongue influence in action. Let me tell you a story about three of my dear friends. First one is Yo Yo Sunny Singh who lives in “Kanedda” and wants to open a “Toyotta” showroom with financial “sport” from his “dad ji”. Then there is Chintan Chakraborthy who is going to get “mayrid” to the “garl of hiz drims” because he “labhs” her “bhery much”. There is also Bablu Yadav who is fighting University elections and promises everyone to “gibh” them “neat and clean univashty”, “class on time”, “egjaminesan on time” if he wins. The story is all three suffer from heavy mother tongue influence. The worst part of mother tongue influence (MTI) is that it kills your confidence. You as a speaker know you sound wrong and even funny. It makes you self conscious and requires hard work for a long time to get over. Just as each language has different words, letters and script – so does each have different sounds. Thus there are some sounds which are found in Hindi but not in English and some sounds may be found in English but not in Tamil. For example: in the word “Pleasure”, the second syllable is a sound not found in Hindi. It’s not “plezar” and it’s not “pleshar” – it is the mix of sounds of “z” and “sh”. Thus, for native Hindi speakers with insufficient English speaking exposure, pronouncing pleasure (or measure or leisure) correctly takes time and practice. Similarly, there are sounds in your regional language which may not exist in English. When we begin speaking in the second language (i.e. English), we initially use sounds from our mother tongue. Thus, everyone has mother tongue influence (MTI) to begin with. With more and more listening to those fluent in the second language, practicing speaking yourself and correcting mistakes, you slowly learn to replace your mother tongue sounds with the original sounds of English. Thus, heavy mother tongue influence happens because your native language sounds have not yet been replaced with the second language sounds. The Americans do speak English like Americans, the British like the British and Indians like the Indians. Aren’t these mother tongue influences? Yes they are. Infact, accents are nothing but mother tongue influences so widespread that they become mainstream. Two characteristics distinguish accents from MTI (which essentially means “undesirable” mother tongue influence): Widespread adoption Uniformity Thus, those regional, local or language influences which are adopted by so many people that the purists cannot ignore or isolate them become recognized as accents. We can’t do away with mother tongue influence completely. Infact, to ease our pain, certain Indian peculiarities of pronunciation have actually become acceptable and that’s what is neutral Indian accent. For us Indians, the target should be to reduce our mother tongue influence so much that from a Punjabi/Bhojpuri/Tamil/Marathi or Bengali English speaker, we become an Indian English speaker. The journey, thus, has three main stops: Non speaker —> Bengali/Punjabi/Bhojpuri English speaker —> neutral Indian English speaker. read less