The great Indian language trouble
AS THE WORLD CELEBRATES THE INTERNATIONAL YEAR OF INDIGENOUS LANGUAGES, INDIA HAS A TASK IN HAND TO PRESERVE ITS 780-ODD INDIGENOUS LANGUAGES
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Every two weeks, a language dies with its last speaker in this world. India, undoubtably is a treasure trove of linguistic diversity, with nearly 450 living languages — 22 of them granted the status of a ‘Scheduled language’ under the Constitution. Nevertheless, the country also faces the perennial threat of indigenous languages dying. As per the first-ever linguistic survey conducted, completed between 2010 and 2013, India has already lost over 200 indigenous languages in the last 50 years. The survey also rang alarm bells as it claimed that another 150 languages could vanish in the coming decades. The survey astonishingly discovered 780 languages across India, over six times the number in the
Census.
According to the United Nations there are approximately 6,500 languages spoken in the world today. But linguists and researchers fear that by the end of this century, over half of the 6,500 languages will be extinct. No wonder the United Nations has declared 2019 as the International Year of Indigenous Languages in an effort to promote awareness of the plight of languages that are in danger of disappearing.
Former HRD minister Smriti Irani in 2014 had stated that India has 42 ‘critically endangered’ languages. The UNESCO calls those languages ‘critically endangered’, if “the youngest speakers are grandparents and older, and they speak the language partially and infrequently.” Out of the 42 such languages, 11 are in Andaman Nicobar Islands, including Jarawa and Sentilese.
Never have inferiority complex about your language. Every person speaking a language should know that his or her language can express every emotion, just like any other language. Everyone should practice speaking — that is the life of any language. — GANESH DEVY, eminent linguist, winner of Padmashree and Sahitya Akademi Award