The case of one's mother tongue
First a dicussion on the ideal frequency to post in a blog. The reason why I want to discuss that here is because I am so vetti today that I have decided to post a second time. Wait. Is it only because I am vetti? Not exactly. I had read something that made thoughts flow and I thought I should record it. Till now I have never recorded my thoughts anywhere. Now that I have started blogging, I thought I should record this somewhere. And me being vetti today proved useful.
Should there be an ideal frequency to post in a blog. This leads us to yet another question. What exactly is a blog. The definitions vary. Some might give te etymological meaning of a blog. Someone might quote from authentic english dictionaries (How authentic and how varied these dictionaries tend to be. Jesus!! (That's christmas effect :P)). For me, everything boils down to articulation of a thought. What is thought? Thought for me is anything that appears in my mind. it could be an emotion. It could be an idea. It could be an intuitive clarity. Thus, blog for me becomes a vehicle of expression. And hence, there is no ideal frequency for a blog. Depending on when we have time, blogs can be posted as often as it is possible. But I warn those people that are into serious stuff and are not really vetti to keep a regular frequency and stick to it. Blogging, like other net related activities (read orkutting), seems to be quite addicitve.
Fine. Now the reason for this blog. I am someone who feels very strongly about languages. By this I mean languages and discussions on them can trigger a flood of activities in my thinking faculty. This post is because of a thread in one of the communities in orkut. A discussion on mother tongue.
Lets try to define what a language is in the first place. It is a means of communication. Fine. Is it a means to express one's mental activities. Fine with me. But is it only that? Is it just physical articulation? Is there no mental component to language? What really constitutes our mental activity? When someone spits on our brand new shirt from a running bus, after the initial surge of emotions which seem to be non-linguistic, what happens? Except for cases where we directly jump into activity (which is a direct manifestion of thoughts in the physica realm), there is always a translating phase, where the language first takes shape. We think in a language. Dont we? Do we not while cracking tough problems seem to be speaking to ourselves? Is that not language? Indeed it is.
Does mental activity happen in a language? Or does mental activity happen after which the results get translated into a language? I would say both tend to happen. When there are expressions of our selves beyond our conscious attempt, the expressions take birth from beyond our conscious mind and then get translated into language. This is where we find ourselves hard to express ourselves. When I listen to Sri Rudram or when I see a beautiful scenery or when I see a gory murder, the expressions are extra-linguistic. We are at a loss of words to describe what we feel. But there are cases beyond these as well. This is conscious mind, where thinking happens within the framework of a language. Most of the times, when we express ourselves, we speak from this realm. Our thinking in this realm is conditioned by our language.
Now the big question. What exactly constitutes our mother tongue. Let me take myself as an example. My mother tongue is tamil. But this is a misleading idea. I would rather say that I am confortable calling my mother tongue as tamil because there are people around me who call their mother tongues as tamil and I can understand them and they understand me. The name is merely a label. Consider a family thath as migrated from a kannada speaking region to a tamil speaking region. Over centuries of living among tamils, they have learnt to call the language outdoors as tamil and the language indoors as kannada. There would come a point when the language indoors would be so different from the kannada spoken in the kannada speaking region (Not to mention the changes that it would have undergone by then) that a normal kannadiga would not understand this family's indoor language anymore. So now, what is their mother tongue? Is it kannada because they call it so? If yes, should we then say the language spoken in the kannada region is not kannada anymore? Or should we say this language is born from kannada but is no more kannada but a new language? Why should the family accept it? Their mother tongue is anyway kannada according to them.
Another thing that would illustrate the futility of the label. What I speak is tamil. What my friends in southern most part of tamil nadu speak is also tamil. What my hebbar friends speak is also tamil and not just that. Even the chennai slag is tamil. So, is everything my mother tongue? Or should I accept what people say? That my mother tongue is that language that has come after centuries of growth as a literary language? Is the language of literature my mother tongue? I would love that. but unfortunately it is not.
Whether it is sanskrit or tamil (the chaste form), both are alien to my mind. I think in neither of these languages. My mother tongue is an unnamed structure that resides inside. These are just external interfaces that polish our thought to make it understandable. If I want to express myself in tamil nadu in written form, I learn the written form. If I want to express myself verbally, I learn the spoken form. If I migrate to another region, I learn another language. is this really true? Again, it is not. For the evolution in my thought process and my learning of tamil have co-incided and I should say the languages that I spoke from childhood have gone into the creation of my mother tongue. So, if what I speak is tamil and english, and if those are what I have grown up with, I would rephrase the proposition about my mother tongue as "Tamil and English created my mother tongue" rather than saying "Tamil is my mother tongue".
As we grow up, the more and more idioms (read languages) we learn, the internal mother tongue grows and we find more and more sires to our mother tongue. A child belonging to a tamil speaking family, living in Andhra Pradesh and learning English and Hindi at school would essentially have a mother tongue that is sired by all these idioms. The various ways in which the mind forms patterns (read sentences) to express itself would be greatly enhanced by the various sentence and grammatical structures in all languages. If I a confortable in more than one pattern and if I think in more than one, I am no more a person of a single mother tongue.
To say tamil is my mother tongue and hence should learn in that medium or pray in that medium is meaningless. The medium of learning called tamil is not the same as the mother tongue that I call tamil. Praying to God in tamil is as different as say praying in sanskrit. So, it is high time we realise this and stop mistreating idioms. Let us learn more idioms (somehow I like to call languages by this word. Dont ask me why. It sounds nice) and let our thoughts flourish.
Thats it for now. Dont be surprised if I post again today. :-P
Should there be an ideal frequency to post in a blog. This leads us to yet another question. What exactly is a blog. The definitions vary. Some might give te etymological meaning of a blog. Someone might quote from authentic english dictionaries (How authentic and how varied these dictionaries tend to be. Jesus!! (That's christmas effect :P)). For me, everything boils down to articulation of a thought. What is thought? Thought for me is anything that appears in my mind. it could be an emotion. It could be an idea. It could be an intuitive clarity. Thus, blog for me becomes a vehicle of expression. And hence, there is no ideal frequency for a blog. Depending on when we have time, blogs can be posted as often as it is possible. But I warn those people that are into serious stuff and are not really vetti to keep a regular frequency and stick to it. Blogging, like other net related activities (read orkutting), seems to be quite addicitve.
Fine. Now the reason for this blog. I am someone who feels very strongly about languages. By this I mean languages and discussions on them can trigger a flood of activities in my thinking faculty. This post is because of a thread in one of the communities in orkut. A discussion on mother tongue.
Lets try to define what a language is in the first place. It is a means of communication. Fine. Is it a means to express one's mental activities. Fine with me. But is it only that? Is it just physical articulation? Is there no mental component to language? What really constitutes our mental activity? When someone spits on our brand new shirt from a running bus, after the initial surge of emotions which seem to be non-linguistic, what happens? Except for cases where we directly jump into activity (which is a direct manifestion of thoughts in the physica realm), there is always a translating phase, where the language first takes shape. We think in a language. Dont we? Do we not while cracking tough problems seem to be speaking to ourselves? Is that not language? Indeed it is.
Does mental activity happen in a language? Or does mental activity happen after which the results get translated into a language? I would say both tend to happen. When there are expressions of our selves beyond our conscious attempt, the expressions take birth from beyond our conscious mind and then get translated into language. This is where we find ourselves hard to express ourselves. When I listen to Sri Rudram or when I see a beautiful scenery or when I see a gory murder, the expressions are extra-linguistic. We are at a loss of words to describe what we feel. But there are cases beyond these as well. This is conscious mind, where thinking happens within the framework of a language. Most of the times, when we express ourselves, we speak from this realm. Our thinking in this realm is conditioned by our language.
Now the big question. What exactly constitutes our mother tongue. Let me take myself as an example. My mother tongue is tamil. But this is a misleading idea. I would rather say that I am confortable calling my mother tongue as tamil because there are people around me who call their mother tongues as tamil and I can understand them and they understand me. The name is merely a label. Consider a family thath as migrated from a kannada speaking region to a tamil speaking region. Over centuries of living among tamils, they have learnt to call the language outdoors as tamil and the language indoors as kannada. There would come a point when the language indoors would be so different from the kannada spoken in the kannada speaking region (Not to mention the changes that it would have undergone by then) that a normal kannadiga would not understand this family's indoor language anymore. So now, what is their mother tongue? Is it kannada because they call it so? If yes, should we then say the language spoken in the kannada region is not kannada anymore? Or should we say this language is born from kannada but is no more kannada but a new language? Why should the family accept it? Their mother tongue is anyway kannada according to them.
Another thing that would illustrate the futility of the label. What I speak is tamil. What my friends in southern most part of tamil nadu speak is also tamil. What my hebbar friends speak is also tamil and not just that. Even the chennai slag is tamil. So, is everything my mother tongue? Or should I accept what people say? That my mother tongue is that language that has come after centuries of growth as a literary language? Is the language of literature my mother tongue? I would love that. but unfortunately it is not.
Whether it is sanskrit or tamil (the chaste form), both are alien to my mind. I think in neither of these languages. My mother tongue is an unnamed structure that resides inside. These are just external interfaces that polish our thought to make it understandable. If I want to express myself in tamil nadu in written form, I learn the written form. If I want to express myself verbally, I learn the spoken form. If I migrate to another region, I learn another language. is this really true? Again, it is not. For the evolution in my thought process and my learning of tamil have co-incided and I should say the languages that I spoke from childhood have gone into the creation of my mother tongue. So, if what I speak is tamil and english, and if those are what I have grown up with, I would rephrase the proposition about my mother tongue as "Tamil and English created my mother tongue" rather than saying "Tamil is my mother tongue".
As we grow up, the more and more idioms (read languages) we learn, the internal mother tongue grows and we find more and more sires to our mother tongue. A child belonging to a tamil speaking family, living in Andhra Pradesh and learning English and Hindi at school would essentially have a mother tongue that is sired by all these idioms. The various ways in which the mind forms patterns (read sentences) to express itself would be greatly enhanced by the various sentence and grammatical structures in all languages. If I a confortable in more than one pattern and if I think in more than one, I am no more a person of a single mother tongue.
To say tamil is my mother tongue and hence should learn in that medium or pray in that medium is meaningless. The medium of learning called tamil is not the same as the mother tongue that I call tamil. Praying to God in tamil is as different as say praying in sanskrit. So, it is high time we realise this and stop mistreating idioms. Let us learn more idioms (somehow I like to call languages by this word. Dont ask me why. It sounds nice) and let our thoughts flourish.
Thats it for now. Dont be surprised if I post again today. :-P
5 Comments:
Talking about tamil tamil is enough. Start learning the langauge which you may need in near future for better communication:-) Hope u understand!!
I really enjoyed looking at your site, I found it very helpful indeed, keep up the good work.
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Your website has a useful information for beginners like me.
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have you thought about people who cannot hear/speak but can still think? what would be their mother tongue?
Interesting information.
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