A tangle of tongues
Media
Part of Philippine Educator
- Title
- A tangle of tongues
- Language
- English
- Source
- Philippine Educator, XII (3) August 1957
- Year
- 1957
- Subject
- English language usage
- English as a foreign language
- Rights
-
- Fulltext
- I I : FEVERISH? ' _____________ ... _ Here's Fast RELIEF! I .... -----------... -SPEEDY SAFE For that headachy, feverish feeling that usually accompanies a cold,take fast-acting CORT AL! CORT AL brings you dependable relief with amazing speed ... peps you up too! WHENEVER PAIN STRIKES Call forCort al I I I FAST•SAFE•SUHE I I ICI, labl•I contci11n,. A"lrhul•cyloc Acid O.JS •"'·; I I Ph1nau1in 0.1 S gm., Callru'r 0 OS•'"'· 12 • l I ·--------~ -----A T angl.e Of Tongues "I cannot talk to my chaprassi (personal messenger) in his own language without an interpreter," a high-ranking Indian official complained last week. "When I have to tell him to come and go or fetch tea -we have to speak English, and he is not very good at it." The official was a Southern Indian speaking the Tamil language, while .his chaprassi was a Northerner speaking Hindi - the modern version of Sanskrit. In a polyglot India with fourteen distinct languages and hundreds of dialects, their dilemma was typical. Besides forcing a political unity on the subcontinent, the British gave India its first universal means of communication in the English language. But when India's constitution was promulgated in 1950, it provided that Hindi would become the sole official language of the government and the schools within fifteen yea.rs. Last week, with just half that period elapsed, thP government acknowledged that it had not reckoned with either the practical or emotional obstacles in the way of this massive reform. The Ministry of Education announced a new policy: All students will be expected to learn three languages, Hindi. English, and one other Indian tongue. The ministry thus hoped ta> quell the very intense attachment to ancestral lanm10rres which hrrn even led to such bloody excesses as the Bombay riots in 1956. Enoli::;h Forever: Furthermore, the ministry· admitted that Enalish will probably never be completely abandoned. "It will be ten to fifteen years more before we crm convert all schools to Hindi as a medium 0f instruction," said an educator. "We decided educcrtional :=;tcmdnrds were more important than patrioti.c· emotion, and that there was no doubt that standards were falling off because of lack of textbooks in Hindi." To provide textbooks - particularly for the sciences - a staff of 35 is now laboring to create a scientific Hindi vocabulary. Their word coinage must be approved by an intricate system of expert committees, state governments, and an official board on scientific terminoloqy. Although 90,000 Hindi terms have been formulated so far, only one-tenth of them have been approved. The goal is 300,000 terms by 1960. The student of the future, however, will find that his technical vocabulary is still studded with English. Scholars can find basic Sanskrit roots for such phrases as "British thermal unit" - which becomes British ushma matrak. But for words like "calorie" and "hormone," the only solution is a simple transliteration - into Hindi script, which still leaves the English words calorie and hormone. ~ from: NEWSWEEK, August 5, 1957 EDUCATION Section Page 45, Column I. CATCHING COLD? --------- -----Here's Fast RELIEF! --------------SPEEDY SAFE For that headachy.feverish feeling that usually accompanies a cold, take fast-acting CO r:T ALI CORT AL brings you dependable relief with amazing speed ..• peps you up too! WHENEVER PAIN STRIKES Coll forCortal : FAST•SAFE•SUHE ~ v ID. '•"'•' 1e.,1oi .. ,: .-u1r1to1;j,1;, a,:d 0,J) t"".i I I ,.,, ... ,,,, .. 0.1) , .... (011,; .. , 0.0) ,... IJ·I I ______ ..., ____ ..