Losing Identity

Hi Readers,

India is a home of several languages or I would say the only country which has a total language more than the combined European languages. It's amazing to know the 7th largest country in the world can have people speaking more than 780 languages. It clearly shows how diverse our culture is but there is something which we should worry about and that is losing our languages. According to survey done by Bhasha Research and Publication Centre, we have already lost 250 languages out of 780 over a period of 50 years. The only reason I could figure out for this downfall is children failing to learn their ancestral tongues.

India is known for its IT industry which provides service to its clients situated all over world. Since English is the common language spoken world wide, we tend to lean towards it and forget that we too have our own language. People from all over India come to different places to work and later they make it their home, forgetting their roots and their future generation would never know what their great grand fathers were like.

The whole point what I want to say is that learning new languages is good but we should not forget our own language which is our identity and this is what India is known for. We can take example of countries like China and Germany where they give importance to their language first and then to any of the foreign language and they are doing pretty good globally. When these countries can take steps to keep their languages alive, why can't we?

I believe this can be achieved if we speak our language and pass it on to our future generations. However, it would be difficult to communicate with our local languages everywhere in India but it can be solved if everybody knows Hindi. Though Hindi is our National language, it is not taught everywhere in India and when locals leave their place to work in some other part of country, they are left with no other choice but to speak English. Even locals speak English among themselves even though they know their tongue. It has become a trend to communicate in English as it makes them look educated. But I totally disagree with this theory. I believe we should give importance to our local language and if it's not possible for others to understand then switch to Hindi.

I am not against speaking English but we should know when and where to speak. This is just my view and an attempt to keep our languages alive.

Hope it meant something to you.

Thanks for reading.

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