BOUQUET OF LANGUAGES
From Sampath’s Desk:
Sanskrit, Tamil, Latin, Armenian, Arabic. Korean, Hebrew, Aramaic, Chinese, Greek, Egyptian, Farsi/Persian, Lithuanian, Icelandic, and Irish Gaelic are considered the most ancient languages of the world. As for India, Sanskrit and Tamil are among them. Even though Sanskrit has now ceased to be a household/spoken language, it continues to stay as a ceremonial language in Hindu religious rites and rituals for God worship and related activities in the form of hymns and mantras. More strikingly, it continues to live through almost all the Indian languages by virtue of its great influence and impact over them.
The Vedic Sanskrit which is said to date as back as 1500-600 BCE
gave rise to the group of Middle Indo-Aryan languages. It now continues as a Hindu liturgical language in India. Although the present written script is in Devanagari, in
the distant past it had Brahmi-based script. There is not a
single Indian language that Sanskrit had not influenced or impacted.
Tamil, by virtue of its long existence, has had a phenomenal transformation. In fact, there is a lot of difference between present-day Tamil and the language that existed centuries back. Even to understand the content of old Tamil literature (especially those belonging to Old Tamil and Middle Tamil eras, and the semantic nuances of the language), one needs guidance. That is why, in Tamil text-books, along with old poems, hymns, etc., brief meanings are indicated for hard words and phrases for a clearer, easier, and better understanding.
A language, beyond being a medium of expression among people, also represents and reflects the culture of those who speak it. Language and culture are like two sides of the same coin called 'civilization'. Again, a language and its vocabulary including proverbs and idioms represented the physio-socio-economic status and conditions, lifestyles, cultural moorings, common beliefs, traditions, shared wisdom, etc. of the homogenous group speaking that language. That is why some words unique to a particular language were verbatim adopted and absorbed in other languages, an example being ‘Tsunami’, a Japanese word meaning ‘high tidal waves.' Other examples are pandal, shamiana, and catamaran borrowed, adapted, and adopted in English from Indian languages. For example, the English word 'catamaran' was derived from the Tamil 'Kattumaram' (கட்டுமரம்) meaning 'logs bound together' to make an improvised boat.
The research study of languages is called 'linguistics' and people who study it are linguists. A linguist is one who undertakes research studies of the entire gamut of the language(s) including vocabulary, grammar, pronunciation, accent, and more specifically how words had evolved over time in that particular language. Being a linguist is not an easy task; you usually have to conduct researches about different specific aspects of a language. There are computational linguists, forensic linguists, comparative linguists, and many other specialties. If you love language(s), you would probably have the scope and opportunity to enjoy an interesting and exciting career in linguistic research studies. The study of literary texts and written records is called philology. A philologist is one who studies and researches literary texts, oral and written records for establishing the authenticity of their origin and evolution route, determination of their meaning and purport, etc. A person who pursues this kind of study is known as a philologist.
Tamil is the mother of Dravidian languages. Scholars categorize the attested history of Tamil into three periods viz. Old Tamil (300 BC-AD 700), Middle Tamil (700-1600) and Modern Tamil (1600-present). The Sangham era was between c. 300 BCE and c. 300 CE (consisting of three time-spans). Although other Dravidian languages were mostly shaped up by Tamil and partly by Sanskrit, Tamil, whose origin was of its own, profusely contributed to the evolution of other Dravidian languages. For example, Malayalam is a unique and perfect blend of Tamil and Sanskrit with speaking and writing styles mostly resembling Tamil.
To dwell further on the origin of Tamil, it descended from
Proto-Dravidian group. Linguistic reconstruction suggests that Proto-Dravidian
was spoken around the third millennium BC possibly in the regions around the lower
Godavari river basin in peninsular India. The material evidence points to the
culture of speakers of Proto-Dravidian as being associated with the Neolithic
complexes of South India.
For long, the poetic form of Tamil remained a hard nut to crack. It remained so for centuries until Mahakavi Subramania Bharathi started writing poems with an easy understanding of their content by the common people and in the process stirred their conscience against the British who ruled India making Tamil Nadu become one of the key Indian states to be in the forefront and vanguard of our freedom movement. His works couched in a simple yet soul-stirring language well reached the common people and kindled their patriotic passion and fervour against the alien rule.
Absorbing and assimilating words from other languages - a fait accompli - is the trend in today's multilingual India owing to compelling reasons.
Psychologists, philologists, and educationists the world over opine
that a child is capable of learning at least three languages (including of
course their mother-tongue) simultaneously. None can deny the promising advantages of having primary education of a child in the mother-tongue. But,
children can be encouraged and given the option/choice to learn as many other
languages as possible, of course, without detriment to their academic performance. India being a multilingual country offers a bouquet of additional languages
to choose from and learn. Needless to emphasize, there are obvious cognitive skills to gain by adopting bilingualism or multilingualism.
In the western bloc especially in the European countries, people (children in particular) generally learn at least a couple of additional languages (English is invariably one among them), as knowledge of additional language(s) has inspiring merits and benefits.
Knowledge of one or more languages other than mother-tongue or medium of instruction gets you a much wider world to feel at home. In short, it helps widen one's knowledge horizons, scale further heights in vocabulary, and discover new worlds of acquaintances including their culture, traditions, and lifestyles. Even in the natural course, the influence of one language on another is inexorable. It only presupposes the dependence of one linguistic population on another in a sub-continental nation like India.
It is not the languages that divide people, but only the
vested interests who try to do it.
R.SAMPATH
20/2/2021
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