“For a Language to Stay Alive, it Should be Used in Cutting Edge Fields" | Linguist Peggy Mohan on Sustaining Regional Languages

Peggy Mohan is a professor of linguistics and the author of several books including 'Wanderers, Kings, Merchants' (2021), which won the Mathrubhumi Book of the Year Award. She’s taught linguistics at Howard University, Washington D.C., Jawaharlal Nehru University, and Ashoka University, and mass communications at Jamia Milia Islamia, New Delhi. She spoke with Outlook's Avantika Mehta about the decline of North Indian regional languages, the importance of acceptance and diplomacy in multi-language polities.

Do you think that North Indian regional languages are on the decline, given that so many of them have their own thriving media industries from movies to music to books?

That's a nice boost but that's not what keeps a language alive.

So what keeps a language alive? Is literature enough, or is it when it's used for instruction?

Compare it to a place like Nepal. Once upon a time in Nepal you'd be likely to get your medical certificate in Nepalese not English. As a result, when you look at the Nepali language I see words that could have existed in Hindi but we don't talk about those kinds of situations in Hindi. For example Shodhpatra is a word unique to Nepal and it means research paper--it's not surprising to find such words in a language like Nepali that is used in everyday life.

I always give my students the metaphor of Mao Zedong lying there looking completely as though he's asleep in Tiananmen Square, but he's not asleep he's dead, he's a body. So that's also the case with literature-- literature is not something that will take the language forward--it's there, it's a body. Nice to have a body because it can give you something to refer to but it's not alive. 

What does it take for a language to be alive?

The answer is two things-- it needs young people to speak it like it's their first language. If a language isn't used as a first language then it will not be passed on. You have to have a sense of renewal. Young people have instincts; they know how to do this. Secondly, the language engages as many avenues of life as possible. Having it in literature is wonderful, it's better than nothing. But the real thing that keeps a language alive is its ability to engage with new concepts, cutting-edge things. In India, we do these things but we do them in English. That's a bad sign for people who could have been, let's say craftsmen, because those who don't know English won't have the language to engage in new technology, medicine etc. 

For example the people from my caste in India work with metals and are craftsman but it wasn't till we migrated to the Caribbean that we started saying things like, we'll study metallurgy, mining engineering etc. In India, we remained labour, but when we got a new language it opened up new avenues for us.

What is the effect then of not using regional and local languages in cutting-edge fields? Does the language speaker's world shrink in a way then? 

When this whole thing doesn't happen in local languages it's as if you've lopped off the branches of a tree. The language is still alive but it's semi-alive; they become isolated from higher education, higher healthcare and so on. They can't do it.

You know how an alphonso mango tree is made? They're all grafted where it starts from local roots but the flowers and fruits are from a completely different species. So you see now that regional languages can be spoken very well to engage with grandparents and all,  or in various functional situations but the minute you have to engage with a larger group, discuss nuanced or new issues, then the flow disappears, the person may be able to communicate but it would not flow, it would be wooden. 

The cutting edge stuff, the work that takes us a little futuristic, is happening but it's not happening in Indian languages. It's not just words, it's also the entirety of the activity of speaking. 

How would we take regional languages forward?

 You have to think of language and life as a bunch of situations. And then when you see many situations not happening in the local language—are not used in those situations--you are beginning to see a language that is stultified. Basically there's an arrow of time with it because you may know it, or think you know it, but your children won't. Because how will you and they engage on all kinds of global and new issues such as internet etc. In a way the lives we live now are not being lived in Indian languages. I think that's a big problem for the languages.

I think I agree that not every single tribal language needs education in its medium because these children actually understand a local regional language. I think some kind of triage has to happen when people can understand the larger language of the area (for example Bengali kids living in Hindi areas speaking Hindi).

The real thing that'll protect a language is that it is futuristic and is doing things that will engage with the future.

Are there any North Indian languages that you see actively being phased out even in the oral system?

Punjabi is a language that is actively being pushed away with many Punjabi-Hindu people who are actively phasing it out and speaking Hindi. It is an Indus-valley language. It's one of those interesting languages where men and women have a very different experience. All the men from that generation are educated in Urdu and are very proud that they don't know Devnagri. But the women can read and write Devnagri. This goes back very far because Punjab region is where migrants came in and then married the local women who had a different speech; so, preserved in women's speech are the patterns of Indian languages that are long dead and that's very interesting.

 Why do you think they're adopting Hindi and phasing out Punjabi?

 Language is not about verbs and nouns it's also about geography, whichever language is in the capital city, for commercial reasons, will always have the advantage. So Hindi will always have the advantage. 

In terms of what is happening now, with the 3-language issue, do you think the Southern resistance makes sense?

I don't feel a problem while I'm here. First of all, the Hindi that they're trying to push is this very Gujarati sounding Hindi but when you walk around [some parts of] the South you can get somewhere with people speaking in Hindi because they don't think it was Hindi; they think it's Dakhini, which is a language that is close to Hindi in that it has Hindi type of words but the grammar is very Telugu and sometimes Kannada. Malayalam for example has a lot of Sanskrit words that you would not even hear in the North. 

For example, in the north you would say 'apne namaz padi?" But in Hyderabad for example it would be "aap namaz pade?" This is a very southern feature. In Dakhini, there's no gender for me and you, there's only gender in he, she and it.

But ‘we’ don't want that kind of language to spread. ‘We’ want a language that northern Brahmins and politicians feel will give them an advantage.

The issue which Stalin has responding to is the political thrust that 'we are going to dictate to you'. But if that were not there those in the south would be happy to speak to you in whatever way they can.

I would like to think we can deal with this in a diplomatic way and not a bureaucratic way because people are willing to get involved with Hindi and mix other languages.

Supposing we did absolutely nothing and just allowed people to pick up the language. I think people would pick up these languages if they have to move. One of the things my students and I want to do in the future is that we are trying to look at all the languages together and see the similarities and talk of a way of managing them all with a certain tolerance for mistakes. How would it work if a Kannada speaker did not have to worry about gender and Malayalam speaker didn't have to worry about certain words. How would we create a translation between the languages in a very easy way for everyday thing. 

Languages themselves don't seem to be the problem; we've made them the problem because languages contain power. I am in Delhi and I want to rule the country so I'll insist on Hindi but it doesn't work. Supposing Hindi was so developed in terms of its work in particle physics or other cutting-edge works that people would want to come to the North and exchange papers and so on in this. But that's not happened.