I received an article thru email regarding our mother tongue, or more specifically the Tamil language. I am republishing it here with a few ammendments for the sake of conciseness. Please be aware that even though this article speaks about Tamil language, you can still apply the concept to any other language i.e. Malayalam, Telugu, Hindi etc. Here it goes.

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1. How many of you can read, write and speak your mother tongue Tamil ( I would focus only on the language Tamil as Majority of Indians here are ethnic Tamils)?
2. How many of you have enrolled your children in Tamil schools or at least thinking of enrolling your children in Tamil schools?
3. How many of you have donated money to Tamil schools, more than your contributions to Temples and Churches?
4. How many of you buy and read Tamil newspapers?
5. How many of you write the Name Boards of your shop/company ( if you are a business man) in Tamil language along with other languages?

 

I am very sure that a majority of you, I may not be surprised if all of you who are reading this give the answer None, None, None, None and None.

If you ask a Chinese or Malay the above questions, the answers will be definitely a positive answer.

Are you all fighting for the rights of poor Malaysian Indian Tamils through these English e-mails? If so, fist you should fulfill the above requirements. If you can not read, speak and write your own mother tongue, how can you understand the grouses of poor Indians, the majority of these poor Malaysian Indians are Tamil speaking people i.e ethnic Tamils.

All their grouses are published in Tamil News papers which you can not read and understand then how can you understand their feelings.

When I ask my own Malaysian relatives to converse with their children in Tamil they do not even consider and they themselves do not attempt to speak in Tamil. Once, when I asked my relative to enroll their children in Tamil school, they said Tamil school standard is very poor whereas the same relative who studied in a "high standard" national school cannot identify "verbs" in an English poem, yet is pursuing a degree course in English.

There is a lot of disunity existing among Malaysian Indians.

There are few Malaysians of ethnic Chinese origin who are not able to converse in their mother toungue. Whereas some Tamilians, who start following Christianity or Islam, they do not speak in Tamil. They start speaking in English or any other language and they do not identify themselves as Tamils and they only label the Hindus as Tamils. Have they become English after becoming a Christian? This shows a poor level of understanding or no understanding whatsoever religion, culture, race, ethnic group and language.

Language is the only tool to establish a strong bond among communities and so everyone must equip oneself with that tool. Communication through e-mails in English will only satisfy your ego, it won’t serve to address the root of the problem.

First and foremost, every human being should feel proud about their mother tongue and their culture. All of you should stop thinking that Tamil schools are meant for low class people and speaking the Language Tamil is low class and it is a pariah language.

If two Germans meet they speak in German.
If two French meet they speak in French.
If two Japanese meet they speak in Japanese.
If two Chinese meet they speak in Chinese.
If two Malays meet they speak in Malay.

Because they all have the pride about their language.

If two Tamils meet, they speak in English! They cannot / do not speak Tamil and what a shame it is.

Even in TV advertisements, the Chinese and Malay segments spoken by the respective race person in their mother tongue is very clear / fluent /confident ,but, the Tamil segment spoken by the Indian Tamil person is always not clear / fluent / confident like Malay or Chinese.Why? Because, the Tamils do not take pride in their language.

This must change first and that can be done only by every individual’s willingness. If any one of you do not respect and take care of your mother, your neighbour will not respect you. Am I correct? The same goes to the language. If you do not respect and take care of your mother tongue, other race people will not respect you and they will only laugh at you. This has been experienced by my wife who is an English Teacher in a National school and many of her colleague Malay teachers have praised her for sending our children to Tamil schools. So, all of you please think.

You may ask what have I done for the language ?

1. Since I am an expatriate my company pays for my children to study in International schools, I still opted to send my children to Tamil schools because they should become part of the community and they should not get alienated by not able to speak their mother tongue and not able to understand the local culture, after all they are Malaysian citizens.
2. We practice speaking with our children in all three languages. I strictly speak in Tamil, my wife in English and Malay. With the result, all of my three children ,even my 3 year old daughter can speak fluently in all three languages.
3. I spread the message of importance of putting the children in Tamil schools and I have managed to convince a Malaysian Indian Engineering professional to switch over his children from Chinese school to Tamil school.

We should not be fanatic about language, we can learn as many languages as we can, but, without ignoring our mother tongue. Only the mother tongue can unite the people and create a bonding.

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Quite an interesting article. To be frank, I see no negative effects of the argument presented in that article. Like I said, it is not merely applicable to Tamils only, but to our friends who speak all other Indian languages. True, there might be no schools teaching in Malayalam or Telugu, but knowledge can always be passed down from generation to generation. A culture’s laguage is a terrible thing to lose.

Some Tamil schools maybe underprivileged as they have a lack of funds and infrastructure to raise their standard. But there are many other schools who’s standard of education stands way above national schools. For example, the Simpang Lima Tamil school in Taman Sri Andalas, Klang has a soaring rate of high-scorers on each UPSR examination, much higher than my alma-mater, ACS Klang. Nowadays, people are standing in long queues (literally) to register their children in that school.

During my primary school days, my parents stressed the use of English AND Tamil. My mother spoke to me in English and Tamil. My father was from a Tamil school, and to me, he spoke with a mixture of Tamil and English. They didn’t deny me the privilege of learning Tamil. When I was 10, they sent me to my neighbour’s house to learn to read and write in Tamil as they were from India. I learnt all the alphabets and word pronounciation in a year. Until now, I am very proud of my knowledge in Tamil. True, I may speak with a street slang at times, but I still cherish the beautiful Tamil dialogues rendered by the late Sivaji Ganesan and Nagesh in the movie Thiruvilayaadal.

Ours is a beautiful language. We do not need to speak it fluently and grammatically correct, but at least some knowledge and understanding will hold so much pride in our hearts.

I hope our readers can comment on this article.