Are we replacing English with Urdu as our national language?
http://dawn.com/weekly/mazdak/mazdak.htm
Welcome to Babylon
By Irfan Husain
A DAILY paper of Oct 11 carries a half-page ad issued by the Sindh government’s information department. It has large photographs of General Musharraf and the provincial chief minister, and bears this message, word for word:
‘Let’s Make a Pakistan Great Country and Let’s Build it to Greater.’ And below the photographs appears this sentiment: ‘Congratulation on Great Victory … Sindh Province with you.’
Considering that this ad, costing the exchequer tens of thousands, has been produced by a private company, one would have thought somebody literate would have written the copy. And as it has been released by the provincial information department, one would expect an officer to have glanced at the copy before approving it.
After being blitzed by official ads extolling the stirring contributions of the great and the good for weeks, I am too weary to object to this latest Sindh government effort. But I can and do object to its mangled grammar and syntax.
This is not some pedantic complaint about the state of the Queen’s English in our country. It is more of a whinge about the state of education here. Surely the advertising company concerned hires people with a passing acquaintance with the language they are paid to write copy in. And even in the Sindh government, there must be a few officials capable of stringing together a couple of sentences in accurate (if cloying) English.
I have no problem with the creative use of a foreign language. For instance, the other day I saw a giant billboard in Karachi, wishing Benazir Bhutto a ‘hearteous welcome’ on her return next week. If you can have ‘beauteous’, I see no reason why somebody shouldn’t come up with a splendid word like ‘hearteous’.
Recently, Zahra Chughtai wrote an excellent article in this paper on the assault of English on young minds at the cost of their mother tongue. Her point was that while the teaching of English to children is fine, what is happening today is that kids are being encouraged to communicate exclusively in a foreign language. Increasingly, there is a class of people who regard Urdu as the language one uses to talk to servants in.
Effectively, English has become the language of power in Pakistan. If you want a good job, fluency (if not accuracy) in English is essential. Young graduates may not be able to write grammatically, but if they can manage a nasal twang, they will have placed one foot on the bottom rung of the corporate ladder.
Even to sell products and services, the use of English appears necessary. A jingle on TV currently promoting a cell phone company proves my point: ‘Hamari sub ki voice hai! Yeh hi smart choice hai! Talk-shawk! Talk-Shawk!’
So in a brief, lively jingle, we have four English words. Other ads are similarly replete with foreign words, even if the products are being sold to people who barely speak the language.At the other end of the spectrum, there are kids who have been born and brought up in Pakistan, and who only speak English. They need to use Urdu only when ordering their servants to do something for them. They are taught at school in English; they watch English DVDs; listen to American pop music; and talk to their friends and parents in English. The compulsory Urdu classes at school are never taken seriously, with the teacher often being the least respected member of the faculty.
After high school, they go off to university in the United States where they promptly forget whatever little Urdu they knew. On their return, they either join Daddy’s business, or get a job with a multinational. In both cases, they have minimal contact with local issues and problems, beyond complaining about the power cuts and the dirt.
Even in the middle class, there is a growing awareness of the importance of English as an essential means of social advancement. I have seen mothers with a very poor grasp of English struggling to speak in the language to their children. Parents make sacrifices to send their kids to ‘English-medium’ schools. In reality, most of these institutions do not have teachers trained to teach in any language, but anxious parents settle for them because of their claim to teach in English.
Despite all this striving for fluency, the standards keep falling. I have been involved in dealing directly and indirectly with the products of this hybrid system for 10 years, and can attest to the sharp decline in the teaching of English. I have seen many bright young people struggling to cope in an institution where English is the medium of instruction. And yet, they and their teachers realise that their ability to get jobs depends on their fluency in English.
But what is this linguistic (and cultural) schizophrenia doing to us? For one, it dulls creativity. Few of us think in two languages, so to think in Urdu, and then translate our thoughts into English, is a constant mental strain.
Other countries cope in a multi-lingual environment. In Switzerland, it is normal for children to be perfectly fluent in French and German. And now they also learn English. But they are rooted in their own mother tongue, and proud of it.
In Pakistan, we have lost pride in our language, and this has something to do with the way we view ourselves. Language is a big component of identity, and somehow, somewhere, we seem to have succumbed to confusion about who we are as a people. Perhaps this is a side-effect of trying to re-define ourselves after Partition.
Language is not just about communicating: it imposes a certain way of thinking. In effect, it is hard-wired into our brain and directs the thought process to a large extent. So confusion over language leads to muddled thinking and irrational choices.
This confusion is reflected in the environment we have created, as well as in the dialogue of the deaf that passes for informed public debate and discourse. The word ‘babble’ comes from The Tower of Babel in Babylon which, in ancient times, suffered from a curse that made the words of its citizens meaningless to each other. After all these centuries, we seem to have created a modern Babylon.