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By Rajkamal Rao
Go back to Comparing Life US v. India
Indian families resident in the US generally face a dilemma when it comes to English: should attainment of its mastery be at the cost of abandoning the native Indian language?
Children who grow up speaking their parents’ native language are mostly bilingual, sometimes, even multilingual by the time they enter kindergarten. But children also know how to sound American. By elementary school, their accents are no different from that of their American friends who only speak English at home. Gradually, though, these children begin to speak their parents’ language less and less. By the time the child turns 10 years old, he/she speaks only in English and is fully monolingual. For the second and third child in the home, the English-only age is attained even earlier.
In modern India, especially in the major metros, this story is unfortunately being replayed for different reasons. As more Indians reject arranged marriages and get into wedlock through dating, it is common to see them enter into mixed or inter-state marriages. What is the common language for a Bengali boy marrying a Tamil girl? English! Children in such families are raised to speak English only. There is also the sense that English is the language of the future and these families actually encourage their children to speak English at the expense of their native tongue. Sarita Rai, in an excellent piece in the New York Times on June 1, 2012 notes that “in Bangalore and elsewhere in Big City India, factors like great mobility, a demanding school system and mixed marriages are churning up a startling consequence: a generation of urban children is growing up largely monolingual -- speaking, thinking and dreaming only in English.” Rai also laments that this development is despite mounting scientific evidence that being bilingual or multilingual makes a person smarter and could shield against the onset of dementia.
There are three issues here for the returning Indian family. First, if the family was hoping to reintroduce the parents’ native language to children in the hopes of protecting its cultural roots, the family may end up being disappointed. As returning children make new friends with local children, they are soon surprised to learn that English is not only the only language the local kids want to speak but also the only language that they know. In fact, these local kids look up to the returning Indian child as a way to learn better English.
Second, the quality of the language and the vocabulary of the local kids is poor. Even English language textbooks written by Indian authors are fraught with errors including poor construction and grammar. And teachers in school, like other adults having grown up speaking their native tongue and limiting the use of English only when in school or at work, are polyglots, as Sarita Rai says. These adults string sentences in English, but insert words from multiple Indian languages to complete their thought - not necessarily the best model for children to learn English from. Returning Indian children are therefore forced to down-shift their natural English levels as they begin to communicate with people around them. This has the potential of hurting their own English language competence in the long run - especially when compared with the friends they left behind in the US.
Third, modern Indian kids are seen to learn to curse at a very young age. We were amazed to see four year olds using the “S” curse word as a common utterance - sometimes more as a conjunction to link words and phrases whenever anything goes wrong. At a tennis class for children under ten, the “F” word was spoken quite often - again more as a curse.
Workarounds exist if returning Indian kids want to continue to engage with American English. They can download audio books and other American language programming (such as podcasts of newscasts from the major US networks) to stay in touch with English as spoken in America. They can continue to use Overdrive technology to download e-books from their US public library. Finally, families could continue to encourage their children to continue speaking with their US friends by phone or Skype. Playing online games - such as Wii or Playstation - remotely is one way to get kids to continue to maintain their US friendships.
Go back to Comparing Life US v. India
Indian families resident in the US generally face a dilemma when it comes to English: should attainment of its mastery be at the cost of abandoning the native Indian language?
Children who grow up speaking their parents’ native language are mostly bilingual, sometimes, even multilingual by the time they enter kindergarten. But children also know how to sound American. By elementary school, their accents are no different from that of their American friends who only speak English at home. Gradually, though, these children begin to speak their parents’ language less and less. By the time the child turns 10 years old, he/she speaks only in English and is fully monolingual. For the second and third child in the home, the English-only age is attained even earlier.
In modern India, especially in the major metros, this story is unfortunately being replayed for different reasons. As more Indians reject arranged marriages and get into wedlock through dating, it is common to see them enter into mixed or inter-state marriages. What is the common language for a Bengali boy marrying a Tamil girl? English! Children in such families are raised to speak English only. There is also the sense that English is the language of the future and these families actually encourage their children to speak English at the expense of their native tongue. Sarita Rai, in an excellent piece in the New York Times on June 1, 2012 notes that “in Bangalore and elsewhere in Big City India, factors like great mobility, a demanding school system and mixed marriages are churning up a startling consequence: a generation of urban children is growing up largely monolingual -- speaking, thinking and dreaming only in English.” Rai also laments that this development is despite mounting scientific evidence that being bilingual or multilingual makes a person smarter and could shield against the onset of dementia.
There are three issues here for the returning Indian family. First, if the family was hoping to reintroduce the parents’ native language to children in the hopes of protecting its cultural roots, the family may end up being disappointed. As returning children make new friends with local children, they are soon surprised to learn that English is not only the only language the local kids want to speak but also the only language that they know. In fact, these local kids look up to the returning Indian child as a way to learn better English.
Second, the quality of the language and the vocabulary of the local kids is poor. Even English language textbooks written by Indian authors are fraught with errors including poor construction and grammar. And teachers in school, like other adults having grown up speaking their native tongue and limiting the use of English only when in school or at work, are polyglots, as Sarita Rai says. These adults string sentences in English, but insert words from multiple Indian languages to complete their thought - not necessarily the best model for children to learn English from. Returning Indian children are therefore forced to down-shift their natural English levels as they begin to communicate with people around them. This has the potential of hurting their own English language competence in the long run - especially when compared with the friends they left behind in the US.
Third, modern Indian kids are seen to learn to curse at a very young age. We were amazed to see four year olds using the “S” curse word as a common utterance - sometimes more as a conjunction to link words and phrases whenever anything goes wrong. At a tennis class for children under ten, the “F” word was spoken quite often - again more as a curse.
Workarounds exist if returning Indian kids want to continue to engage with American English. They can download audio books and other American language programming (such as podcasts of newscasts from the major US networks) to stay in touch with English as spoken in America. They can continue to use Overdrive technology to download e-books from their US public library. Finally, families could continue to encourage their children to continue speaking with their US friends by phone or Skype. Playing online games - such as Wii or Playstation - remotely is one way to get kids to continue to maintain their US friendships.
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