Our Languages

                               Language is a communication system. It is true that we use language to communicate with others. However, language is much more than a communication system. The most recent thinking about the nature of language suggests that language is first and foremost a representational system; a system which provides us with the symbols we need to model for ourselves, to ourselves, inside our heads, the universe around us. This modeling, carried out using the symbols ("words") provided by language, is commonly called "thinking." The communication function of language, which allows us to represent things not only to ourselves but to others as well, is an added benefit.

                            Some languages are "harder" than others. While languages differ from one another in just which parts are simple and which are complex, all languages seem to be about equally complex or difficult to learn in their totality. For example, if we compare English and Russian we find that English nouns are relatively simple, while verbs are rather complex; in Russian, the nouns are hard and verbs are relatively simple.

                            Language is writing. If we ask a naive English speaker how many vowels English has, the answer is usually "five". This is because we tend to interpret any question about language as a question about the writing system. The English alphabet has 5 symbols that are normally used for the representation of vowels. But the English language has between 10 and 12 basic vowel sounds; this is the answer the linguist is interested in. Language is first and foremost oral; speech as a means of communication has been around for perhaps 200,000 years or more, while writing has existed for only about 6,000 as far as we know. Many languages, including many Native American languages as well as most of the creole languages of the Caribbean, exist without a written tradition. This in no way diminishes their language-ness.

                           

India is the home of a very large number of languages. In fact, so many languages and dialects are spoken in India that it is often described as a ‘museum of languages’. The language diversity is by all means baffling. In popular parlance it is often described as ‘linguistic pluralism’. But this may not be a correct description. The prevailing situation in the country is not pluralistic but that of a continuum. One dialect merges into the other almost imperceptibly; one language replaces the other gradually. Moreover, along the line of contact between two languages, there is a zone of transition in which people are bilingual.

                          Thus lan­guages do not exist in water-tight compartments. While linguistic pluralism is a state of mutual existence of several languages in a con­tiguous space, it does not preclude the possibility of inter-connections between one language and the other. In fact, these links have grown over millennia of shared history. While linguistic pluralism continues to be a distinctive feature of the modern Indian state, it will be wrong to assume that there has been no interaction between the different groups.

                         On the contrary, the give-and-take between the languages groups has been very common, often resulting in systematic borrow­ings from one language to the other. The cases of assimilation of one language into the other are also not uncommon. Let us look at the nature of linguistic diversity observed in India today. According to the Linguistic Survey of India conducted by Sir George Abraham Grierson towards the end of the nineteenth century, there were 179 languages and as many as 544 dialects in the country.

However, this number has to be taken with caution. It may even be misleading in the sense that dialects and languages were enumerated separately, although they were taxonomically part of the same lan­guage. Of the 179 languages as many as 116 were speech-forms of the Sino-Tibetan family, spoken by small tribal communities in the re­mote Himalayan and the northeastern parts of the country.

                      Origins of language are shrouded in mystery. However, it is possible to reconstruct the bits of this history. It is generally agreed that in the history of social evolution language must have arisen with the discov­ery of the art of tool-making. Understandably, the early tool-making communities must have depended on cooperation between different members of the group on a highly organized basis.

This would have been possible through the use of a language. Thus evolution of lan­guage must have progressed hand in hand with the evolution of material cultures. As the history of material cultures shows the change in techniques of tool-making was initially slow, but later on it picked up. Language also evolved with the same pace. Expressions became more and more complex with the passage of time. In fact, at every stage of evolution, there was a direct relationship between material culture and the language in use.

Evidently progress in material cul­tures shows that the functions of brain were becoming more and more complex and with these changes language also became complex. The way languages evolved from vocal sounds to words and sentences re­vealed how they became symbolic as humans tended to express abstract rather than concrete ideas.

It is obvious that in the course of evolution many languages were invented independently at different points of time in different regions of the world. They became further ramified as the social space within which inter-communication continued was always limited. As a result, new groups were formed and new speech communities came into being.

The discovery of the script in the history of development of languages must have taken a painstakingly long time during which picture/signs became conventionalized. Our knowledge of the early scripts is still incomplete. For example, the script of the Indus valley (Harappan) civilization continues to pose difficulties. We have not been able to decipher it simply because we are not familiar with the system of language in which communication was conducted by the Harappan people.

Despite the widely perceived linguistic diversity India’s unity as a socio-linguistic area is quite impressive. Several linguists have analyzed the basic elements of India as a socio-linguistic area. Describing lan­guage as an ‘autonomous system’, Lachman M. Khubchandani recognized the major characteristics of the speech forms of modem In­dia. Each region of the country is characterized by the plurality of cultures and languages “with a unique mosaic of verbal experience”. In Khubchandani’s view modem languages of India represent a striking example of the process of diffusion, grammatical as well as phonetic, over many contiguous areas.

However, he considers linguistic plural­ity only as a superficial trait. “Indian masses through sustained interaction and common legacies have developed a common way to interpret, to share experiences, to think.” What has emerged is a kind of organic plurality, although the geographical distribution of speech communities suggests a kind of linguistic heterogeneity.

Some of the basic elements of India’s linguistic unity may be seen in the fuzzy na­ture of language boundaries, fluidity in language identity and complementarity of inter-group and intra-group communication. Khubchandani also emphasized the need of linking languages with the ecology of cultural regions described by him as kshetras.

As a language area India is being put to mutually contradictory linguistic interpreta­tions which confuse the issue. Perhaps a better understanding of the linguistic scene can be developed if the static account of the multiplic­ity of languages is replaced by recognition of the elements of cultural regionalism. Similarly, the issue of linguistic homogeneity which has been argued by several linguists is fraught with complexities. In this context, one can cite the example of the states of the Indian Union carved out on the principle of linguistic homogeneity. The reality is that these states are not necessarily homogeneous in their language composition and cultural attributes.

In an earlier study, Khubchandani examined the evidence on plu­ral languages and plural cultures of India. He dwelt upon the question of language in a plural society. The processes of language modern­ization and language promotion were also analyzed on the basis of a review of the language policies and planning in India. In this work, Khubchandani noted that people in certain regions of India displayed a certain degree of fluidity in their declaration of mother tongue. On this basis, he recognized two zones in which the country could be di­vided: a fluid zone and a stable zone. The fluid zone extended over the north-central region where Hindi, Urdu, Punjabi, Kashmiri and Dogri are spoken.

The stable zone, on the other hand, incorporates western, southern and eastern regions. People in these regions did not reveal any fluidity in their mother tongue declaration. Reference may also be made to the seminal work of Murray B. Emeneau who analyzed the characteristics of India as a language area. Tracing the history of development of the Indo-Aryan and the Dravidian languages he evaluated the shared experiences of the differ­ent speech communities.

Emeneau defined linguistic area as “an area which includes languages belonging to more than one family but shar­ing traits in common which are found not to belong to other members of (at least) one of the families”.