I don’t know if you ever noticed it, but whenever we talk or write about “Mother Tongue”, there is really no way of getting around also having to talk about the invisible (or maybe not so invisible) elephant in the room.
For the expression “mother tongue” is an example of one of those rare beasts which contains its own opposite within itself; it’s a kangaroo word.
(Don’t be surprised; we linguists have a name for everything!)
Take the term “mother tongue” and if you remove the initial “m”, nested inside you have “other tongue”, like a joey in its mother-kangaroo’s pouch!
Mother tongue <> Other tongue.
The idea of “Mother Tongue Day” is great, because all of us have one (well, actually, as good friend George van Driem will point out, most of us actually have Father tongues, inherited along with our Y-chromosomes…. but that’s another story!).
But, if, on the other hand, “Mother Tongue Day” is really only celebrated by those of us who speak a non-dominant (and at risk of dying!) language… if “Mother Tongue Day” is actually “Oppressed Second-Class-Citizen Language Day”, well, then that is sad!
And it is in fact just us celebrating the day. (I say “us” and some of you might say “Now wait a minute, Mike; English is your mother tongue!” Okay. I won’t deny that English is my biological mother tongue, but I also have a dozen adopted mother tongues which are not English.)
Those who have English as their “mother tongue” (and in fact only language) in North America, and those who have Hindi as their “mother tongue” (and in fact only language) in that large swathe of territory known as Central North India, they have no reason to ever think about “other tongue”… except as a minor nuisance, like cockroaches crawling around in the hidden corners of the room… and hey, isn’t there a spray for that?
And yet, nobody gets more incensed by the fact that someone isn’t (or can’t) speak “our tongue” as people who are monolingual in a dominant (and domineering), de facto “official/national” language. Which is why we have the “English Only Movement” in North America, and signs in trains saying हिन्दी हमारा भाषा है! “Hindi is our language! in north Bihar … where Maithili in fact is our mother tongue.
Back in the day, it wasअंग्रेजी हटाओ, देश बचाओ ! (Save our country; Throw English Out!), and that was bad enough… But now it is not only English which is at risk of being tossed out, like a baby with the bath water.
But maybe that wouldn’t be the case if everyone – and especially those who are now monolingual dominant-language speakers – had not only a mother tongue, but also an other tongue? And an other tongue which no longer belonged to the “other”… an “other” language which was – and which they considered – fully and equally theirs.
And that is why I say what we need is not so much a “Mother Tongue Day” as an “Other Tongue Day”!
ekushé 