Where Thiruvalluvar still lives in the tongue

A language does not live in the dictionaries or in grammar books. Languages live when people speak it and make it an outlet of their emotions.

Every one of us loves our mother-tongue. A language is more than syllables and phonetics, its about expressing one’s heart’s stirrings, the constant chatter of thoughts in the head and our reaction to the outside world.

But a Tamilian is a different creature. He wears his love for his mother-tongue on his sleeves.

Sikander Khan, an advertising executive, has a definite view on languages as he reasons, “It is now accepted that English is the universal language at the workplace especially after Bill Gates’ MS application tools and the Internet.

And I hate to see too that Hindi occupies, at times, a rank above one’s mother tongue and displaces it. Our children sing SRK and Salman Khan songs and speak Tamil with a foreign accent.”

What is it in a Tamilian that makes him so protective of the language? They take special efforts to celebrate the language and keep a live connect with the masses.
You will find photo-frames of Thiruvalluvar in city buses with a quote from the Thirukkural, a treatise on morality, values and ethics in chaste poetic verse in the language.

I think it is difficult for a child growing up in Tamilnadu not to have read about Tamil literature, at least one abridged version of some text. Tales of Kannagi who burnt down Madurai seeking justice, is a fable not lost with time; Kamba Ramayana is initiated to the young in schools.

There are television shows and radio talk shows that run quizzes on Thirukkural; in Chennai there is a Thiruvalluvar statue opposite the famed Sanskrit College in Luz, Mylapore.

We carry the love for the language a step further by naming sons and daughters as Tamilselvam or Tamilchelvi and so many variants with the Tamil prefix. On every festival day, major TV channels run debates in chaste Tamil called “pattimandram” and its moderators like Solomon Pappaiah, Dindingul Leoni are household names.

Bollywood is seductive in its appeal and its popularity is widespread. So Hindi gets a good buy-in. But one’s mother tongue need not die away. It is not a bad idea for language enthusiasts and idealists to keep the mother tongue alive and kicking through constant interventions.

So these TV shows, school quizzes, busts of icons in buses and naming neighbourhoods with well known names are all ways to make the language  attractive to posterity.

There is a fine line between parochialism and nationalism. A liberal outlook accommodates all languages. But it would be very sad to see a day when we would struggle speak our own tongue, as not only would we have a lost an intimate connection with our kith and kin, but with ourselves too, in a sense.

Also read:

Chennai suburban line: A moving reflection of the many colours of Tamil Nadu

When Madras became Chennai