The “Ulaga Tamil Chemozhi Manadu” - World Tamil Conference 2010, which was organised with huge pomp and glory at Coimbatore between 23rd and 27th June, drew a huge crowd of Tamil speaking population, from across the globe. Being a native speaker of Tamil, I too was one among the many curious visitors, who wanted to have a feel of the event and therefore went on a post event trip to see the exhibition and displays of this mega event.
The displays in the exhibitions showcased the antiquity of the language and the strength of Tamil literature. There was an impressive display of 40 decorated rathas, titled “Iniyavai Naapathu” which carried a model of a story or theme related to Tamil culture. The exhibition had a number of displays on how the Tamil language has evolved. While there are mixed findings on dating the origin of this language, it is undoubtedly atleast 2000 years old. The olden day script called “Tamil brami” carved on stones, brass strips and palm leaves, and the later evolved “Vatta ezhuthu” which was totally unrecognizable to me, were among the many displays. It was a great experience for me to gain a better insight of my mother tongue and it certainly made me feel proud, to be a native speaker of this ancient language.
A search in wikepedia reveals that Tamil is among the top 20 most popular spoken language in the world. The first 5 being, Mandarin (Chinese), English, Spanish, Hindi and Russian respectively.
One of the greatest challenges of each language is its sustainability. I am happy to find that a lot of appreciatable work is happening in the scope of sustaining Tamil, as a living language of the world. A lot of Tamil literary work has been computerized and is now available as online content. Softwares with Tamil interface are being developed. Tamil stories and poems are created in animated formats and made available on CD for children to learn. Even, the English movies are now voice dubbed in Tamil. Though it looks funny to see the foreign actors, speaking in Tamil, the good part is it becomes understandable and a delightful experience to the common man.
A language will continue to live, as long as it has a written script, which could be documented for the future generations to read and relate to. Languages that have lost their script but still exist as an oral langauge will soon die or perish. A classical example is the Egyptian language, which became extinct because it lost the script.
Similarly, languages that are not adaptable to changes will perish. For example: The invention of computer and internet has brought into use a set of terminologies, which does not find a matching word in another language. In these situations, words need to be created in that language. The entire list of computer terminologies is now available in Tamil, though the day to day usage of the same is minimal.
With the advent of the western culture and more and more number of people speaking in English the usage of the mother tongue has decreased. Our chilldren find it hard to spell words rightly, in Tamil. The SMS and Online Chat culture among college students is about writing Tamil in English. For example, to ask, “Where are you”, they type “enga irukka” using English alphabets. Well, it certainly makes life easy. It certainly sounds more sensible to call coffee as coffee and not to search for the equivalent Tamil word for cofee.
Every language has its own sweetness. For example a poem or song written in Tamil, will have its unique flavour, which the translation of the same, cannot deliver. There is a rich knowledge base found in Tamil literature, right from the age old Thirukural to the inspiring songs of Bharthiyar. Even today there are a many insightful novelists, writers and poets who are making great contributions in Tamil language. So along side getting our children educated learning in English schools, let us encourage our children to also read stories, novel and poetry in Tamil. Let them develop a taste and liking to their mother tongue, by reading what they like to read, and not just the academics.
Remember, there is a close affinity between a language and a culture. If we are interested in preserving our culture we also need to preserve our language.
Happy Reading,
D.Senthil Kannan
Article Dated Sep'10
