Mother tongue – You are in a new city or a town, it is obvious that you will find a vast change in your lifestyle, it may be your home, place of work and the main problem arises is the lack of proper communication the most important thing is language.
We find it a blessing in disguise somehow when a person can understand your words or has the same mother tongue its wonderful if the person communicates with your mother tongue in a new place where Hindi or English may not work.
But most of the time they better prefer the local language and avoids to speak the mother tongue.
Conversation with the autowala or auto driver
Did this ever happen to you? Travelling in an auto rickshaw in the unknown city having a majority of a particular language and people. While you are very less familiar to the language sometimes just being able to understand the language but unable to speak. Worst is when you need to explain your verdicts.
So the only thing one can do is use a blended language mixture of words without any head or tail of grammar only motive is to make the person understand or explain your mind out.
Sometimes asking the name of the person works out, the surname might be you might know your mother tongue but rarely it works because as it happened to me after the entire conversation in broken sentences just before getting down finally autowala says “Didi abar dekha hobey”! (See you soon!!) And then you feel like you are an idiot and he the super knowledgeable person.
Believe me, it’s a sort of pain in your throat and tongue along with a pressure on your translating skill.
Incidents on Official Visits or Meetings
When two unknown people meet while you have your conversation on even though you share the same mother tongue. Well! What should it be? Maybe its simply showing your courtesy or manners towards each other according to the official atmosphere.
Best part while before leaving and leaving towards the exit door ending the words “saying it was nice meeting you, I’m Abhijit Debnath” “Ami Bengali” ! Erm! Then why was I trying to speak in the local language, work would have been easier if he would have introduced himself earlier.
This is the reason you should always introduce yourself before beginning any conversation though illogical but less hard work sometimes. Pheuuuu!!!! Introducing each other before for the first time is also counted to be a part of manners, while I find this as a clever way to reduce your hard work in language communication.
Employees or Workers
In a recent visit to a small factory in my local area, I saw the workers of different people from different area working together, they work on wages basically. While one of us tried to speak to them they responded in their common or local language though they were from different areas.
The reason may be communication becomes easy and quite effective in the working place.
The funniest part is that few find it a discredit to speak in their language though they belong to the same part or region. This is because they may believe themselves to belong to that particular region due to their birth, it becomes their native place and also owns the language.
After asking about introducing themselves and asking them it was known that few of them can speak my mother tongue but due to the effect of the working atmosphere and staying in that area for a long time it, speaking the local language became their habit.
Delivery man
Knock on the door! Generally, they speak in Hindi or English but suddenly you find them speaking in their local language. Thank God! Their only job is to deliver food and I had only to receive it. Or else maybe I had to stay satisfied with a glass of water for the whole night.
Ends up only into give my food and take your with only verbal expressions, again it would have been complicated and restless if you are in deep hunger and simply again had to work hard in explaining any of the issues to this delivery boy.
Reasons to avoid mother tongue….
Recently I have seen people avoiding to speak in their mother tongue. Perhaps you find people who speak your mother tongue but generally utter the common language. People of Bihar or Jharkhand are found to speak in Bengali in Kolkata while they are so passionate about this place that they introduce themselves as Bengali, though their ancestors are from Bihar or Jharkhand.
While few Bengalis in Assam staying since decades speak Assamese even when two Bengali is in front of each other they speak in Assamese. The reason is a habit of speaking the native language that brings in a discomfort to speak in their mother tongue.
While! Again if you have grown up in a place like Delhi no doubt in spite of being Bengali, they don’t speak Bengali even though they understand, actually, they are don’t have much of fluency in Bengali as much they have in the Hindi language.
Irrespective of any region or part of any state or place, language is a mode of communication between two people. No matter if you are using a blended form of new composed language where only both of you are working hard to understand each other or what is meant to say? Sometimes languages end up to crack laughter such as
“Ami tomake bolta hai” Ki tumi yeh jagah pehchaanta hai” , so even though the auto driver may be bengali working in Bihar, his say will be ” Haan pehchaanta hai”.
It sometimes becomes hard to be calculative and be precise to speak a constructive language is sometimes challenging, harder is to understand unconstructive versions or lines.
Though it becomes difficult it inspires people to explore new places learn new languages. Meet new people communicate with them which is also a sort of excitement for most of the people today.
