Learning in mother tongue facilitates multi-lingual skill: Karnad
GOANEWS DESK, PANAJI | 16 February 2013 09:23 IST
Girish Karnad at 21st All India Konkani Literary Conference
The primary strength of learning in mother tongue is that the child can later learn multiple languages, said Gnyanpeeth award winner litterateur, thinker and actor Girish Karnad.
Speaking after opening the 21st All India Konkani Sahitya Sammelan in Margao yesterday, said preliminary education in mother tongue creates a strong base within a child.
While not denying the importance of learning English as a language, Karnad said it does not mean you try and create a base only in English.
"In fact by learning in English, your child may become a good techocrat, but not a good thinker", opined the famous Kannada writer, who speaks and writes English profoundly.
According to Karnad, no child can develop his or her thinking capacity by learning in another language than mother tonuge. It is not possible, he added.
Being a multi-lingual country, Karnad pointed out that Indians excel in learning more than one languages and use different language for commerce and different for correspondence.
He also felt that knowledge of English language is getting degenerated these days because teachers who learnt bad English teach their students also bad English.
Karnad however strongly felt that child needs to learn more than one languages.
Learning one language alone is an European concept which we are trying to follow by teaching our children only English while giving up our multi-lingual tradition.
This trend has posed a big challenge before all Indian languages including Kannada like Konkani, he observed.
R S Bhaskar, president of the 21st Sammelan, appealed to the Konkani community to adopt open apporach in order to unite the divided Konkani community.
In his presidential address, Bhaskar expressed grief that once united Konkani community today is divided between religions, caste, regions, scripts by creating islands.
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