Letters: Promoting a language

This refers to the article "Sanskrit and the learning curve" (BS Weekend, November 29). By all means, let us have Sanskrit as a language. External languages such as German or French are perhaps popular in the country because much attention has gone into fashioning their lessons in incremental steps and the evaluation of a student is more on rewarding progress than punishing slips. Given our system of language education, a student of Hindi, or for that matter Sanskrit, could score far less where teachers could be putting exactitude over all else - one reason even a Class V student is forced to go for Hindi tuition, inviting an early dread for languages. Like Lego bricks, languages are founded on basic building blocks and refinements inducted in stages and more importantly, the curiosity sustained. We do not send a kid to a coach for handling Lego bricks.

Grammar was the Bible of the English class till the other day and the language continues to be useful and relevant, despite Twitter/SMS lingo making us squirm. But for poetic licence, be it syntax or construed adjectives, poets of yore might not have touched fame. Many of us find it difficult to converse in our own mother tongue, but that does not drive us to penance. As like countering external imports through better quality, content and packaging, indigenous languages too must be backed by a systematic redesign of material and reorientation of teaching. The remedy lies in pragmatic promotion of the language.

R Narayanan Ghaziabad

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