Murdering the Mother Tongue: Time to stop it

I was wondering, how important is it to know your mother tongue? I mean if you are living in a place different from your native place and the language spoken there is not your mother tongue then the difference of knowing another language would be definitely beneficial.

Should people be ashamed about not knowing their mother tongue? I think the society should not tease them but make them aware how important it is to know your mother tongue.

One might argue simply saying that it’s simply a language after all.... Why is it a must to know it, when you are hardly ever interested to use it? If a person is living in another country it is good to know another language, if not one should be ashamed of themselves.

There is a particular class of ‘weird’ people who know the language but pretend to not know it. Who knows why people go through all the trouble to pose.... isn’t that really funny?

Well, at times I used to feel terrible about not knowing or missing the proper ‘Sinhala’ words when having a conversation. For me it was always something to be ashamed of.

We have come across when listening on to many radio and TV station announcers or presenters in the present society mix the language of ‘Sinhala’ and ‘English’ together thinking that it is the latest fashion, and the tragedy is that some listeners carry it forward as a trend.

For an example if we take a country like China they always gives priority for their mother tongue. If I’m not wrong the people who is fluent in the international language is much less comparing to other countries. And they do not feel ashamed about it at all, but they have never been second to any part of the world.

China is one of the mighty and fast growing economical giants in the world and that’s why they have challenged by the year 2020 to be No. one in the ‘Gross Domestic Production’ (GDP). If you visit China, to follow an educational course, the first requirement or one regulation would be at least to get a basic knowledge in their mother tongue. There was no step taken back for their success of not knowing the international language.

Let me make it clearer. My argument is what’s the point of even knowing 10 languages when you are not fluent in your mother tongue? Would we ever feel the comfort of a home sweet home when we stop at some other destination? Youth, it’s time for us to value our language, feel the pulse and beauty of our native language. This does not mean we should not learn other languages but why not first be fluent in our own?