Most people don’t want to be forgotten in a world that is so prone to forgetting. According to the Language Conservancy, a non-profit in Bloomington, Indiana, we lose approximately nine languages every year globally. When we forget a language, we also forget the stories of the people who speak it. We forget the community’s cultural beliefs, rituals, knowledge systems, and their relationship with the geography of their land, all of which are embedded in that language. Several communities stand at the brink of inexistence in other people’s memories today. Several have already lost their stories. In her essay “In What Language Does the Rain Fall Over Tormented Cities?” Arundhati Roy talks about the role the Varna system has played in the erasure of Kaithi—a script that was mainly used by people belonging to non-Brahmin castes for languages like Awadhi, Maithili, and Bhojpuri. Roy mentions how Sanskrit, a language considered an indispensable tool in studying the country’s history, was never a language of  “the people”. Kaithi is just the tip of the iceberg. Unlike Kaithi, thousands of languages and scripts have probably slipped away without getting an honorary mention in the works of accomplished authors. The aftermath of this loss is concerning. The loss of a language also means the loss of its speakers’ collective memory. Yet, somehow, the idea of losing an alarmingly increasing number of languages globally every year does not generate the amount of anxiety one would assume it would. The invisibility of these endangered languages gives impetus to our apathy. There are several factors at play that make the privileging of certain languages possible. 

 

The statusing of twenty-two languages as scheduled languages in a country with one of the largest linguistic diversities in the world creates inherent hierarchies, hierarchies that affirm the idea that some languages and sociolects are less important—often deemed so not for lacking speakers, but for lacking speakers who have a say in the way things are run. While the caste system in India has impacted the perception of languages like Bhojpuri, it is only a part of the problem. In a discussion about Sindhi literature and language during the Kala Ghoda Arts Festival author, Nandita Bhavnani, spoke about the shame surrounding one’s community and identity that often keeps Hindu Sindhis in India from speaking their language at home. Elaborating on her point further, Bhavnani spoke of the perception of their community as a group of cowardly, money-minded, and quasi-Muslim people and how the same has acted as a chisel to give this shame the shape it holds today. 

 

This session threw light on three very important factors that determine the likelihood of a person embracing their language—their perception of the language, the stereotypes associated with its speakers, and the employment opportunities it brings to its speakers. This realisation made me think of all my Konkani friends who prefer conversing in English with their family instead. Reluctant to jump to conclusions, I spoke to a few older members of this community to get a better understanding of their evolving relationship with their language. Though Konkani is one of the twenty-two scheduled languages of India, speakers of the language fear their numbers in Maharashtra are dwindling today. Statistically, the language is far from being endangered, but the older generation’s anxieties are rooted in the change they see around them. Retired Mumbai-based banker Suvarna Gokarn noted how the way people engage with and use Konkani has changed since her childhood. “The language is not as pure as it was in our childhood. Konkani has now become the second language for most Chitrapur Saraswat people and English has become their first language. Some people from our community live in Mumbai, Chennai, Karnataka, and Delhi but most of them have migrated to New Zealand, America or other European countries. So they have adopted the language of those countries,” she tells me. As the conversation went on, both Suvarna Gokarn and her husband, Suresh Gokarn, speculated the reasons for the same. “When I lived in Talmakiwadi in Tardeo, I used to go to a Marathi medium Protestant School. I read both stories and poems in Marathi. Most people went there as it was not expensive and Marathi was easy to learn. But subsequently, people realised without English, you will not get a job anywhere in this world,” he told me, highlighting the role industrialisation played in pushing people to seek education in English.

 

Globalisation and technology have also made irreversible changes to the way people interact with and use language. In a telephonic conversation, Professor Ganesh N. Devy, who started the Bhasha Research and Publication, highlighted the role artificial intelligence has also played in the erasure of languages by decreasing people’s dependence on natural memory which he called the “creek of construction of language”. When I asked Professor Devy what happens when a language dies, he answered: