What is Happening to Minority Languages?: 2
April 1, 2009 by Riya Agnihotri
Filed under Bilingual Development
Our identities are comprised of many facets; and for ethnic minority peoples our identity is closely related to our geographical homeland and ancestry. The history of our nation, our language, religion and rituals have an irreplaceable place in our lives.
As British Asians our lives are inextricably related to various areas that we often give little thought to. We walk a tightrope between two very different cultures managing, with expert ease, different languages and culturally varied situations.
But now things are changing for the children of second generation immigrants. Our first-generation parents had little choice but to bring their children up with a minority language at home. They often enforced stringent rules that rarely relaxed in the face of defiance from their children who were being heavily influenced by Western culture, foods, languages style and address.
This has now manifested in the third-generation children being less proficient in their ‘home’ languages and it is becoming obvious that they know little of their ancestral background.
Some children are lucky enough to have frequent exposure to grandparents who still converse in their native languages with their grandchildren. Thirty years ago this knowledge would have been imparted (albeit unwittingly) by parents.
So why has this happened?
Parents today are busy. Changing gender roles for both the indigenous population and the British Asian community has meant both men and women work outside of the home. As a result children, in the most crucial stages of their lives, are brought up with the majority language that child minders , nurseries and schools use. Unless a specific minority language speaking carer is sought by the parents, the child will grow up with very little exposure to the minority language. This would not have been the situation 30 years ago as mothers were still predominantly spending their lives in the domestic sphere.
Saturday schools in a child’s minority language of choice is not enough to develop adequate linguistic skills in the chosen language.
At the risk of judging parents and perhaps resorting to generalisations, I have found in my research for this book that the majority of parents tend to have negative associations with minority languages. Whether the minority language is Punjabi, Hindi, Gujerati or Urdu. Often they feel that these languages are not held in high regard by the European and western world and therefore parents are reluctant to impart these languages to their children for fear of being ostracised by the host culture.
These ‘community languages’ are hardly thought to have the cultural connotations of French; the sophistication of Italian or the global popularity that Spanish enjoys.
Being bilingual for some British Asians is not something they view with high regard. They have grown up with their minority language and for some that is (unfortunately) viewed as a secondary but a necessary part of their upbringing. Necessary in the sense that they were required, as children, to accumulate knowledge in the language in order to effectively communicate with their parents or the other ‘older’ members in the community. For these people the minority language was and still is, only required to communicate with family and very close familial friends and the elders in the community. It is not something that they view with pleasure.
Now the friendships and ‘work’ networks of British Asians are specifically targeted in the majority language: English. In fact most global business and networking is carried out in English. If one was to look at factual information 80% of all websites are actually in English. Therefore any need to keep up minority languages has been eliminated.
These facts coupled with a negative attitude and connotations, minority languages are losing their foothold amongst the majority of British Asians in the UK.