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Parents are language tutors

LANGUAGE SKILL: An average baby has the gift of speech organs, in co-ordination to develop language skill in its early childhood. In its infancy it attempts to sound the words it hears from its parents or other elders. It repeats whatever it hears.

The acquisition of language and speech skills begin in early childhood and evolves progressively. Wise parents sing nursery rhymes, songs, hymns and chant gathas and verses, so that their infants may hear and recite them over and over and develop speech potentiality; besides, infants are fascinated and lured by such melodious singing and chanting.

Parents are good models

Mostly parents and good environment facilitate children to acquire verbal mastery, in a rudimentary method. Educated and cultured parents and elders invariably use pleasing propitious and polite words, phrases and sentences. On hearing them, their children, as a rule mechanically repeat them.

Thus they develop their vocabulary as well as speech skill and basic grammatical rules too. Such children are invariably at an advantage when they enter school life.

Some over enthusiastic parents fuss over their children so much by providing them with too many books, workbooks, picture books and story books. Pre-school children should be in a good pleasant mood to learn speech by themesleves. Some children are born more talkative than others.

Such intelligent children always become renowned speakers later. Samuel Johnson, the lexicographer who complied the first English dictionary and Winston Churchill, Prime Minister of Great Britain, during the Second World War were such outstanding eloquent speakers.

However, some children develop the skill of speech later in life. One classic example is Albert Einstein, the German born US physicist who developed the theory of relativity. As a child he found it extremely difficult to learn to talk. His teachers called him a half-wit and even his parents thought that he was subnormal but later he became the professor of science.

Why do some children stammer?

Some inconsiderate parents or elders use strong arm tactics and silence their children. Such children regard that self expression is forbidden. Psychologically, such negative ideas are gradually imbedded in the subconscious mind of those children.

As a result, they try to speak haltingly with a tendency to repeat fearfully the same sound or syllable. This confusing and halting feature of expression obviously cannot be curbed until the negative and destructive thoughts of fear and shyness are eliminated completely from the subconscious mind.

Parents, the language tutors, obviously have to be patient, tolerant, understanding and good models in dealing with their children, allowing them to talk freely, even noisily, at home.

Their wings of self-expression should never be clipped. Parents should all the time be ready to stimulate, lend a hand and co-operate with their children in the acquisition of language skill and the miraculous gift of speech.

What is the global language: French or English? In the bygone days, the European languages, French, Latin, Spanish, Russian and Italian had the ascendancy over English. Old English appeared to be only a dialect used by common people in their day to day dealings.

The members of the royalty in England used French in conversation and communications; so did the aristocrats and the elite. The church used Latin in religious observances; the same practice was prevailing in Sri Lanka within recent memory.

However, in the sixteenth century, when Queen Elizabeth (1533-1603) came to throne great scholars like Shakespeare, Marloue and Spenser blossomed English literature and brave young men, Drake and Raleigh with scores of young English sailors sailed the sevenseas and set up the British Empire over which the sun never set.

Precisely, every language borrows words but English has been a notorious borrower. After the norman conquest in the eleventh century English borrowed thousands of French words and absorbed and at least seventy five percent of those are still in use with slight modifications.

It is reported that about five thousand new words are being added to the English vocabulary every year, enriching the language. From Sri Lanka too the words bo-tree, perahera, pansala, vesak, dagaba and several other words have been adopted. Besides, the words, some stems or roots are also borrowed and many a part of speech is formed.

The Roman soldiers were given a special cost of living allowance called sal to buy salt.

English borrowed the latin stem sal and formed and compiled saline, salinity, salary, salaried. Today English is being used in more than eight thousand territories in the world.

In 1955, nearly half a century ago the Bandung conference was held. The delegates from 29 Asian and African countries attended. The proceedings were conducted entirely in English, the language all could understand. Converse and write.

Sri Jawaharlal Nehru said, "English is the major window for us to the outside world." Another prominent Indian national leader Sri Rajagopalchari added after gaining independence in the wake of a hard battle, with the British, "English is a gift given to the Indians by the goddess Saraswati, Goddess dedicated to learning.

So, Indians should look after it and take advantage of it. Civilization is making headway in diverse fields, science, technology, commerce, communication, education, diplomacy, computer science and aeronautics and so on. It is evident that English is tremendously developed and appropriate to be the global language so as to meet any state of affairs, in the modern world.

French was the pre-eminent language in Europe in the days gone by. Most of the members of royalties and elite in Europe flocked to Paris the nucleus of European civilization and culture to drink deep at parisian institutions.

After imbuing French language, literature etiquittes, new fashions, preparation of culimary dishes they presumed that they were fully cultivated personalities, so as to wield authority over their people and hope for their respect.

For example, Catherine the Great Empress of Russia (1729 - 1796) absorbed French culture and French thoughts, style of high society and revolutionized Russian society so much, eventually she won the honorific title Great. Being jealous of their beautiful language and glory of their culture, French shilly - shallied to absorb words, under illusion that the pristine glory of their language would blemish and finally fade away.

At a certain stage the French authorities even threatened to penalise those who ventured to absorb words of foreign tongues. Consequently, French lagged behind English in the forward march of human civilization. In case, French had adopted the democratic and liberal language policy of English today, French, an international language could have been the dominating global language, relegating English to the secondary status.

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