By Muhammad Badar Alam

Speaking the same language is so much an idiomatic nicety to describe similarity of views as it is an indication of how endangered lingual diversity is across the world. "Catastrophic is the word to describe the situation," says Dr Dennis L Malone, an international literacy consultant working with US-based SIL International. "Over the next 100 years, 90 per cent of the languages face extinction. Compared to this, only 10 per cent animal species will no longer be living on the earth in 2100 if nothing is done about them," he tells TNS in an interview.

An Ethnologue compiled and updated by SIL International, originally Summer Institute of Linguistics, lists in its 2000 edition over 6,800 languages spoken globally. "Only 600-700 of them will remain by the end of this century," warns Dennis. His wife, Dr Susan E Malone, working with SIL in the same capacity as her husband, can give at least one reason for this grimness on the international linguistic scene. "It's rooted in people. If a community is not interested in passing its language to the next generation, no public policy or government support can guarantee that their language will live," she says.

The couple -- based in Bangkok and visiting Lahore after attending Punjab Lok Boli Mela organised by Punjab Lok Sujag in the last week of January 2005 in a small town southeast of the city -- have interesting stories to tell about people and their languages. "In Papua New Guinea, one generation in a minority community almost completely missed out as far as knowing the mother tongue was concerned. Then the grandparents thought they should transfer their knowledge of the language, if not to their children, then to their grandchildren. An amazing thing happened when grandfathers and grandmothers took to teaching the language to their grandsons and granddaughters. The generation falling between them became hugely interested in the process as well. "A language on the verge of dying suddenly started showing signs of vitality only because people were interested," Susan recounts. "Indigenous Maori people in New Zealand have created 'language nests' to keep their language intact. Functioning at pre-school level, these nests use only one language -- the Maori."

From their long experience of working in Asia, Malones can verify that the Maori experiment is worth its while. "Children initially trained in their mother tongue have all it takes to do well at school. They understand what they read and feel at home while in classroom," Dennis says. Nothing wrong with the theory, except for the fact that many children are not fortunate enough to have basic schooling in their mother tongue. According to a brochure published by Washington-based Centre for Applied Linguistics, "approximately 1.38 billion people speak languages that are not used for formal education. Children from minority language communities often attend classes taught in a national or regional language that they don't understand". Dennis says the children's inability to understand what they are taught explains why school dropout ratios are so high for minority children. He cites a Chinese instance. "A teacher at a school in China used to complain that her pupils were dumbheads, showing no interest in their studies. The reason was simple: The kids were not being trained in their own language."

For him, the phenomenon creates two responses. "Firstly, children are unable to identify with the classroom which to them remains an alien place having nothing to do with the reality of their lives. Secondly, a schooling in an official language, if finally it goes through, creates dissatisfaction among its recipients from their immediate surroundings. After passing out from official language schools, they are hardly able to live and work in harmony with their natural habitat. They lose respect for their elders and believe that by dint of their education they should no longer be doing the things their parents have been."

The way out of this situation is a multi-staged programme that the couple has been pursuing like many other SIL experts in various parts of the world.. "At the first stage, children use their mother tongue to learn reading and writing; at the second stage, they become fluent readers and writers in their mother tongue and are exposed to the national/regional/official language in oral form; stage three provides a bridge between fluently reading and writing the two languages and the fourth stage represents a time when the learners are able to pursue their studies in both the languages," explains Susan "The idea is to integrate minority children in the mainstream without them having to sacrifice their heritage."

For Dennis, the benefits of the approach are too obvious to ignore. "The docile students at the Chinese school (mentioned above) immediately became very active while learning as soon as they started receiving education in their mother tongue. Now their teacher complains they are rather noisy."

And he has more than this lone Chinese instance to back his contention. "Many research studies have shown that the minority language students who received the most mother tongue instruction in elementary school performed best at high schools imparting education in national languages."

Is the process of a child's learning many languages as a result of this programme cumbersome? Dennis believes not the least bit. "Once children learn to read and write in one language, they can easily transfer these skills to learn any other languages. This is as true for languages completely different from each other like in terms of alphabet and script -- as Chinese and English -- as it is for closely linked languages like Urdu and Punjabi."

But Susan strongly warns against banking entirely upon this mother tongue schooling programme to revive a language. "Don't depend upon a school to revive a language. It can be very important in teaching a language but it cannot keep the language alive by itself." This is what happened in the Republic of Ireland at the time of independence in 1920s. "They adopted Irish as their national language. But no one spoke it outside the classroom. All cultural socialisation was still taking place in English, as in the past; the radio was broadcasting in English and the newspapers were having English editions alone. So they had to abandon Irish and revert to English in order to keep the country up and running," observes Dennis.

Susan believes the process of reviving a language has to start at home. Showing a table what the Malones call 'the process of language shift', she elaborates that "the death of a language will still be a couple of stages away, if it is used in cultural socialisation at home and among the community". The 'language shift' consists of eight phases, each of which shows the level of language's usage and the state of its health at that level. According to this configuration, a language will be at its healthiest when it is used at the upper government level and its weakest when few of its fluent speakers are left.

Where does Punjabi stand on this scale, particularly in Pakistani Punjab? Malones believe if Punjabi parents in Pakistan keep talking with their children in their mother tongue, then the language can creep back to the level where its speakers can achieve a stable bilingualism (with Urdu or English as the second languages). "It has the potential to be used in formal education along with the national language. It may even go a stage higher and used in workplaces of larger society, maybe through mass media (as it has already shown in Indian Punjab)," says Dennis.

But what if the parents don't feel compelled to transfer their knowledge of Punjabi to their children, as is usually happening in most middle and upper class Punjabi households? Who knows what will happen then? Malones have no clear idea, apparently because they don't know the extent to which the transfer of language, or the lack of it, has been taking place in Punjab.

They are, however, sure on at least one count. "Whereas Punjabi has a lot of literature, it needs to have a lot of literacy to remain a vibrant language," observes Susan. "For this literacy to take place, it is essential that curriculum for its education is developed which is in harmony with its culture. Simply translating existing curriculum in the national language to Punjabi will not achieve the desired results," adds Dennis.

If they are right, then maybe it's already time for the Punjabis of this part of the world to go back to the basics. Rather than endlessly harping upon what is the highest manifestation of their linguistic creativity -- classical sufi poetry -- they'd be linguistically much better off by focussing on preparing some good Punjabi primers.