Final Consequence of Destruction of Language and Script

5. Final Consequence of Destruction of Language and Script
The people are supposed to have died, and the caste is supposed to have been eliminated from the root if language and script are destroyed. For instance, if a person from one caste forgets one’s language and culture and assimilates others’ language and culture, this person has already become of another caste. Furthermore, this person has already adopted the habits, food and clothing of others as well. As such, a person has to follow the language, culture, tradition, and speaking habits of another caste; identity, symbols, signs, and emblems of the previous caste don’t occur in the transformed caste. So religion, language, script, culture, and tradition are the proof of different caste and identity.

So, this is taken as the main reason. Linguists opine that the mother tongue is the main proof of a caste to claim its rights. Once it is lost, the caste and humans also get lost. The history also gets destroyed, and there won’t be any proof of the identity of that person and caste.

Linguists take language as the invaluable arsenal of the history of humans, and the mother tongue is an identity indicator of a caste and pillar of memory. Once the identity indicator of a caste gets destroyed, the end of the people of that community also arrives soon. It is also heard to be saying a person without a mother tongue is like a human without ‘atman’ (the soul). So, Scholars and linguists have great concern about the receding trend of the mother tongue to extinction. Australian author Kabit Malaufan’s view becomes worth mentioning here. He notices that the language he is speaking is slowly going away from the lips and tongue of the local speakers. Pondering on this topic creates great fear in him, says writer Kabid. He has shared his feelings as graver than one’s own death. A person without a mother tongue and culture is like an orphan.

Similarly, another scholar has also shared his feelings regarding the loss of language and culture. To talk about the history of the ‘Khoikhoi’ community of the ‘Menta’ caste of Africa, Hendrikastromen has said that being unable to speak one’s mother tongue creates a feeling of growing up sucking the breast of an unknown woman.

When we talk about the Sherpa community, if language, culture, script and tradition get destroyed, the Sherpa community will also die. There won’t be another worse scenario than this. It would be the worst scenario not only for Sherpa but also for the global community. It is because the culture of Sherpa has benefitted lots of people across the globe.

Further loss of a language and a script hampers the particular caste, state and whole human community equally. The experts’ meeting of the United Nations has further supported this point. In the meeting of the United Nations Language Federation in Canada in 1992, linguists and scholars unanimously concluded that the loss of a mother tongue is an unrecoverable loss to the whole human.

6. In this grave situation, it comes to be our great concern to protect and preserve our culture and language. There are two ways we can do to protect and preserve our language. They are:

a. When to Protect Language?
b. How to protect language?