As the technology gap is closing around the world, I am super optimistic that one day, no one would need to learn any other language except one’s native, to become employable or migrate to another state/country. Technology will break the language barrier; in the future, there will be a near-invisible device that will be able to translate spoken and written material in real-time. In the past few months, I have come across various videos on how artificial intelligence has been successful in translating sign language in real-time and, similarly, how the same can be done for other spoken and written foreign languages because it requires similar engineering for both.
I cannot emphasize enough how much I wish for the success of the application of this technology. At the same time, I cannot stop thinking about what my alternate reality would have looked like if such technologies were present and used in daily life when I was growing up. Here is my language journey: my first language is Bhojpuri, while I did my schooling in a Hindi-medium convent. As part of the three languages education system, Sanskrit was the only option available to us then. Post my board exams, I selected the science stream in 10+2 and had to shift to the English medium. There, we had a choice to opt for a Hindi-taught course, but most competitive exams and higher studies were accessible only in English. Therefore, this shift from Hindi-to-English medium was but an essential course of action for many, which I went for as well. This transition period was a difficult time for me. My academic foundation was shaking. While reading, we create images in our minds; it is part of the natural learning process. Once, when we were studying ‘Light,’ one of the physics chapters in school, a different picture registered in my mind than what I had visualized when taught the same material for the first time in Hindi as ‘प्रकाश.’
When in graduation, I majored in statistics and had limited use of English; ‘given… then… else,’ ‘let us suppose’, etc. was all that we needed. There was flexibility enough to allow students to take up subsidiary papers in mixed languages. But, instead of taking the exam for macroeconomics in English, I opted to take the paper in Hindi, which was in my comfort zone. Since microeconomics was pretty much mathematical in nature, I was able to manage it in English.
But the absolute terror presented itself when I joined the MBA program at Hyderabad as a step towards making myself employable. One of the many defeats that I can recall was when my roommate and I decided to come forward to the owner-cum-admin of our private hostel to complain about the hostel’s poor condition. It was a heated discussion, but a word didn’t come out of my mouth. I went completely blank. My roommate felt betrayed. Later, I explained my language deficiency (proficiency) to her. The matter between us was sorted.
I needed to work on my English.
During placement season, I got selected by a US-based corporate giant. I was allowed to give some of the responses in my native language. Since it was my first job interview experience, I did not appreciate how wonderful it was for the organization to respect my language preferences. Today’s interviewing process still gives a lot of weightage to proficient English speakers. Further, as I listened to stories from my peers and juniors about their experiences, I realized that interviewees, during the selection process, are still judged by their mastery of the English language, even though it might not be relevant for the actual work expected of a person in the organization. I guess I had a narrow escape then. However, since the language of operation at an organization is often, English, the struggle continued.
A decade ago, I used to think that the modified education system must have lessened some of the problems for the new generation that we had to face in our time. But lately, I have been observing how the workforce dynamics have changed. There has been a great amount of migration among job seekers. For instance, today, the population in Tier-3 cities is filling up the jobs that earlier the population from Tier-1 used to land. The people from Tier-1 cities are now taking up employment outside India. So, we still have a part of the workforce in similar situations as I was. As I think about the future, the new ‘National Education Policy (NEP) seems to be adding regional languages to our three-language education system as well. The emphasis is on making a student’s first language the medium of study in higher grades because children understand better in their first language. This is where the conflict that I faced earlier, stared at me again. The new generation will have to face the same language transition at an older age when adaptation becomes even more challenging. It was easier to advance from Bhojpuri to Hindi during my formative years than to transition to English as a teenager.
I am not multilingual. I personally find learning new languages more extra-challenging than anything else, but do we really need to be a part of the 1% of the global population, polyglots, for reasons like education, employment, and migration. A person should learn a new language out of love or fondness for the language, and it should be available to them as a choice. It is impossible to enjoy a heart-to-heart conversation with all the language constraints people face today due to polyglotism or even multilingualism. So I am hoping, that if not humans, then machines could take over this issue and create a boundary-less world. I do not have anything against the English language. English and Hindi are both India’s official languages, and I sure do not have anything against regional languages either. I like to be able to connect with people by conversing with them in their local language. Still, my reality is that I had to give up my proficiency in my first language to acquire a second language for education purposes, and then from the second to a third language due to job requirements. These language transitions were a must then, but it didn’t have to be so.
All said and done, I have come a long way now, and would like to share a few tips to improve one’s proficiency in English, which worked for me. First, communication skills are different from language skills. Therefore, even having great command over a language, a person might lack communicative skills. However, a primary language proficiency does help at some level to enhance our communication as well. Here are some of my “beg, borrow and steal” mantras:
- Beg — I begged one of my roommates to listen to me speak in English for 5 minutes every day and give me feedback on it. Later, the collaboration worked, and I offered her reverse services for Hindi. Win-win for both sides.
- Borrow — I borrowed a slim book with a red cover from my brother titled, “Most Common Mistakes in English”. With my half-cooked English language skills, it was more important for me to recognize the blunders I was making than to learn to speak like the natives. Reverse learning was the perfect first step towards making the most of the situations and cooking something instant yet nutritious.
- Steal — Using such expressions or phrases that I read or listened to, so many times in my routine life, that it became my own. Regular trash-out is also essential to get rid of a style that is not suitable within your work area, in your interests, or to your personality. One small request I have of my readers is that one should be very selective about what one is reading or listening to. Our experiences will stand us in good stead in determining what content is appropriate and what isn’t. When we are not ‘masters’, we cannot differentiate between trash and gold.
