Nepal123.com - 5

As the local levels are responsible for school education upto class 12, their support to provide early education in the mother tongue would greatly help

Nepal, with a population of about 30 million, is a rich mosaic of 123 ethnic groups and 125 languages, which give the country its lingual, ethnic, cultural and religious diversity that has helped maintain Nepal’s integrity and sovereignty for centuries. Sadly, however, quite a few of the country’s languages are on the verge of becoming extinct sooner than later, and with them their culture and traditions. Unless the government is willing to intervene, there are little chances of reviving these languages. One of them is the language spoken by the indigenous Lohorung community in Province 1 in east Nepal. According to Nepal’s census-2011, there are only 3,633 Lohorung speakers in the country, a figure that has not increased and could start falling in the near future. The status of some other languages of the country is even worse. Take the case of the Kusunda language. The 2011 census recorded only 273 Kusunda people – who are former hunter-gatherers of the forests of western and central Nepal – with just 28 who could speak the language. And with the death of some fluent speakers due to old age in recent years, the language has more or less become extinct.

Many of the languages are dying out due to social and economic reasons. When people of these communities marry into other communities, it impacts their mother tongue. And their offspring are less likely to pick up the language. Marriage apart, migration is a big factor for the declining population of certain languages. There is not only migration within the country but also outside for work, with the youth unlikely to return to their community. In a country where the Nepali and English languages have become the standard means of communication between the people, the parents could be the only ones speaking an ethnic language. Their siblings neither speak nor understand the language. So what is the point of being a Kusunda, Lohorung or a member of any other ethnic group if you do not know your language?

Can something be done to preserve our vanishing languages? We could take a cue from Israel, where the Hebrew language, which was limited to being the sacred language of Judaism, has been converted to a spoken and written language, and in 2018 made the sole official language of that country. But this required the intervention of the sta

Read the full story on The Himalayan Times

The post EDITORIAL: Speak your language appeared on Nepal123.com.