to get
meaningful education in the schools, as the language created by him
is very close to the variety spoken in the homes of the underogs.
Influenced by the successful experiments of Norway and in fusing
different dialectal features for creating a new National Standard
Language, this writer has made an experiment in standardizing Naga
pidgin which is not only in the right direction, but also given the
proper support would also hope to succeed.
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Methodology
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By
now the need for a standardized Naga pidgin has already been
established. Since it is not possible to wait till the Naga pidgin
gets a standard form through the historical processes, the language
planner has to intervene. The option ordinarily available to a
language planner in such a situation is to select as the norm the
variety spoken (a) by the largest number of people or (b) in the
administrative headquarters. It was also found that either of these
choices could not be availed of in the case of Naga Pidgin without
violating the sentimental and instrumental goals. It was therefore
found essential to create a neutral variety on the hypothesis that
if a Pidgin is the result of inter-lingual fusion, the standardized
pidgin could be the result of intra-lingual fusion i.e., pidgins
arise in multilingual contact situation where the different
linguistic groups involved have no common language for inter-lingual
communication. A pidgin so developed is not a common denominator of
the languages in contact but a restructuring of the grammar of the
contact languages. On the same lines, but by a conscious effort, one
could create a new neutral variety by selecting, on certain
principles, features from the different varieties which then
function as the superposed standard variety. In this grammar such an
attempt is made at the level of phonlogy and grammatical categories,
the two areas where the maximum variation is found. All the
varieties show the same set of grammatical classes. A full
justification for choosing one form rather than the other is given
in the Appendix 2 along with each item involved in the
standardization. The paper which set up this hypothesis appears in
appendix 1.
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Conclusion
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Nagaland has a population of
773.281 (1981 census) with 23 indigenous languages and about ten
recent immigrant linguistic groups. The State Government has
recognized 13 languages for being used as media of instruction at
the primary level. Not all the recognized linguistic groups,
however, get the benefit of this policy decision owing to the
non-availability of textbooks in many of the recognized languages.
The children of such recognized linguistic groups, as well as the
children of the minority linguistic groups are therefore forced
to learn through the medium of the neighboring language, if
textbooks are available in that language, otherwise through the medium
of English, a foreign language, right from class 1 onwards. In other
words, a child is forced to learn through the medium of a foreign
language even before it learns to read and write its own mother
tongue. Still worse is that this foreign language is used as the
medium of instruction at the age of 5+ even before the children have
full control of the spoken form of their respective mother tongues.
Such a wrong language education policy is causing incalculable
damage to the cognitive abilities of the Naga children, leading to a
high rate of failure at the public examination in subjects like
Mathematics, Science, etc. And the Naga children are condemned as
unintelligent ones for learning subjects like mathematics, science,
etc. whereas the real culprit is the total lack of meaningful
communication between the teacher and the taught owing to the use of
an alien language as the medium of instruction in which
neither the students nor the teachers have any fluency.
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It was in this context that the role of Naga pidgin, an alternate
mother tongue for most of the Naga children, in education is
considered. It was stated that, in addition to getting the benefit
of learning through the mother tongue, the use of Naga pidgin would
also enable the preparation of high quality textbooks and also a
drastic reeducation in the input of both finance and human resources
but at the same time having a more effective and efficient system is
a neutral medium of communication, its use would not be advantageous
or disadvantageous to any ethnic/linguistic group, rather its use
would ward off inter-ethnic linguistic revelries. The Education
Commission (1966) and the various other committees that went into
the question of teaching English as a second language at the schools
had specially recommended that English should not be taught in the
schools earlier than class V. The assumption behind such a
recommendation is that the learning of English as a second language
or for that matter any other language would achieve its objective
only if the child has perfect mastery over its first language and is
able to express freely its limited experiences in its mother tongue.
Despite such a scientifically and academically sound recommendation
made for the whole of India, in Nagaland English as a second
language is introduced at class I itself at the age of 5+ and in
many instances, English is used as the medium of instruction from
class I onwards. Therefore, it is in the interest of Naga children
and the vital interest of the Nagas as a whole that a reappraisal of
the role of English in education in Nagaland is made.
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