What happens when children don't learn their mother tongue

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Shyamla, who was born to a Tamil father and Fijian-Indian mother, was only taught English as a child. Now, she feels like she has been locked out of her culture.

It came as a shock for Ravi Chand when he realised that he could not converse in the language of his grandmother.

Shyamla Eswaran was born in Australia to a Tamil father and Fiji-Indian mother. A professional dancer Shyamla spoke only English while growing up.“My parents say it was because my dad was a Tamil speaker, and my mother is a Hindi speaker, and they did not have a common language. Therefore they just chose to teach us English,” Shyamla explains, adding that the other reason was that her parents thought that would help her fit in more.

"And sometimes that left them a little bit out of the loop from family members who are still living in India.” We are living in a country where before colonisation there were some 250 languages spoken around 800 dialects by the indigenous people. That was actively suppressed by government policies as recently as the 1970s.

“The moment there is a fracture in your cultural connection, it distances you from the people who might be connected to you through blood.” There have been increases in the proportion of the population speaking Hindi from 0.5% to 0.7% and over 160,000 people speak Hindi at home. Ravi and Shyamla both emphasise that their children would be learning the languages. Ravi says his three-year-old son deserves to learn the language of his mother and father.

 

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Blame white people. That usually fixes it

I also picked up on “locked out” I mean she goes to India and everyone expects her to answer in Hindi Don’t think so, didn’t we already figure out how many hundreds of languages are used in India? Don’t they also have English as an official language?

Who cares

Doesn't matter as those idiots that lock them out of the culture are not worth knowing.

Crikey! Born in Oz and speaks english? Unheard of. Except for our Indigenous community we all have some form of overseas family history. Just a matter of talking to parents, reaching out, researching and learning.

'locked out'? How so? By whom? SBSNews

I'd blame the parents.

In short, they're adopted children of the land.

She's an Australian, already speaks English & ought to learn an indigenous language of the land upon which she resides. Learn the way of this land, her home.

I dunno... this report sounds like an oxymoron, nothing is barring her from embracing or acknowledging the other parts of her ancestry.

Nowadays you can easily pick up a travel dictionary or even just Google translate. This will let you learn enough of the language basics to survive wherever you go.

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