Language, Culture & Identity: Preserving Our Heritage in a Changing World | Smt. Sentila T. Yanger

Good morning everyone and respected chair person respected professor umar rani pappu swami deputy director central institute of indian languages ​​mysore mrs doctor havasa l king principal txo college doctor vicham dibbo matarna assistant professor department of linguistics all the language experts get here researchers community representatives participants students ladies and gentlemen it is a great honour and privilege to be here as the chief guest at the inaugural programme of the five day workshop on crafting digital resources for the languages ​​of nagaland which is jointly organised by the centre of north eastern language development central institute of indian languages mysore and the department of linguistics txo college. I extend my warmest greetings to all of you and my sincere appreciation to the organizers for bringing us together for a common cause that is not merely academic and technological but deeply connected to our identity, our heritage and our future. I am not going to be talking about the technical session with you in the next five days but I would like to share and perhaps come to a common ground for all of us gathered here and I am extremely happy to know that there are 12 representatives from the 16 Naga tribes of Nagaland here today and that perhaps may be you could also find some common ground in what I have to share with all of you. Today Tech The Digital Technologies Offer Us Extra Ordinary Possibilities. We can record our oral traditions, create digital dictionaries as it was mentioned by Dr Pappu Swami and Language Archives. And develop files and keyboards digitize manuscripts build language learning resources and make indigenous and minority languages accessible to younger generations and AI artificial intelligence is here to stay and other emerging technologies can further support translation transcription speech recognition and language documentation but technologies alone cannot preserve a language we must understand that a language survives when its community continues to speak it teach it create in it and take pride in it. And Nagaland is blessed with an extraordinary linguistic and cultural diversity. Our languages ​​carry with them the memories of generations. Our fathers, and they preserve our traditional knowledge. Our songs and stories. Our customary laws. Our relationship with nature and the ways in which we communities understand the world today. In Naga society, unfortunately, one observes a visible decline in speaking our mother tongues, particularly in urban spaces. I would like to begin by asking a single but profound question: what happens to a community when it loses its language? At first, it may appear that very little has changed. People continue to live in the same villages, celebrate the same festivals, eat the same food, follow many of the same customs, and remember the same ancestors. But something fundamental begins to change. A language is visible; it is an invisible thread that connects generations, and it carries the memories of our grandparents. Parents to Grandchildren and It Gives Names to the Landscape Explains Relationships Preserves Traditional Knowledge and Expresses This is a way of thinking that may not exist in quite the same form in another language. For example what we know in our mother tongue could not find that exact explanation in English nor in Nagamese nor in Hindi. So when that tradition is broken, the basic code is broken. Communities can gradually lose parts of themselves, and we see across the world. There are many communities that have experienced language loss, in some cases, right from colonial policies. First, assimilation, and you know, like in residential and boarding schools, where children were taught not to speak their mother tongues. I myself grew up in a school like that, where we were literally made not to speak our own language. And so, English was once a part of me, but as you know, you grow older, and you find that, you know, I still stumble in my language because that was not ingrained in me when I was a child. And I find that loss is a very hard-felt loss for me. And so, this kind of, you know, being forced to associate this from your language has been there right from the colonial policies. No End The Boarding School Systems Discouraged and Punished People for Speaking Their Ancestral Languages In Other Cases Migration Urbanization Economic Pressures Dominant Language Education Now We Have Hindi That Has Been You Know Put Across to Our Children Today as the National Language and the Influence of Mass Media Has Cost Younger Generations to Shift Towards More Wildly Spoken Languages ​​Like Nagamese Hindi English And Here in India We Saw the Last Speaker of the Bo Language in the And Islands Who Passed Away Just Recently 15-16 Years Ago in 2010 Can You Imagine The Last Speaker of the Bo Language in the And Islands And So in the Dead of That Person a Whole Cultural System Also Died with That Person with That Individual Here in the North East Closer to Us in Arunachal Pradesh The Koro Language Belonging to the Tibeto Burman Language Family is Also Critically endangered and in UNESCO the benchmark is that when there are less than 10 thousand speakers a language becomes endangered so the Koro language is currently spoken by roughly 800 to 1500 people within the Koro Aka community in the East Kameng district of Arunachal Pradesh imagine just barely 1500 people who are speaking that language it has no written alphabet and very few speakers under the age of 20 consisting of youth and children converse only in Hindi and this population of 1500 less than 1500 people they live in five cluster villages and this is all located in the Ban block of East Kameng district of Arunachal Pradesh and so I am just drawing that comparison to say that kind of a you know situation was the outcome of promoting Hindi in 1962 after the Chinese aggression when China had come right into The periphery of Arunachal Pradesh and so the government policy was to introduce a common language which was Hindi to you know to unite all the Arunachali tribes because they did not have a common language at that moment in time. And so Hindi was the binding factor that brought all of them together and in the case of the ah you know the Koro speakers of the Koro Aka tribe they are just down to 1500 people and the children they all speak in Hindi so unlike us in Nagaland we have Nagamese even though it doesn't have a script it has sort of you know it binds us all the 167 tribes of Nagaland as a common unit followed by English and that has sort of like you know brought us together and this you know Nagameses the strength of Nagameses coming into our homes is particularly visible in urban environments if you go to the towns of Kohima the Mapur Chumukutima you know you will find that in a lot of homes Nagamese and English has permeated into the family system unfortunately we do not see this so much in the districts were the Language is still carrying on but I won't say strongly everywhere through Nagaland our languages ​​are also weakening however the possibility of the same situation like in Arunachal Pradesh is also possible in Nagaland in the future and as I said we see that visible science particularly among the younger generation today and so this is the common ground that I was talking to you about before I started speaking that you know we have all come across this situation in our own environment [sound of clearing throat] and speaking Nagamese and English we are also distancing ourselves away from our mother tongue so I like to just quote in the words of the internationally recognized American linguistic scientist Stephen R. Anderson and I quote the world's linguistic diversity is steadily declining now as local forms of speech increasing Became Moribund Before the Advance of Major Languages ​​of World Civilization When a Language Ceases to Be Learned by Young Children Its Days Are Clearly Numbered and So This Kind of a Result Often Follows a Familiar Pattern and How This Pattern Works Out Is When Grandparents or Grandparents Speak the Language Their Parents Understand But Use It Less Children Understand Only a Few Words and Eventually the Language is No Longer Spoken by the Younger Generation. And this is how language can disappear not necessarily in one big dramatic movement. And a moment but quietly household by household and generation by generation and finally when the speakers disappear the consequences extend beyond language consider our indigenous knowledge contained in a language all our indigenous knowledges are spoken in aao sumi lota takir puchuuri chaksang it is not written in english it is not spoken in english it is not it was never spoken in naangus it was always spoken in our mother tongues and so a community may have highly specific words for different plants medicinal practices soil conditions even our animals seasons the winds rivers and cultivation and these words that are spoken to describe these things are not simply labels they reflect generations of observation and lived experiences by our ancestors. Now consider our oral tradition the transmission by word of mouth and so we Nagas before the written script came in via christianization we had no written language we receive the script only via education because of christianization and today our language are written in this Roman script and so ultimately when the last generation of fluent speakers disappears without passing the language on to an entire cultural world can die with it. This is why initiatives such as the one we are innovating today are so very important in today's world. The digital age gives us powerful opportunities to protect, strengthen, and revitalize our Indigenous languages. But there is also a serious concern before us. Languages ​​cannot survive simply by being documented. It must be spoken. A language may have dictionaries, recordings, books, and digital archives, but if children stop speaking it and families stop transmitting it from one generation to the next, the language gradually becomes silent. And this is why digitizing language must be approached not simply as a technological exercise, but as an act and from the perspective of cultural stewardship, a responsibility that we must take upon ourselves. And finally, I would like to emphasize one important principle: technology must serve the speakers, not replace them. Document Digitize, Teach, But Mostly Speak, Speak the Language, and with these thoughts, I congratulate the organizers, researchers, here present the language experts from the communities, and everyone involved in this meaningful initiative. I wish the workshop every success and hope that today's inauguration marks the beginning of a sustained movement for the preservation, revitalization and flourishing of the languages ​​of Nagaland. Thank you. [Appreciation]