Good morning everyone. I am ______ standing before you to speak on the topic “ Is my mother tongue enough? – yes of course, it would be more than enough only if I wished never to leave my house. But that is something impossible, unimaginable and disagreeable, not only for me, but for every human being, especially those who live in cities. So I honestly admit that my mother tongue is not enough for me. “Language is the means of getting an idea from my brain into yours without surgery”.
Suppose my mother tongue was Hindi and yours Tamil, and if both of us said, “my mother tongue is enough”, Goodness! Think of my result in this competition. If we know only one language, we live only once. But we live a new life for every new language we speak. The more languages we know, the more we are a person I am a student. I am someone who has always loved language. I am fascinated by language in daily life. I spend a great deal of my time thinking about the power of language, –the way it can evoke an emotion, a visual image, a complex idea, or a simple truth.
Language is the tool of my trade. And I use them. all–all the English I grew up with. If language is denied to anyone, the following experiment will show what happens. Frederick II, The Roman Emperor, ordered some orphans to be brought to the palace where they should be observed while being brought up. He arranged every kind of physical care, but banned any kind of verbal or emotional, or physical contact. Thus he tried to find out which language the infants would speak naturally. It was expected that it would be either Hebrew, Greek or Latin.
But it was none of these languages nor was it the language of the children’s parents – the children did not speak any language at all: they died. This unkind experiment and several psychological studies, show that language is not only a product of human life it is the prerequisite of it. Or in other words, human beings require a human relationship to survive. The first language of a child is part of their personal, social and cultural identity But there are also many people who prefer to speak and communicate in their second language rather than their mother tongue.
They feel more comfortable in the second language because their mother tongue might be very limited and does not provide a large number of words or expressions. This shows mother tongue is not enough. Mother tongue will help us breathe! Another language will help us survive! English will help us withstand. Anyway, Kindness is the language which the deaf can hear and the blind can see. So let the number of language you learn be high and the effectiveness of your communication be at its peak, but never forget kindness for words can harm more than physical assault. Jai Hind! Thank you
