Language and Language Teaching, Issue 2 - Azim Premji Foundation

of Marathi. The remarkable thing was that formany of them, Marathi was not even theirmother tongue! But I could hear expressionssuch as the following quite often when they triedto speak in Hindi:1. ye meraich hai.This mine only is.This is mine only.In Hindi it would be, ‘Ye meraa hii hai’. Theuse of ‘meraich’ shows a Marathi influence.2. kaiko re!Why oh‘Why eh!‘kaiko’ is used in Marathi in informal speech.In writing, I found many ‘errors’ in the use ofmatras (symbols showing vowels and the lengthof time needed for their pronunciation),especially in the use of short and long ‘i’ and‘u’. To correct such errors, a language teachershould first know why these happen. I examinedthe work of many students and discovered thefollowing: They wrote the short sounds with asign of the longer matra and vice versa. I listenedcarefully to the elders as well, and found thatthey also pronounced these sounds in a similarmanner. One should understand that these areall ‘errors’ in the process of learning, and happendue to the language used around them, andchildren do eventually learn to write correctly.Thus, what we treat as mistakes and oftenpunish our children for, are actually expected,and are simply an evidence of what they arelearning from their environment.Then what did I do?I searched for a Marathi-speaking parent anddiscussed the problem with him. He said it wasall due to the use of the wrong wilanti, which inMarathi means maatraa. Therefore, the word‘hindu’, was pronounced hinduu in Hindi, andhiindu in Marathi (the short ‘i’ became longand long ‘uu’ short). The children also wrote itas hiindu when writing in Hindi; after all, inHindi we want them to write as they speak!So I thought it over and came up with a verysimple solution. It may seem silly, but it worked.I asked the students to exchange the matrasthey intended to write, therefore they wrote ‘i’in place of the longer ‘ii’, and the longer ‘ii’whenever they intended to write a small ‘i’.After a bit they caught up with it and came upwith a similar solution for correcting their small‘u’ and long ‘uu’.One important thing to note is, never jokeabout the mother tongue of children, ortease them about it. If you laugh at theirlanguage, they will hate you as well as thesubject you are trying to teach, forever.Aspirated Hindi consonantsNow let us look at a Tamil-speaking child whois in class one. She/he is either new to Hindi, orhas just learnt a few words in it. How would aHindi teacher make her/him say themahaapraan, i.e. aspirated sounds? Aspiratedsounds are produced with an extra puff of air.That is what makes kaanaa, meaning ‘oneeyed’different from khaanaa meaning ‘food’.Tamil does NOT have aspirated sounds. If ateacher understands that what is involved inproducing an aspirated sound is just an extrapuff of air, she would be able to help her studentsa lot. In this case, early intervention also helps,for once the tongue and other relevant parts ofthe mouth become habituated to speaking in acertain manner, it will be very difficult to correctthe pronunciation. Even our brain will refuse toaccommodate the new way of pronunciation.The first two classes of the Primary is the besttime to perform this task.Language and Language Teaching Volume 1 Number 2 July 2012 17