Sunday, May 14, 2017

Some myths about language

Osmania University celebrates its centenary this year (plus a few other anniversaries!). As part of its celebrations, it has brought out a freely downloadable volume called Insights on Global Challenges and Opportunities for the Century Ahead -- here's the link to the 27-MB PDF.

As the Preface notes, the 400-page volume "contains 81 articles with insights from eminent personalities including Nobel laureates, World Food Prize winners, Padma awardees, Heads of national and international organizations, distinguished scientists, social workers, and spiritual leaders."

Among the several interesting contributions to the volume is "Some myths about language" by Duggirala Vasanta, Aditi Mukherjee, and Dipti Mishra-Sharma (pp. 95-99). Addressing a general audience, they briefly discuss the following 10 myths:

Myth 1: Sanskrit is the ‘mother’ of all Indian languages.

Myth 2: Borrowing from other languages or language-mixing ‘spoils’ the purity of a language.

Myth 3: ‘Dialects’ are inferior to ‘languages’.

Myth 4: ‘Script’ is an essential part of language.

Myth 5: Exposing preschool children to multiple languages / scripts will hinder their cognitive growth.

Myth 6: The alphabetic writing system of English is inherently superior compared to Indian scripts.

Myth 7: Sign languages are not real languages / there is just one universal sign language.

Myth 8: Men and women differ in their linguistic / spatial abilities because their brains are wired differently.

Myth 9: Machine Translation (MT) will replace human translators.

Myth 10: Machine Translation output quality is so bad that it is useless.

Do take a look at these useful reminders.