LETTER TO HILATH: Kids and the English Language

Dear friend,

There could be so many unknown and uncontrollable reasons why people are letting their kids speak in English nowadays. Some maybe doing it for just the way you say but there could also be so many other factors on why such changes come in a society.

Kids these days are exposed to such a variety of cartoons, children's' movies, videos and books, of which almost all the appealing ones are mostly in English. Even before kids can walk properly they are introduced to English nursery rhymes that are used to capture their attention in order to facilitate care-giving at home and later even in pre-school.

Their whole living environment has changed drastically compared to 30 or 40 years ago. Looking at the small units each family lives in now, kids grow up secluded from a bigger family environment which makes it almost impossible to look after them every minute while tending to housework or taking a needed rest while one parent would very likely be out at work. Family members or friends hardly pitch in to help to take care of kids nowadays unlike in the olden days. Children seem to need attention all the time and parents can hardly be with them every minute. Kids are happy playing with toys on their own for a while but they get bored soon. All kids aren't into art or reading or writing or interested in household chores. Even if kids have an interest in those things they still need supervision and parents need a lot of their own time to relax too if they want to bring up kids in a tension free environment. Naturally, the most available resource is to let kids watch something they like, which is almost always in the English language.

If we look at a home where extra family members live, there arises so many problems when elder people can't accept the drastically transformed ways of the modern world and try to control and change how kids are brought up. To avoid a bigger conflict in the family, some keep their kids away from elderly people who use a form of language that doesn't really fit today's norms or cannot be understood by the latter generation and in some instances may not even be too appropriate. Here again, an easier option for parents is to keep their kids occupied with a cartoon or any type of media while the parent goes about doing what is needed.

As kids are fast learners when it comes to things they like and unintentionally copy what they hear and see, being exposed to so much media that is in English would naturally have a very strong effect. Moreover, kids often come across books, toys, clothes, children's paraphernalia which are all made to match with their favorite cartoon characters that are always available in an English language medium. Even most of the foods they eat today have a foreign influence on them.

Through various forms children go on learning English and mimicking what they learn in the form of daily conversations. Parents cannot make them talk in Dhivehi every single time when kids prefer and are more familiar with another language. If kids start calling 'mummy' or 'daddy' instead of their native form it isn't deemed so important as something that has to be absolutely changed. The days when parents hit children to make them obey or change or shut them up is gone now. So some people don't make kids grow up in fear of every little thing they want to do, or try to change all their ways. Punishing them just for the sake of making them talk in a certain language does not seem like it is worth so much time and effort. What children love, mostly rules over them.

Conversing in English while kids are young doesn't feel like it is such a big and bad thing until the kid fails in Dhivehi language at school. And the nation's education system seems to be shaped in a way that evokes an aversion in kids to study Dhivehi. One look at the schools' Dhivehi and Islam textbook would make some adults feel that they themselves might need more schooling as the contents of the books are in such complex words and lengthy sentences. These textbooks fall short of piquing up children's' interests and the books don't seem to have improved to be more appealing or more comprehensive to a generation that hates to study Dhivehi.

Sometimes talking to kids in English is easier; a pleasant change that takes away the harshness of the spoken Dhivehi, parents of the 70s or 80s learned in their childhood which contained a lot of unpleasant and scathing words due to broken and unstable family environments. Some Dhivehi sentences don't sound nice as it is reminiscent of traumatizing childhood scoldings that sometimes came from uncultured parents. While growing up it becomes hard to differentiate the unbecoming aspects of faulty parenting or the sometimes uncultured language of parents because, being their offspring it would be hard to see the parents' flaws maybe sometimes due to childish assumptions that parents are perfect and that they know everything. Those who become aware of how much of an unpleasant-Dhivehi speaking habit has been ingrained upon them throughout their lives could refuse to pass it on to their children by not encouraging their kids to speak in Dhivehi or by avoiding to speak in Dhivehi altogether.

However, there also might be those parents who might think speaking in English is a cooler way or puts them above the average people of society. There could also be those who are determined to immigrate to a foreign country where obviously English would become very handy. Kids capable of speaking in English have an advantage in the instance of them going abroad during their childhood. And kids who are more familiar with the English language have an advantage when having to study it as a subject at school by not needing too much extra help in the subject.

Unlike decades ago, children now have parents who can speak and understand English which again makes the language more prevalent. And with the nationwide dominance of an English language medium of learning, media and accompanying conditions, clothes and even food that all promote a foreign language, it is no wonder that children find it easy to slip into an English speaking life and easily relate to such a widely used language. If we cannot combat all of it with better and more quality Dhivehi books, more tantalizing Dhivehi media, or establish a Dhivehi language dominated and native oriented environment for them to spend more time in, children will keep choosing what they like and prefer most. Others might just have to remain helpless and powerless or finally succumb to become more tolerable towards a bilingual generation.

Yours sincerely,

XX