From: ssankara@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu (Sornam Sankara)
Subject: Naangaam Tamil
Keywords: Tamil, Science, Education, Language
Organization: The Ohio State University
Date: Wed, 22 Jul 1992 00:41:54 GMT




Contd from the previous posting..
--------------------------------

     (a) Compared to Indian languages Japanese language has more disadvantages
to be used in computers or scientific language.  It has three different types
of alphabets called kathagana, Hirahana and Kanchi.  The scripts of all the
three types are not line-based but curve based.  Kanchi is simply the Chinese
ideograph representation.  Still, they have been using all the three scripts in
science and computers.

     (b) Former Soviet union had many languages and ethinic groups.  There
were approximately 130 languages  and out of them literature came from 78
languages and 56 languages were used in schools and colleges and educational
materials were published in them.  42 languages carried newspapers and research
magazines.  Though Russian language became dominant in due course all the other
languages did not lose their importance or richness.  That was one reason
literacy rate increased from 26.3 % (in 1897) to 56.6 % (in 1926) and 98.5 %
(in 1959).  Dont say that Soviet union is a bad example because of its present
fragmentation because present situation is due to many other problems.

     (c) In the beginning of this century Chinese language did not have well
defined scripts or phonetics. There were about 40000 ideographs used for
writing.  In the period of 1917-1921 a radical reform took place in Chinese
language and even after that there were a lot of new changes took place. Even
languages of Mangolia or Tibet which did not have any scirpt earlier developed
equally by using Chines scripts.  Literacy rate increased from 20 % (in 1949)
to 80 % (1969).

     (d)  When we can waste a lot of money in military misadventures or large
scale corruption or even the high-tech research, there is nothing wrong in
investing money in the development of languages which will bear good fruit in
the long run.

     (e) English should also be taught as a language from the school level.
Not all the edcuted professionals are going to migrate from one state to
another state or country,  may be less than 5 %.  This small percentage can
take special language classes or training depending upon whihc region they want
to relocate.  There should be some language institutes in all districts where
one can take adequate training to live in any part of the country.  Even 3
months training will be sufficient for someone to acquire enough knowledge
about a particular language or culture for survival and then they can pick up
more after going there.

     (f) Interaction between scientists of other languages will not be a
problem when Japanese, German, French or Russian scientists can survive without
learning everything in English.  In fact there will be people who will be
voluntarily learning in both languages and translations can be helped by these
people.  When translaters get good jobs and salaries there will be a crowd for
doing it with enough competence.

     In my next articles, I will go into the details of who should play major
role in scientific langauge developement and also aspects of scientific
language.


S. Sankarapandi

ssankara@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu


======================================================================
References:

M.N.Guboglo (1986) in " Language and education in multilingual settings"
ed. Bernard Spolsky, College Hill Press, San Diego, pp 5-15.

B.I.Gorokoff (1962) "Language developement in the Soviet Union" - A preliminary
Study.

S.B.Alitto (1969) in "Aspects of Chinese education", ed. C.T.Hu, Teachers
College Press, N.Y.
Newsgroups: soc.culture.tamil