Hello!
As I come from such a diverse country, it was a rather surprising experience to be introduced to more cultures around the world when I first came to Raha International School but everyone was friendly. I guess we all shared the international mindedness bit. This school truly gave me an international outlook in life and I started learning about new cultures rather than India alone. Now I have friends from Venezuela, USA, England, Ireland, Middle East, Egypt, South Africa, Netherlands, Thailand, Indonesia, South Korea and Australia (George) of course! ;) ... and that basically covers all the continents except for Antarctica, of course. Do people even live there? Leave it in the comments below. Yeah, but it's quite awesome meeting all these people. Ok, I'll stop...... :P
Now coming to my interests, I am very interested in racket sports, although I haven't gotten the opportunity to learn it yet, I still like it! I like helping others, learning Economics and knowing about my culture and other ones as well. Back in India, even though Hockey is our national game, Indians don't quite care about it :P. All they care about though is cricket and sometimes football. Weird? Not quite... because at the time when the British ruled India, cricket became a very popular game and Indians started playing it too. This is also when Indians got insight into the western society and found it pretty amusing. So people started migrating to the west(although the population didn't seem to decrease), and many languages were lost due to that. India is currently becoming extremely 'westernized' and is rapidly modernizing. Due to this, people have started to forget the importance of their 'mother tongues'.
My aim now is to do a Hotel Management degree at Ecole Hotelier du Lausanne in Switzerland and then hopefully get an MBA after some work experience. If I was to be in India my fate might have been different. Back there and in some Indian families across the world like their sons and daughters to be engineers or doctors. No offense but that's kind of what happens right now.... not the case for me as I am pretty lucky that my parents allowed me to go for a career with international relevance, where I can use the international mindedness I learn from RIS. I am grateful to my parents for allowing me to follow my passion.
My language has connections to my Culture, the media and Literature and it has an important role in everyone's daily life. Just like English, we have, in my state the language used in different ways in radio stations, holy books and Malayalam Literature. As I am a person who can speak 2 languages fluently, English and Malayalam(language of Kerala), I have to drastically change how I speak to my elders in both the languages. In Malayalam, "Adheham" is a respectful way to say or "he/she" or "thaangal" to respectfully say "you". In English you just use "you" but take on different tones when you speak. So, as you can see My language and English have nothing in common and I have to transform myself once I get back home to a studious, well-mannered and respectful kid. (I am already one, but you get the point.)
I see culture as a way of life, a lifestyle. It consists of beliefs, laws, traditions and customs. I have realized that culture greatly influences the way we think and act. I identify myself with the South Indian culture as I still hold the beliefs, follow daily practices and adhere to laws and traditions. As my parents have always stressed on the importance of knowing my culture and past, I have grown up learning it and English together and I have no problem to speak in both Malayalam and English and I know how to and when to talk, in both the different cultures across a wide variety of topics.
This is starting to get interesting, right guys?? :/
This best represents me as what you see in the photo is not just a normal goat or deer. It's a Nilgiri Tahr! It's a mountain goat and there are only 1500 of them left in the world, both in the wild and in sanctuary's. I was fortunate enough to get a good photograph of it as it is pretty rare. So what I am trying to say is I am a person that is hard to come across. I am rare, unique and I just wanted to show off my photography skills. :P Nah, I'm just kidding.
More posts coming up on Language and Me! Thank you for reading my blog! Leave your comments as it is always a pleasure to receive feedback from you! :)))))
I'm Rohit Menon and I'm a grade 11 student studying the International Baccalaureate in Abu Dhabi. I am 16 years old and was born on the 1st of September, 1998 in "God's own Country", Kerala. India, well, lets just say that it is a land of diversity. Different people with cultures, religions, castes and ethnicities come together in a lovely place we call 'Bharath Matha', or Mother India in English. There are no words with which I can describe the deep rooted love for my country. From a young age I was always interested in India's achievements as a nation and how the unity has developed through time and communication. If you go back in time, India had a diverse population who spoke about 780 languages! Out of this, about 220 languages have been lost and through time another 200 could vanish because people die and the new generation fail to learn their mother tongues. Sad but true...... :'( :((
As I come from such a diverse country, it was a rather surprising experience to be introduced to more cultures around the world when I first came to Raha International School but everyone was friendly. I guess we all shared the international mindedness bit. This school truly gave me an international outlook in life and I started learning about new cultures rather than India alone. Now I have friends from Venezuela, USA, England, Ireland, Middle East, Egypt, South Africa, Netherlands, Thailand, Indonesia, South Korea and Australia (George) of course! ;) ... and that basically covers all the continents except for Antarctica, of course. Do people even live there? Leave it in the comments below. Yeah, but it's quite awesome meeting all these people. Ok, I'll stop...... :P
Now coming to my interests, I am very interested in racket sports, although I haven't gotten the opportunity to learn it yet, I still like it! I like helping others, learning Economics and knowing about my culture and other ones as well. Back in India, even though Hockey is our national game, Indians don't quite care about it :P. All they care about though is cricket and sometimes football. Weird? Not quite... because at the time when the British ruled India, cricket became a very popular game and Indians started playing it too. This is also when Indians got insight into the western society and found it pretty amusing. So people started migrating to the west(although the population didn't seem to decrease), and many languages were lost due to that. India is currently becoming extremely 'westernized' and is rapidly modernizing. Due to this, people have started to forget the importance of their 'mother tongues'.
My aim now is to do a Hotel Management degree at Ecole Hotelier du Lausanne in Switzerland and then hopefully get an MBA after some work experience. If I was to be in India my fate might have been different. Back there and in some Indian families across the world like their sons and daughters to be engineers or doctors. No offense but that's kind of what happens right now.... not the case for me as I am pretty lucky that my parents allowed me to go for a career with international relevance, where I can use the international mindedness I learn from RIS. I am grateful to my parents for allowing me to follow my passion.
My language has connections to my Culture, the media and Literature and it has an important role in everyone's daily life. Just like English, we have, in my state the language used in different ways in radio stations, holy books and Malayalam Literature. As I am a person who can speak 2 languages fluently, English and Malayalam(language of Kerala), I have to drastically change how I speak to my elders in both the languages. In Malayalam, "Adheham" is a respectful way to say or "he/she" or "thaangal" to respectfully say "you". In English you just use "you" but take on different tones when you speak. So, as you can see My language and English have nothing in common and I have to transform myself once I get back home to a studious, well-mannered and respectful kid. (I am already one, but you get the point.)
I see culture as a way of life, a lifestyle. It consists of beliefs, laws, traditions and customs. I have realized that culture greatly influences the way we think and act. I identify myself with the South Indian culture as I still hold the beliefs, follow daily practices and adhere to laws and traditions. As my parents have always stressed on the importance of knowing my culture and past, I have grown up learning it and English together and I have no problem to speak in both Malayalam and English and I know how to and when to talk, in both the different cultures across a wide variety of topics.
This is starting to get interesting, right guys?? :/
This best represents me as what you see in the photo is not just a normal goat or deer. It's a Nilgiri Tahr! It's a mountain goat and there are only 1500 of them left in the world, both in the wild and in sanctuary's. I was fortunate enough to get a good photograph of it as it is pretty rare. So what I am trying to say is I am a person that is hard to come across. I am rare, unique and I just wanted to show off my photography skills. :P Nah, I'm just kidding.
More posts coming up on Language and Me! Thank you for reading my blog! Leave your comments as it is always a pleasure to receive feedback from you! :)))))
Why is it more difficult in the indian culture to engage in a conversation with a teacher? I don't want to come off as insensitive, but is there an actual reason to it?
ReplyDeleteHey Sohail!
DeleteThanks for reading my post although it kind of s**ks, but I have completely modified it and I would be grateful if you read that and commented on it.
Now for the answer for your question: There's a saying in our language- "Matha, Pitha, Guru, Devam". Which means in order of importance "Mother, Father, Master(teacher), God". This is why we highly value our masters and teachers and we always try to seek their blessings and therefore is much more difficult to present ourselves before them. There's a lot to say if you want it in detail. If you do, then ask me in class. I would be more than happy to explain!
** Although this might offend some readers please don't be offended. I am only talking about my culture and that's it.
Hi Rohit,
ReplyDeleteI like where you said "culture greatly influences the way we think and act". My culture also influences the way I think and live. It perhaps represents my personality that I'm from Thailand. Culture was what we were taught since we were young kid, so I think it true that it greatly influences us.
Ink
I guess the east has a lot of concepts that are common to every culture, right? Anyway thanks Ink, I'll make sure I read yours! :D :))
DeleteEastern parents be like: " Know your past. Determine your future"
*No offence intended
Rohit, I found your blog very interesting and insightful. You put a lot of detail about your country and culture which is very nice. I like how you talked about loss of languages throughout time.
ReplyDeleteThank you Ghadeer! I appreciate it. I'll make sure I read yours :D
DeleteGreat work Rohit ! Interesting to read about your culture in more detail. There are also more than 700 types of Indonesian languages being spoken to this day(declining each year) too but the fluent users are usually older people. What are your thoughts on the world becoming more 'westernised' ?
ReplyDeleteBy westernized I mean trying to emulate the western lifestyle, and therefore forgetting our own culture and language.
DeleteJust for example: Rohit is an Indian who has an American passport. So he is basically American, and he will have to, I would like to use the phrase 'melt in' to the American culture as it is necessary for survival... kind off. So the family of Rohit will gradually or immediately for get their culture and probably their mother tongue. India is just an example. Have you noticed that only people from Asia and Africa and South America move to Europe and North America, mainly UK, USA, Canada in order to get a better standard of living. This is what I mean by the world becoming westernized, its basically a term used for people forgetting their laws and beliefs and starting to blend in to the western way of thinking. That's my view :D
*No offence to anyone of any sort was intended. I you did feel offended though, well... deal with it :P nah I'm kidding, just give me a response at rohit.santhosh.menon@gmail.com or leave it in the comments below!
Uh, i think you misunderstood my question there Rohit. I just wanted to know how you feel about westernization and people not learning their mother tongue. Not the meaning of westernization.
DeleteOh lol. No worries I just think it's kind of sad that languages are disappearing. That's it
DeleteI'm indiannnnnnnnnnn not australiannnnnnn jeezzzzzz
ReplyDeletehahahha!
ReplyDeleteHI ROHIT. First off, I think the fact that a fellow NRI thinks about the slow death of languages in India is relieving! There is so much Indian culture, which is being lost day by day. Lets make the best of efforts to conserve it! Keep up the good work
ReplyDeleteYeah man, its sad that people don't know their mother tongues now..... I agree with us trying to conserve the culture! We can only do this by instilling the culture and language in the next gen from a young age onwards.
DeleteAnyways, thank you for the comment! Will make sure that I read yours
I am not sure I can actually articulate why I enjoyed this blog, but I sure can try. I found the section on the loss of languages to be the most interesting. As someone from i different culture I had never considered losing a language. With this in mind I do have a few questions. What languages are being lost? Why are people neglecting to learn them? We should try to keep as many languages alive as possible, that is not up for dispute. But I really came to the comment section to say I love your blog. Keep it up man
ReplyDeleteThank you Aiden! I enjoyed yours too!
ReplyDeletehttp://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2013/09/05/asia-pacific/social-issues-asia-pacific/over-200-languages-lost-in-rapidly-modernizing-india-study/#.VBBwuZXlocA
Check this link out and you will get the answers to your questions. I just found it and is very interesting. You can also see the extent of the extinction of languages! They term India as "rapidly modernizing" which is very true. But do check out the site if you want more information :D :))