Individuals and organizations have cautioned over making Nagamese an official language upon conscious and sensible grounds. On the other hand, the fact remains that ‘Nagamese’ is the lingua franca to the wider spectrum of the Naga population. It emerged by natural evolution inside the scientific laboratory of chemistry embroiling Assamese, Bengali, English and Hindi etc. Apparently, with the status of being an automatic natural outgrowth, it is user-friendly, neighbor-friendly and a uniting lingo, spoken from the market-place to the corridors of power.
In academic parlance, ‘A language is a system of conventional vocal signs by means of which human beings communicate’. To quote Lewis Thomas, the biologist and author; “The gift of language is the single human trait that marks us all genetically, setting us apart from the rest of life. Language is, like nest-building or hive-making, the universal and biologically specific activity of human beings. We engage in it communally, compulsively, and automatically. We cannot be human without it; if we were to be separated from it our minds would die, as surely as bees lost from the hive”.
English belongs to the Germanic branch of the Indo-European languages viz., Indo-Iranian, Hellenic, Celtic, Italic, Balto-Slavic and Germanic. Most scholars agree that the original group of people that spoke Proto-Indo-European, the language which would later spilt into a number of branches, including the Germanic branch, lived somewhere between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea some 6000 years ago. This population then expanded/migrated eastward, westward and northward and thereby came to inhabit most of Europe and parts of Western Asia. Assamese, Bengali and Hindi are also bequeathed from these same common origin.
The history of English is a story of cultures in contact during the past 1,500 years. The growth and popularity of English in one aspect is attributed to the fact that the vocabulary of English was borrowed freely from languages across the world. Political, Economic, and Social forces shape the language in every aspect, most obviously in the number and spread of its speakers. Moreover, English, like all other languages, is subject to the scientific principles involved in linguistic evolution, growth and decay that characterizes all forms of life.
The assorted Naga dialect belongs to the Tibeto-Burman language of Sino-Tibetan language family. Tibeto-Burman languages are spoken throughout the highlands of Southeast Asia as well as parts of East Asia and South Asia. Despite the fact that the Naga dialect shares its common origin with the Sino-Tibetan language family, there is a vacuum in its socio-economic-political reality. Using Chinese, Japanese, Tibetan or any other Southeast Asian script to develop Naga script might be possible nevertheless it would be awkward. Coining or inventing Naga script and common language may also be achievable yet it will require centuries for its common usage.
None of the Naga dialects from the 65 - 77 odd tribes or for instance; Ao, Angami, Chokri, Tangkhul or Sumi can be levelheadedly used as a common language to replace ‘Nagamese’. Nearest choice away from Nagamese as an official common language falls to either Hindi or English which are already notified by Government of India as official language. While, languages cannot be forced down one’s throat, the challenge remains whether it will be worthwhile developing an alternative official Naga common language. Apart from the de facto mother tongue - “Nagamese” for many of the contemporaneous Naga generations. The extent and importance of “Nagamese” as a language today make it reasonable to ask whether we can speculate as to the probable position it will occupy in the future, growth in a language is primarily a matter of population of its speakers.
V.T. Chakhesang vt.chakhesang@gmail.com Nagaland, Kohima.
