Mums hold competition to encourage children to speak their mother tongue (From Harrow Times)
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Children receive certificates for participating in ConnectMums contest marking International Mother Language Day
11:30am Thursday 14th March 2013 in News By Jaber Mohamed
The children who participated in the mother tongue competition all received certificates
A group of Indian mums held a competition to encourage their children to speak their mother tongues.
ConnectMums, an organisation for Indian women living in the UK, held the event at the Harrow Arts Centre in Hatch End.
A total of 12 children took part, with each contestant reciting a poem, reading a passage, or singing a song in their parents' native tongue.
All the participants were aged between seven and nine and they spoke languages including Hindi, Tamil and Marathi.
Subha Ganesh, 31, of Lyndhurst Avenue in Pinner, is the founder and director of the group and said a lot of children do not realise how easy a language is to learn when they are young.
She said: “It was really good because a lot of the children were encouraged to speak their own language more often.
“My son told me he never thought it was so easy.”
The children performed in front of a panel of judges who assessed how fluently they spoke and how well they understood what they said.
Joint first prize was awarded to seven-year-old Sarvesh Kausik and eight-year-old Nirmay Jadhav but everyone who took part received a certificate.
A special prize was given to four-year-old Shaunak Gupta because he was the youngest contestant.
Mrs Ganesh added: “It was good for the children to feel appreciated for speaking their mother language and we hope they keep using it.”
The contest was held on on Saturday March 9 to mark International Mother Language Day held on February 21 of every year.
Comments(2)
surfnutt
says...
10:22pm Fri 15 Mar 13
kiku5496 says...
6:37pm Fri 15 Mar 13
Growing up in Colony perhaps made this inevitable. The saving grace was that we were taught to read and write Gujarati for a couple of lessons a week. My first Gujarati teacher resides in Kenton and I have been lucky enough to meet her, memories came flooding back of the sheer enjoyment of learning my mother tongue. My mother had never been to school again under colonial India, so it was ironic that I was learning my mother tongue. My mother who is 86 and lives in Burnt Oak taught herself to read Gujarati about 4 years ago.
The point I wtould like to make is that until we include these mother tongue languages in the mainstream school our children will not be able to put the same value they do to English. Infact not knowing part of themselves I believe makes children underconfident. Oh by the way as children my siblings and I spoke swahili as it was lingua franca of the country and also managed to learnt Hindi from Bollywood Films. We are at risk of loosing a Great Resource amidst our community if our children do not get a chance to learn their mother tongues.
Cllr Krishna James