Is speaking in Mother tongue a shame?

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I have always wondered how sweet our mother tongue is. At all times, I enjoy speaking in mine’s where I can express my feelings very clearly and lively. Mother tongue varies from person to person. But, each and everyone’s are precious for them as everyone’s mother. Expressing our thoughts, sharing our ideas, conveying our views can be done with easiness than in any other language.

Nelson Mandela said, “If you talk to someone in a language which he or she understands, it goes to his or her head. If you talk to somebody in his or her language, it goes to their heart” Our mother tongue is close to our heart. Our mother is special for us though there are many mothers around; our language is special for us though we have many languages to speak.

As the evolution of IT industry, we could find English as a predominant language in many cities. Mainly in a metropolitan city like Chennai, English is a major one. I accept we need English for our client interaction, communication with foreigners and studies. But, the situation is mostly changing today. Started as a language for communication, English is occupying the chief part. It is considered as the person speaking in English is well intellectual, brainy and highly cultured whereas the others who is not that much fluent in English language is marked as dull.

We are failing to admit the fact that English is also a language like others and not a knowledge which needs to be acquired or a measurement of our status. This also gave a growth to a serious status issue. In my neighbourhood and relations, I could see this happening daily. All the kids of them are trained to speak and respond in English than to the language Tamil which is their mother tongue. They are feeling ashamed to speak in Tamil before all.  

Some years ago, I got a chance to work in Hyderabad Hi-tech city. There I got diverse of experience. One such from which I moved through was their dedication towards their language. . Almost 98% of people know only Telugu (their mother tongue) and Hindi (National language). I could not find any other language much prevalent in the country as we see in Tamil Nadu. No one is ready to learn other languages or accept it. Being in Software Company too, I could hear only Telugu or Hindi there instead of English. They will use English only to make understand of their thoughts with others who could not understand Telugu or communicated with their onsite folks. They will be very much careful in protecting their language. They are loyal towards their language.

Why are we missing this here? Many times, I have thought this. A Telugu person will speak in Telugu if they meet. Kerala people start speaking in Malayalam, Karnataka people in Kannada, North Indians in Hindi. Whereas, 2 tamilians meets, they will start their conversation in English. !!

Nowadays, kids know the name of many things only in English rather than in Tamil. One of the ancient languages is now becoming a shameful language to practise. Is it a good sign in this city? We cannot leave all other languages being in a country like India where diverse languages exists. Also, I am not speaking about making politics based on the language as it was done before. In this modern world and diverse India, we need to be ready to learn many languages. But the chief should be our mother tongue so that it can prevail yet. We need to give importance to our dialect as our mother and safe guard it.