Top Tweets for #LanguageCannibalism

The priorities in Odisha are completely misplaced. I’ve clearly told my daughter speak only English in school. Yet every day she struggles to make friends because most children communicate in Hindi. Even in so-called top schools, the problem isn’t always the school curriculum. It’s the parents. Parents speak Odia among themselves, then suddenly switch to Hindi with their children. Teachers do the same. They don’t feel confident speaking English, but they also hesitate to speak Odia because they’ve somehow been taught that Odia is inferior. So what’s left? Hindi picked up from TV, serials and everything around them. And then we wonder why children grow up disconnected from their own language while still not becoming genuinely fluent in English. Parents and schools are jointly creating this mess and it is the child who pays the price.