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At a time of globalization, the planet communicates mainly in Mandarin, Spanish and English. However, every human being has a mother tongue, an essential element of identity. A theme honored by the UN on February 21 to "encourage the preservation and defense of all languages spoken by people around the world."
" At home, we spoke pular, outside with friends, I spoke Wolof, and at school we spoke French, " recalls Mbaye Sow, a Senegalese who shares his life between his native country and France. Like him, there are millions who hold a mother tongue (also called a first language) other than the one they use on a daily basis.
" The mother tongue is a primordial identity factor, it is the language of the early childhood and the family, " analyzes the linguist Marina Yaguello. " The mother tongue is, in essence, the first analysis of the world available to the human being, " explains for its part the linguist Louis-Jean Calvet. Indeed, you can spend your professional life speaking French or English for example, but at the same time " see the world through the language we learned first ".
In France, the majority of the population is unilingual, meaning that French is not only their mother tongue but also their language of everyday life, work, and so on. Which is very different in other parts of the world. In French-speaking African countries, French is a second or even a third language. In India, where several hundred mother tongues rub shoulders, Hindi and English are the predominantly spoken languages.
However, the majority of bilingual and even trilingual people often think, express feelings, dream, in their mother tongue even if they use it very little. " When I go back to my native village in Senegal," says Mbaye Sow, " I'm laughing at myself because I speak pular with a French accent or broken words in Wolof. But I am extremely attached to my mother tongue and culture, it is she who raised me. "
Because maintaining the mother tongue is a richness, no matter what language (there are about 5,000). It is thanks to the mastery of one's first language or mother tongue that basic reading, writing and numeracy skills could be acquired.
Schooling in the mother tongue, an asset or a disadvantage ?
The debate is fueling a number of discussions among linguists: to be educated in one's mother tongue would be to learn better and avoid failures. Many investigations have been conducted on the subject. Louis-Jean Calvet himself did it some twenty years ago, in Mali, in primary schools: some classes started in French, and other experimental classes started only in Bambara, then French was there. introduced little by little. As a result, at the end of the primary cycle, students who had started in Bambara were better in all subjects, including French, than those who had started in French.
What about literary Arabic (or standard Arabic), which is nobody's mother tongue? The native language of a Tunisian is Tunisian, a Syrian Syrian, etc., proof is that a Lebanese does not understand the speech of a Moroccan for example. " This is a real problem of language policy for the Arab countries, for their development, notes Louis-Jean Calvet, because the school is the first factor of development and that we waste a lot of time trying to learn to people a language that they do not speak in the country. "
Marina Yaguello totally rejects the idea that it is better to be educated in one's mother tongue. For her, it is the opposite: it is an advantage because it allows much more plasticity in language learning. " I was born in a family of Russian immigration, so Russian is my mother tongue. But I went to kindergarten in French, and I consider this language as being also my mother tongue ... "
Two mother tongues, a wealth that Maya, age 4, and her brother Sohan, age 7, have, who have French and Hindi as mother tongues. " Since their birth, testifies their mother Fanny Godara, a French woman married to an Indian, I speak to them in French and their father in Hindi. Sohan and Maya, who are fluent in both French and Hindi, have a third language, English, a language learned by listening to their parents in Pondicherry, a town in south-east India where they live. and where we speak Tamil. When their Indian grandparents visit them, Rajasthani (a local variation of Hindi) invites itself into conversations ... " It is an exceptional opening on the world that must be maintained, " says Fanny Godara.
Mother tongues at risk
The date of 21 February was not randomly chosen to become International Mother Language Day: that day in 1952, students were killed by police in Dhaka (today's capital of Bangladesh) while they were demonstrating that their mother tongue, Bengali, would be declared the second national language of Pakistan at the time.
According to the UN, every two weeks a language disappears, carrying with it a whole cultural and intellectual heritage. " These are languages spoken by a very small number of speakers," says Marina Yaguello, " who are politically, ethically, incorporated into larger groups speaking a more widely spoken language and resistance is very difficult. Indeed, a national language will inevitably exert pressure on the languages spoken locally, mother tongues that will therefore be heavily competing. " They do not necessarily disappear, continues the linguist, but can no longer provide all the functions of the language. "
The case of Berber is interesting for more than one reason: it remains more than ever anchored in the countries of the Maghreb, yet Arabized for several centuries (at least 35% of Algerians and more than 50% of Moroccans have Berber language first). To the point that this language has become official in some countries alongside Arabic.
Thus, not only some languages manage to maintain themselves but new ones appear. " From the geopolitical point of view, we can see new states emerging from all over the world; it usually follows the recognition of a language that did not exist , "analyzes Louis-Jean Calvet. This is the case of Serbo-Croat who became Serbian and Croatian, Czechoslovakian became Czech and Slovak, but also of Hindustani became Hindi and Urdu during the creation of Pakistan. A note of optimism therefore, even if the languages that go out are much more numerous than those that are born.