Part-2 The wagging of tongue (The Mother tongue and Father tongue): 336B

 We regrouped after a few days. The first question my friend asked was why the word ‘evolution’ found repeated mention in the imaginative story I had told earlier. Noting the silence of my usually alert inner voice, I prodded it with a “Were you sleeping?’ jibe.  “Now and then, you threw at me numbers with a long tail of cyphers. I did what one does, when confused.”  With this sarcastic comment it turned the table on me, just like that. 

I replied, “Before moving forward, I may use some of the earlier points from the earlier discussion, in support of a context. “The proto form of humans of today started the evolutionary journey about ~ 70 lakh years ago. Then our proximate ancestors appeared on the Earth by about 2 lakh years ago! After about 1lakh years, they learnt to walk on two legs, became mobile and embarked on   a migration spree.

 During this migratory phase, they dabbled in arts on rocks and fabricated rudimentary musical instruments. Then on, a sizeable portion of human existence was spent in developing a unique system - the musical sounds as a form of communication, combining indoor and outdoor versions. Spoken words were still out of their repertoire. This was my reason for repeatedly mentioning the important word evolution. Though the exact year of the first cry is not known, I am going to used it as an anchoring point to start with.” 

I silently spoke to my inner voice, “Did you notice that I have reduced the number of zeros for easy comprehension.  Now, will you listen without confusion?”  Going ultra-silent, it did not respond with either a zero or one! 

Eagerly, my friend raised a hand and asked, “Why and how nature got involved in all these?” 

“Probably, the early humans perceived two other types of sounds, other than the cry of newborns. The less threatening and soothing ones made by the non-jungliwallah animals, and birds.  The thoughtful Nature had included the haunting images of forlorn, expansive landscapes dotted with thick forest and water bodies teeming with ferocious, born free jungliwallahs and fortress sized birds making blood curdling, high pitched squeaks and calls greeted and terrified them in equal measures.  

Sound effect was provided by storms, crashing waves, thunder, tremors and pyrotechnics with lightning forest fire and impacting meteorites. These harsh exposures frightening and threatening their very existence. But this experience was the key that let them into the library of sounds of varying depths and tones to refresh and remember.

Nature always protected and provided a species which was evolving from its lab. By incorporating these elements in the syllabus, the humans were being taught the art of survival.  Driven by anguish and helplessness, the students must have literally grasped the gift and tirelessly worked with it, hoping to make speech.” 

My friend questioned, “Suppose they had unresolved doubts, would they have ended up in the clouds of confusion?”

Though his tone struck a different chord in my ears, ignoring his double entendre I replied, “The teacher was confident that these frightening sounds would eventually become background noise, as centuries roll by. These sights and sounds were used only to reinforce the feeling of fear, fright and wonder which were already imprinted in their genes.” 

Two questions came from my friend. ‘Where from the humans got their genes? What did the ancestors do before they could speak in words?” 

I   retorted, “From the same lab that was trying to teach survival. How to spread and occupy the vast real estate called the Earth?  How to produce roots for multiple languages? Nature had the perfect answer in uninhabitable climate and food scarcity. The tribes were forced to move from place to place and continents to continents, for the sake of survival. In the process new sounds were detected, adapted by the settlers.

The settlers did not sit on their hands till such time primeval sounds could become words.  They took to rockface and cave arts to serve as a medium of expression. The music of sound proliferated with many variations to keep the seeds alive for the latter spoken languages. The first speech like sounds uttered by humans could be as old as the rockface and cave arts.”

In no mood to stop, he asked, “When humans started walking one lakh years ago, why speech did not follow soon after?” 

I exhorted him to imagine like this; “The migration of our hunter-gatherer ancestors was a ploy used by nature. It played an important role to push another step forward in the human evolution - the creation of a “speech” gene. This gene was crucial in the transformation of the elementary ‘click' sounds to the nascent, humanlike speech. 

Why it did not happen soon is known only to Nature. Not in a hurry, it had taken a cautious approach to develop the human vocal box, in stages. It deliberately spent nearly half of their pretty long migratory period to incubate these elements – mouth, pharynx, nasal passages, larynx and the vocal cords. A giant leap occurred when these formless sounds transformed themselves from clicks to words in the form of monosyllables or twin-syllables or as a proto-language. The frequent migratory changes naturally resulted in the birth of more and newer tongues. We will have to follow them step by step, to understand and appreciate.” 

The inner voice a doubt. “What was it called then as Mother tongue or Father tongue or by any other name? Why you call a language a tongue?”

 I just scratched my head and murmured, “Surely those habitats and the languages would have been overrun many times over as like how you overwrite a hard disc. The answer might emerge from the bowels of an archaeological excavation, who knows, when?

For our convenience, let us tag this nameless tongue as “Mother Tongue. For the growing child, it is a limited edition of spoken words! Years rolled by and the growing child left the fold of the mothers to tag along with the male member of the family. While learning survival skills, the children picked up, side by side, the forager's language - “Father Tongue. It is a utility language to stay safe and gather food. What developed as “Mother” and “Father” tongues   in one group of settlers happened in many other different settlers in different environmental zones! For the present, shall we leave it here?

Even for modulating a meaningless sound, the tongue plays a role. It plays a much important role in a developed language. That is why by convention people call it a ‘Tongue’, O.K?”

My friend asked, “Is it not confusing when you mention Mother tongue and Father tongue in the same breath? Is there no distinction between the two?”

“Unless I clear your doubt now, you will hear everything with doubt and confusion. As newborns, the mother and father might have heard the same musical sound. Later when they became parents, they would have played the same music. This father would have gone out with his father and learnt some unique sounds. He then would have educated his son with those unique sounds and so on. The mothers also would have heard all these unique outdoor sounds. In fact, the parents more or less equally contribute to the mother tongue, understood within a group of settlers.”

Not knowing where the concept of Father tongue was hiding, my friend was not ready to accept my compounded and confusing explanation.

His confusion forced me to explain clearly what became a mother tongue or Father tongue. “Foetuses / Babies and mothers keep communication with each other via feelings Newborns are exposed to their mother’s tongue, the language they hear from the cradle. They grow up making growls, squeals and vowel-like sounds, mastering phonetics, and to attain a level of competency. This exercise, eventually becomes the speech, in their mother tongue.

When the child accompanies the hunter-gatherer father and gets exposed to ‘attacker-attacked’ or ‘hunter-prey ‘sounds from the group of hunters.  Genetic mark-up variation might have triggered the child to become proficient in the hunter’s language of sounds. Due to migration, the father might have brought a different mother tongue and if the child manages to master it, then the father’s mother tongue becomes the child’s father tongue.”

As soon as I finished, I sensed a dramatic change in the room. From the facial expressions, I understood that my friend has landed himself on those places where the humans learned to walk. He might be reliving the haunting images of forlorn, expansive landscape, thick forest and water bodies, ferocious animals and fortress sized birds making blood curdling, high pitched squeaks and calls that greeted and terrified. 

My friend, in an accusatory tone said, “Since barely there is any distinction between the two, you could have stopped after mentioning that the parents more or less equally contributed to the mother tongue! And it would have been nice.” 

I liked this criticism which also brought a worry - will he be back for the next session?

I did not want him to sit on the tip of an iceberg to know about Father tongue. Confident of gathering sufficient points, I asked, “Want to know about Further tongue?”

He must have immediately sensed my intention to spin some passable story and said, “Why not? Let us see tomorrow.”

“Don’t ask me whether I am sure about the first humanoids being a man and a woman.   That being the case, how there could be a mother tongue and father tongue in existence for them to speak?  Clearing these doubts may not produce certainty.  It produces an appearance of certainty. Would you like me to continue?” 

The words doubt and clarity might have scared him from having further doubts. He meekly nodded in agreement. 

"Father tongue" refers to the language or dialect passed down or spoken specifically by one's father. This term is used to differentiate it from the "Mother tongue". The concept is applicable to families where parents from different linguistic backgrounds share each of their native language with the children. 

Anthropolinguists introduced the "father tongue hypothesis" quoting many historical migrations, when the immigrant men introduced the vocabulary of a new language. The local women shaped it with grammatical structures. Maybe, you can call it a migrant’s language! 

Besides the education in the vernacular or dialect as a child we naturally grow up speaking, the "Father tongue” informally describes the second language learned through reading and instruction.  There is one thing you have appreciate about the language. It is always eager to mix up with other languages, seeking company and probably to perpetuate itself in an evolving form. 

My friend asked, “Can you clarify with examples?” 

A kid speaks a third language, if parents speak different Mother tongues and also speak that third language. The second important factor might be the influence of a sibling in school or Smartphone and Television on the kid to speak a third language a smart language, there is a variant to this Smart tongue, which helps the toddlers and children to pick up multiple languages, including or excluding Mother & Father tongues. The malady is that Smart tongues might suffer from being relegated to spoken only category. 

The language learning skill of a child gets interesting hereafter wards. This bi or tri-lingualism, lays the foundation to handle many other languages. With eyes on higher studies, learning a foreign language becomes easier. Professionals, working in foreign countries, learn tongue twisting and vocal cord stretching languages for easier acceptance.  Few excel in this endeavour, with tongue and vocal cords intact, and while a majority is content to pass by without hurting the language sentiments of the natives. 

“The Kichidi tongue” used by professionals to discuss technical matters, mixing native tongue, education tongue and local tongue. A cauldron of Mother tongue, Father tongue, Latin, Greek, French, German and English words and the local tongue.

“The Sweet tongue” with no language barrier is used to exchange affection and intimacy.

The “Hot tongue” with no language affiliation is used to diverge on disagreements.

“The Beverage tongue” with no language barriers is used to strike a compromise after the sweet tongue had turned hot & sour. 

He asked, “What holds back the majority from becoming proficient in many languages?”

“An interesting question. Scientists and researchers believe the key is in the differing degree of Y- chromosomal and attempted mitochondrial DNA variations in our genes could be the contributor. It is difficult to understand the sketches and structures of the variants, not for laymen like us!

After hearing out my friend asked a doubt, “How do you know all these things?”

Closing my notes, I replied, “I had doubts, clearing them did not produce certainty.  I just took the ‘appeared certainty’ as clarity and closed the chapter. After all, how could the learned and peer reviewed anthropologists and Medical Scientists be wrong?”