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This is just a humble participation in the discussion initiated by Jamyang Khyentse Rinpoche in last Saturday’s Kuensel.
In 2008, I attended a two-module management training programme called “Leading for Change” organised by RCSC for mid-level civil servants. At the end of the second module, the resource person asked the participants to come up with sketch drawings on the theme “Bhutan: Twenty years from now.”
Two sketches particularly struck me: one depicted a herdsman from Merak-Sakteng checking the latest international butter price offers on the internet from his home desktop computer; the other was a cleaner haughtily shaking hands with the prime minister of Bhutan as if to say, “I’m your boss and you’re my servant.”
While these two scenarios will indeed be noticeable changes for Bhutan, if at all they happen, one may wonder whether both the changes are in the right direction, the change we can believe in. If they are not, we may have to choose wisely; and to choose wisely, we will have to work hard just as a American politician said, “Change is inevitable. Change for the better is a full-time job.”
Using rinpoche’s figurative expression, I will attempt to share my views on two of the four aspects raised by him.
Language
This is an area where we have to blame ourselves. The problem, I see, is not so much with Dzongkha as a language, but with us as its users and, perhaps, with its strategies and planning.
I have several foreign friends, who have acquired Dzongkha competency — both speaking and writing— by learning genuinely within months if not within weeks. Some foreigners have even written books in Dzongkha.
Some things we have to learn with the brain, but some things we have to learn with the heart. The main problem for Dzongkha not becoming popular is not learning with heart, as I see it at this stage. Of course, there are other issues like proper planning and proper teaching-learning; and for this, we may have to rewrite some Dzongkha literature and we may have to reassess our Dzongkha pedagogy, but we also have to rethink our perception of the national language.
This is not to say that we do not need English. English is a necessary language for us. But saying we need English is not to be considered as same as we don’t need Dzongkha.
I recommend bilingualism. This does not mean mixing Dzongkha and English, but a policy of considering the two languages equally important and defining their domains of use quite clearly.
India has something called three-language formula: Hindi as the official language, English as the associate official language, and mother tongue as a state language or third official language. Singapore and Switzerland have four-language policies; and some other countries, such as South Africa, have eleven official languages. This means that they devote so much time and resources to teach all the official languages equally.
The possibility of using Roman script to write native languages, as suggested by rinpoche, is not without problems. This is especially true for languages, such as ours, which have so many similar words, with tonal distinctions to indicate different meanings.
Because of the Dzongkha sound systems, we may have to use diacritics and symbols, which will be far more problematic than the problems posed by using the native script. In fact, in every country, including European and Asian ones, such as Indonesia, where Romanisation is an official policy, there are controversies and problems of arbitrariness in writing their languages.
To talk about the importance of a national language, I think the presidents of China and France or the chancellor of Germany will never address a UN Assembly session or a NATO summit in English at least for another 1000 years. If they do, they will not get votes. Anglos will be Anglos; Romans will be Romans. Why can’t Bhutanese be Bhutanese and move ahead as Bhutanese?
Let us keep rinpoche’s suggestions, which are very objective, as a possible option if things fail miserably and go horribly wrong; but for now, let us continue to do what we do, of course with modifications and adaptations, and see how it goes. Someone said, “You don’t have to burn books to destroy a language. You just have to get people to stop reading them.”
Let us not do this at present.
Happiness
My idea of happiness is that I have a work to exercise my brain or my brawn; that I have a root lama to seek refuge; that I have enough leisure and affordability to go on holidays and pilgrimages; and that my fridge is never empty. My happiness is also a kind of world, where everything is green when I look out of my window; where no person commits suicide; where our streets are free of gang fights; where our neighbours do not complain of burglaries.
It is also a kind of life in which husbands do not beat wives, or vice versa; my grandparents do not feel alienated from society; and my office mates do not die of kidney failure because they could not get enough dialysis.
To create a world like this, which is almost Utopia, I think everyone has to play his or her own part. The government has to generate maximum hydro-ngultrums or dollars; the banks have to think of giving back to the people and to the economy, and not always think of taking away from them; and our companies and industries have to invest in those projects, where there are economies of scale.
Our agriculturists have to grow those crops that we have comparative advantage over other producers in the neighbourhood, and they have to think of creating variability and diversity, so that we have maximum gains from international trade. Our villagers have to plant two saplings for every tree they cut down.
Last, but not least, our lamas and monks have to keep praying or chanting ferociously. Although they do not create tangible outputs, they clear all unforeseen obstacles for our country; so that we can move forward as a small but happy nation, along with automistic-mechanistic countries, like USA or Japan, for as long as the Earth exists.
The nature and weight of our responsibilities may differ. Some may have to carry forests on their backs like mountains; some may have to crack nuts like squirrels; but let us all play our parts in this game of nation building.
Source: Kuenselonline
In 2008, I attended a two-module management training programme called “Leading for Change” organised by RCSC for mid-level civil servants. At the end of the second module, the resource person asked the participants to come up with sketch drawings on the theme “Bhutan: Twenty years from now.”
Two sketches particularly struck me: one depicted a herdsman from Merak-Sakteng checking the latest international butter price offers on the internet from his home desktop computer; the other was a cleaner haughtily shaking hands with the prime minister of Bhutan as if to say, “I’m your boss and you’re my servant.”
While these two scenarios will indeed be noticeable changes for Bhutan, if at all they happen, one may wonder whether both the changes are in the right direction, the change we can believe in. If they are not, we may have to choose wisely; and to choose wisely, we will have to work hard just as a American politician said, “Change is inevitable. Change for the better is a full-time job.”
Using rinpoche’s figurative expression, I will attempt to share my views on two of the four aspects raised by him.
Language
This is an area where we have to blame ourselves. The problem, I see, is not so much with Dzongkha as a language, but with us as its users and, perhaps, with its strategies and planning.
I have several foreign friends, who have acquired Dzongkha competency — both speaking and writing— by learning genuinely within months if not within weeks. Some foreigners have even written books in Dzongkha.
Some things we have to learn with the brain, but some things we have to learn with the heart. The main problem for Dzongkha not becoming popular is not learning with heart, as I see it at this stage. Of course, there are other issues like proper planning and proper teaching-learning; and for this, we may have to rewrite some Dzongkha literature and we may have to reassess our Dzongkha pedagogy, but we also have to rethink our perception of the national language.
This is not to say that we do not need English. English is a necessary language for us. But saying we need English is not to be considered as same as we don’t need Dzongkha.
I recommend bilingualism. This does not mean mixing Dzongkha and English, but a policy of considering the two languages equally important and defining their domains of use quite clearly.
India has something called three-language formula: Hindi as the official language, English as the associate official language, and mother tongue as a state language or third official language. Singapore and Switzerland have four-language policies; and some other countries, such as South Africa, have eleven official languages. This means that they devote so much time and resources to teach all the official languages equally.
The possibility of using Roman script to write native languages, as suggested by rinpoche, is not without problems. This is especially true for languages, such as ours, which have so many similar words, with tonal distinctions to indicate different meanings.
Because of the Dzongkha sound systems, we may have to use diacritics and symbols, which will be far more problematic than the problems posed by using the native script. In fact, in every country, including European and Asian ones, such as Indonesia, where Romanisation is an official policy, there are controversies and problems of arbitrariness in writing their languages.
To talk about the importance of a national language, I think the presidents of China and France or the chancellor of Germany will never address a UN Assembly session or a NATO summit in English at least for another 1000 years. If they do, they will not get votes. Anglos will be Anglos; Romans will be Romans. Why can’t Bhutanese be Bhutanese and move ahead as Bhutanese?
Let us keep rinpoche’s suggestions, which are very objective, as a possible option if things fail miserably and go horribly wrong; but for now, let us continue to do what we do, of course with modifications and adaptations, and see how it goes. Someone said, “You don’t have to burn books to destroy a language. You just have to get people to stop reading them.”
Let us not do this at present.
Happiness
My idea of happiness is that I have a work to exercise my brain or my brawn; that I have a root lama to seek refuge; that I have enough leisure and affordability to go on holidays and pilgrimages; and that my fridge is never empty. My happiness is also a kind of world, where everything is green when I look out of my window; where no person commits suicide; where our streets are free of gang fights; where our neighbours do not complain of burglaries.
It is also a kind of life in which husbands do not beat wives, or vice versa; my grandparents do not feel alienated from society; and my office mates do not die of kidney failure because they could not get enough dialysis.
To create a world like this, which is almost Utopia, I think everyone has to play his or her own part. The government has to generate maximum hydro-ngultrums or dollars; the banks have to think of giving back to the people and to the economy, and not always think of taking away from them; and our companies and industries have to invest in those projects, where there are economies of scale.
Our agriculturists have to grow those crops that we have comparative advantage over other producers in the neighbourhood, and they have to think of creating variability and diversity, so that we have maximum gains from international trade. Our villagers have to plant two saplings for every tree they cut down.
Last, but not least, our lamas and monks have to keep praying or chanting ferociously. Although they do not create tangible outputs, they clear all unforeseen obstacles for our country; so that we can move forward as a small but happy nation, along with automistic-mechanistic countries, like USA or Japan, for as long as the Earth exists.
The nature and weight of our responsibilities may differ. Some may have to carry forests on their backs like mountains; some may have to crack nuts like squirrels; but let us all play our parts in this game of nation building.
Source: Kuenselonline
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