Nepal is a multilingual nation with 92 officially recognized languages. However, a single language (Nepali) has been given power and status, recognition and prestige while, as a corollary, the remaining minority languages are impoverished and marginalized. Furthermore, due to the utilitarian values of English and its global recognition, people are being increasingly inclined towards learning English. This creates a scenario of a compulsory bilingualism and thus depletes the minority language learning environment. Therefore, with four languages dying per week of 6000 world languages and English strengthening its global dominance, the future of minority languages and local vernaculars is growing uncertain.
Nepali Language Policy favors Nepali and English languages, and thereby privileges use of Nepali and English. Essential though they are for education, employment and access to the world resources, the policy, in the existing situation, has done more harm than good. The speakers of minority languages, owing to the common financial hardships, deliberately focus on providing their children an education of the national language - Nepali, which will help them thrive in the national context and of the global language - English, which open them a door to the realm of opportunities in the global platform. Thus the local level competency of the minority language has been degrading and with it a score of knowledge and culture.
Benjamin Whorf, a lauded linguist, claims that language shapes reality and thought and when a language dies a perspective of world a train of thought dies with it. Language death is a great catastrophe that erases a mode of thought from world and wipes away cumulative knowledge of generations. Nepal, being a particularly fertile ground for diverse ethnicity and mecca for linguistic variations, prides on its heritage of the language of culture. But since the establishment of nationalism and neo-Nepal, concern for these minority languages is conspicuously absent. I for one, as a linguist and more importantly as a responsible citizen of the nation, can no longer hold the silence.
Every child who fails to master his mother tongue and gives up on the local language doesn't only cause a loss for the national heritage but also fails to maintain his own identity. Language is a medium that establishes a person as a distinct member with his own identity, culture and history. Between all the financial struggles a person suffers in Nepal, there might be little time left for him to worry about his identity and teaching his children the local vernacular. But what would remain of your presence if you cease to sing the oracle of your ancestor in a language you can pride to be yours? Identity has always been played down in our society, but it is past time now to cultivate back our identity, preserve what is ours - our language and thus foster our identity. The boundaries of the world have started to blur and soon enough each one of us will find ourselves playing more and more important role as a global citizen. So, when we face the world as an individual the only thing that will maintain our unique identity is our own language, our ethnic tongue and not our expertise in English.
The nation has its own role to play by coming up with a better Language Planning and Policy (LPLP) but let us not underestimate our own part. Teach your child Nepali and English, if you most, but also teach them the language unique to you and your clan. And someday soon, no language (as it happened recently will be wiped away by a landslide because the village was the only place that language was spoken) will be extinct because of a mere landslide. Each one of us will always know where we have come from and the nation as a whole will have a lusher vegetation of culture and heritage.
I think it is better if you can add one sentence of your main topic and statement at the beginning of first paragraph, which will make the entire essay clearer.
You didn't say directly "your stands and opinions "
Plus, try to leave a empty line after each paragragh.
