How Does Your Mother Tongue Speak to Nature?

A “mother tongue” is the very first language that we hear as babies, very often, even before we are born! At 7-8 months of pregnancy, an unborn fetus in the womb can already begin to recognize the sounds and patterns of languages spoken around them. Once we are born, grow older, and begin feeling our way around a wider environment, our mother tongue plays an important role in making connections with other people, plants, animals, and things.

I’ve been told that when I would go out on a walk with my dad as a toddler, not a minute would go by without me touching or pointing to something and chirping in Hindi, “Yeh kya hai?” (What’s this?) or “Woh kya hai?” (What’s that?). This early phrase that I picked up helped me, like many other young children, find words to name and talk about all the new aspects of the world I was experiencing.

Languages help us have conversations with our families, laugh or argue with friends, and listen to, read, and share stories with each other. Our mother tongues, in particular, also carry the traditional ecological knowledge, folklore, and wisdom of our communities. The vocabulary and grammar of a language or dialect that is native to a region can tell us a lot about the landscapes, climate patterns, biodiversity, and ecological relationships of that environment. Let’s look at some examples of this!

In the arctic and subarctic regions of the Earth, the landscape is all snow and ice, and winter can last for 9 months of the year. The Inuit languages spoken in these regions are famously known to have many dozens of words that refer to what we would simply call “snow” in English. A person growing up in an Inuit community would, however, learn to identify things like “pukaangajuq” (snow that is good for making igloos), “aniuk” (ice-like older snow found near rocks and used for making water), or “naanguaq” (snow formed in hard raised bumps). These diverse words for snow are also packed with knowledge of the arctic environment and how to live in it.

Similarly, in the Khasi language spoken in the north-eastern Indian state of Meghalaya, which is known one of the wettest places on Earth, there are several names for distinct qualities of rain. For rain in general there is “slap”, but there is also “lap-khyndai-miet” (nine-night rain), “lap-boi-ksi” (rain that looks like lice when it settles on hair and clothes), “lap-bam-briew” (human devouring rain), “lap-beh-mrad” (rain that comes at the beginning of spring and helps hunters identify the tracks of animals)… and many more!

In Tamil, the vocabulary for different kinds of water bodies is incredibly vast. While “Enthal” is a small waterbody that holds only rainwater, “Eri” is a manmade catchment for rainwater and irrigation, and is defined by a bund on three sides. While “Ootru” is a spring, “Kumizhi” is a rock-cut well spring, and “Aazhikkinaru” is a freshwater spring or well occurring near the seashore. “Kuttai” is a small pond where cattle are sometimes washed, “Sengai” is a pond with duckweed, and “Poigai” is a lake with lotus and lilies and lots of natural beauty. These words evoke very specific images, some of these closely tied to particular cultural relations with water.

Caption: Nongin bird, the State bird of Manipur

Local names of plants, animals, and birds can tell fascinating stories of how communities perceive them and give us valuable information about them. The Garhwali name for the Bergenia ciliata plant is “seel-phoda” (stonebreaker), indicating both where it is often found growing between cracks in rocks, as well as its medicinal use in the treatment of kidney stones. The Kumauni name for another plant, Selinum candollii, is “bhut-keshi” (ghost’s hair) as the long hair on the roots of the plant are used to ward of evil spirits. The state bird of Manipur is called “Nongin” (one who follows the tracks of rain) in the Meitei language, as it is believed to know the cycle of rain and clouds in the sky.

English, which is spoken today as a common language across many different places across the world, has also incorporated words from many other languages. From Hindi, for example, we have the word “jungle”, which describes the kind of wild, dense, and tangled forest vegetation found in monsoon-fed India. The word “loo” also comes from Hindi, referring to a strong, hot, and dusty summer wind that is unique to the Indo-Gangetic plain of north India.

Increasingly, however, English is also replacing the rich vocabulary of other native languages. Many of us cannot say we are fluent in our mother tongue anymore. Sadly, this also means we are losing important ways of knowing, understanding, and thinking about different ecologies.

Can you think of any interesting names for birds, trees, water, or weather patterns in your mother tongue? Ask your parents or grandparents for the stories behind these names. And share these with us!

Illustrations in this article are credited to Chhavi Mathur.