Language in Bhutan
KATHMANDU, JUL 03 – After more than 40 years of uninterrupted efforts at state expense, the national language of Bhutan, Dzongkha, stands where it receives more hatred and avoidance from the citizens compared to English. Further development would only mean making it survive as a dialect in Bhutan. The people involved in the development of the language must have made a preliminary assessment by now that Dzongkha is not a convenient language Bhutanese can hold for long, owing not only to the country’s linguistic diversity but also due to its non-uniformity in meaning and pronunciation.
Dzongkha changes with each village, and efforts at standardising the language for decades have failed to yield any substantial results. The Dzongkha Development Commission (DDC) is one of the major government agencies receiving a massive amount of support from the state every year for linguistic development. The other two dozen languages spoken in the country receive not a penny for their development. The DDC has been demanding even more.
Every year, at least two national conferences are held with the objective of expanding Dzongkha. Participants at the recent national conference in Thimphu pointed out that the national language, as it was declared in 1969, could not compete with English. They said that not only were the general people, most specifically youngsters, more inclined to using English, but even the ministries use English for communication and official purposes.
The government some years ago had made it mandatory that all government documents be prepared in Dzongkha, and that all official letters be exchanged in Dzongkha. Today, this formality is fulfilled in official documentation where such documents have rare usage in daily administration. However, the cabinet still transcribes its decisions in English, vividly reflecting the reality that this language from western Bhutan has been unable to unify Bhutanese society.
Dzongkha movement hardliners insistently advocate that Dzongkha must replace English at least for official purposes. However, they have not given an alternative for non-Dzongkha speakers. The sole mission was to make it mandatory that all Bhutanese be fluent in reading and writing this language. Constitutionally, a person is not entitled to get Bhutanese citizenship without knowing Dzongkha.
Historically, Dzongkha is the second language in Bhutan to have a script in the list of two. The only other language of the land to have a script is Nepali, which had been used in official documents till the reign of the third king. The greatest obstacle to the use of Dzongkha is and will be lack of written and spoken fluency among senior government officials and politicians in it. It is even harder for those coming from other linguistic groups. The appointment of a Dzongkha officer in each ministry to transcribe all the official documents in the national language also did not produce any fruitful results.
During the preceding Dzongkha conference, the most honest view came from DDC chief programme officer Tandin Dorji who said that Bhutanese citizens should be offered a bilingual choice when communicating with or within the government.
The language will have a struggling time hereafter. Most young people do not want to learn Dzongkha beyond the proficiency required for personal
communication. The social conviction that a person studying Dzongkha will have a low social status has compelled young people to opt for English as their primary subject. Insertion of English terms in Dzongkha conversation is another symptom of linguistic degradation of Dzongkha.
The biggest setback for Dzongkha experts was during the constitution making process. The team found it extremely difficult to translate the first draft of the constitution into Dzongkha. To make the constitution understandable to an illiterate population, it was necessary to translate it into Dzongkha. And the absence of terms to define the exact meaning of many legal and constitutional words compelled Bhutan to extract Tibetan vocabulary which in turn made it more complex and difficult for Dzongkha speakers to understand the constitution. Even today, native Dzongkha speakers who lack English knowledge do not understand most provisions of the constitution. It will take decades even to invent the legal words in Dzongkha, portraying a picture that Bhutanese society survives without a judicial system.
The DDC is still in the mood to force the citizens to learn the national language not just for speaking but also for writing. To this goal, the Education Ministry has been asked to introduce more subjects in Dzongkha. The conference concluded this month in Thimphu further resolved to set up regional offices for propagation of the language. Ironically, it was only last year, under immense pressure from teachers, students and guardians, that the government revised its decision to teach history in Dzongkha, understanding the reality that world history cannot be translated into Dzongkha. Though the national language has been upgraded substantially in the last few decades, lack of adequate vocabulary has kept it backward.
The effort to inculcate Dzongkha knowledge through force is likely to change, at least for toddlers. The Dzongkha curriculum for classes pre-primary to III has been proposed to be changed to end rote learning of this language. Yet the process has been tedious and time consuming where a teacher is unlikely to handle classroom teaching. There is already a shortage of Dzongkha teachers with very few from the new generation willing to join this profession. Tedious teaching methods will further discourage the young generation to enter the teaching profession.
Dzongkha students have fewer job opportunities. Most private companies demand command of the English language for any job. Considering the incompetence of Dzongkha students to compete with other students in the Public Service Commission examinations, the government has allocated a certain quota for them.
A few government ministers are pushing the issue further that any person entering government service would require equal proficiency in Dzongkha and English. This will obviously discourage the young generation. The only good option for national policy makers is to sideline the use of Dzongkha in favour of English at least for official correspondence, since the Bhutanese have already made their mark in English.