Remazan Bakur: Language and Mother

Rastinews — Since the dawn of humanity, formation has begun with the mother. Not just language — humanity itself takes shape through the mother. Protection and upbringing start with the mother. For the young of every species, the mother's embrace is the safest place there is. Why do we call it the mother tongue? We can explain this in two ways. First: the language the mother speaks. Second, in the Turkish sense (ana dil): the foundational language. Or the mother of several distinct languages. Our ancestors never used the term "mother tongue." Among us Kurds, only "language" and "our language" were ever spoken and passed down.

Especially in recent years, in Kurdish literature and Kurdish press, people with no expertise in language, no grasp of it, no command of it, have built Kurdish out of borrowed Turkish concepts and stuffed the language with them. When a Kurdish word was unknown, they coined one from the Turkish meaning instead and built sentences around it. This began in particular with the newspaper Azadiya Welat, and with Kurdish television, digital media and social media. In the absence of any oversight body, any monitoring or review, Azadiya Welat, television and digital social media tools produced an artificial, counterfeit language among our people — and this artificial, counterfeit language has poisoned our new generation.

"Mother tongue" is itself one of these manufactured terms, and many manufactured words like it have entered our language and taken root. Yes, we Kurds have five distinct dialects. We say we need a mother tongue drawing on all five, a language that benefits from all five dialects, so that we Kurds can have one shared language. That is a separate matter, and one I raise often. But my subject here is the term "mother tongue." Perhaps we should define and explain it as the language the mother speaks.

The language of children, the language of the new generation, is without question the language the mother speaks. Whatever language the mother speaks, the child learns. Life and living take on meaning in the child's mind through that language. That society's web of relations takes root in the child's mind through that language; that language's vocabulary comes to occupy the child's mind. Education experts say the primary learning age runs from birth to puberty. This is the age at which the child learns through the mother. At this age the greatest influence on the child is the mother's influence. The child, born into the father's lineage, is raised and protected by the mother. The new generation is the mother's masterpiece.

It is at this age that children learn language — they learn its very grain and texture. Our elders have a saying: what is instilled at the breast stays until the grave. This proverb carries deep meaning. In short, we can say: whatever a nursing child learns stays with them for life — stays, that is, until death. That is why learning at this early age determines one's membership in, and belonging to, a nation. Through their spirit, their consciousness, their affections, that child becomes — inwardly and psychologically — a member of their own society and nation.

Our mothers knew no language but Kurdish. Through our own language, we became members of our own nation. Mothers of this era all know Turkish. If a mother speaks to her children in the occupier's language, that is self-destruction — tearing down one's own house with one's own hands. A child raised in the language of an outside power, an occupier, does not feel like a member of their own society. Emotionally and psychologically they become a stranger to their own community; the sense of national belonging in that child grows weak and frail. No nation is built from people whose sense of national belonging is weak and hollowed out.

Regrettably, in North Kurdistan, it is no longer only in the cities — it now reaches into the districts and villages, too: mothers speak Turkish with their children. This is itself a sign of grave danger. It means that within another generation, Kurdish will no longer survive in North Kurdistan. The loss of a language is the loss of a nation.

I do not call our language "the mother tongue" — our language is the Kurdish language, because not every Kurdish mother's language is Kurdish. The language of our new generation is the mother's language, but today's mothers are not the mothers of the past. That is why: if the mother's language is Kurdish, then nationhood will be built; but if the mother's language is not Kurdish, nationhood will be lost.

I hope every Kurdish mother speaks Kurdish with her children. May this counsel lodge in every ear, and may it be pressed upon Kurdish mothers, so that our new generation, rooted in its nation's essence and authenticity, achieves success and progress through its nation's web of relations and culture.