Re: paata chandamama kathalu
Bapa Rao (brao@tis.com)
Thu, 11 Sep 1997 14:30:42 -0700 (PDT)
>
> On Thu, 11 Sep 1997, Bapa Rao wrote:
>
> > > regretful conclusion that it is not a particularly good resource for
> > > children growing up in the U. S.
> >
> > I won't disagree with you, but would like to explore why this may be so.
> > An explanation I have heard from an experienced friend is that the world
> > of chandamama stories is far removed from the world of Indo-US children.
>
> It is not just that the world is far removed, but also the
> language used in chandamaama is also far removed from the one that the
> Telugu-US children are used to. For example, assume that a story begins
> in the following manner: "vijayasEnuDanu raaju magadha_raajyamunu
> paripaalinchuchunDenu. atani paalanalO prajalellaru sukhasnatOshamulatO
> jeevinchuchunDiri. prajalakshEmamE paramaavadhigaa raaju
> pravartincucunDeDivaaDu". Even for a child that understands the Telugu
> spoken around the home, the only familiar words in these three sentences
> would be raaju and atani.
But chandamama doesn't use such language, though. It would have said,
"vijayasEnuDanE raaju magadha rajyaanni paripaalistU unDE vaaDu. ..."
>
> Add to that the content of many of the stories: Many of them are
> about semi-adult subjects or stories with morals. There are not as many
> 'adventure' or 'thriller' stories. The children find it extremely hard to
> relate to the language and theme. Their attention wanes.
Setting aside the language barrier for the moment, how would you explain
the greater ability of Indian kids to relate to the same semi-adult
morals and themes when compared to Indo-American kids? (to be honest,
I don't know if the current TV generation of Indian kids are relating
to those stories any more) It can't be that India-raised kids are
more receptive to more mature themes at an early age, can it? If
anything, I would have said the opposite.
A lot of childrens' literature in English I have seen is of the "fable" or
nIti-katha variety in a broad sense--the rainbow fish that won't share
and comes to grief, aesop's fables, Beatrix potter's Peter Rabbit,
or Pooh-bear goes to school/doctor etc.
Basically there is the narrative acting-out of some
situation, followed by a conclusion (it is wrong to lie/disobey, going to
school isn't as scary as it may seem etc.) So, basically they all
seem to have some child development/behavioristic core in them.
I think it is a legitimate problem with chandamama stories (even
for Indian kids) that the themes and morals tend to be conventional
and unimaginative (e.g., my complaint about stereotypical girl-roles).
It may be that, given alternatives with more imaginative themes,
children intuitively reject the less imaginative ones.
>
> It is true that if they listen to/read several of the stories, they
> will understand the langauage better. But, the catch here is that they
> would need to be interested to learn the language and they would need to
> know the language to be interested.
It is worth exploring how this situation differs from ours when
we were learning English or Hindi, reading/listening to stories
in those languages etc.
Bapa Rao
----- End of forwarded message from Bapa Rao -----