Viewed through a hyper-nationalist lens, so many of our kids speaking Hindi, the lingua franca of the Big Brother next door, is a veritable disaster. But it is nothing to be alarmed about. Studies suggest there are many cognitive benefits to being bilingual. But is it good if your child is being exposed to Nepali, Hindi and English at the same time? Won’t that result in confusion? Not necessarily. Hindi and Nepali belong to the same language family, developed in the Indian subcontinent between the 1st and the 4th century CE. If you know one, it is not that difficult to pick up another.

 

Nonetheless it is interesting that countless Nepali children are learning Hindi through cartoons. The cartoon television networks broadcast in Nepal are all based in India, and their shows often come with a Hindi commentary.

 

Some of these cartoons are Indian originals (‘Motu Patlu’, ‘Chhota Bheem’), while other popular western ones like ‘Tom and Jerry’ and ‘Oggy and the Cockroaches’ are dubbed in Hindi. According to Madhu Bikash Khanal, a school psychologist, children are most susceptible to picking up new languages between the ages of two and nine. When they watch Hindi and English cartoons regularly, they gain some skills in these languages.

 

 There can be no doubt about the benefits of having more cartoons and children-centered shows in native tongues

 Some children get so addicted they refuse to eat without watching their favorite cartoons

 

But most Nepali children of this age group do not watch cartoons on television but rather on YouTube, often on their parents’ smartphones. Some get so addicted they refuse to eat without watching their favorite cartoons. That is a separate concern.

 

Getting to learn a popular language of a neighboring country, one which is a rising global power, is a “big plus”, says sociologist Chaitanya Mishra. He advises ditching our ethno-centricity that makes us look down on certain groups of people and languages.

 

Yet there can be no doubt about the benefits of having more cartoons and children-centered shows in native tongues. This will help children improve their Nepali, the country’s national language. More than that, it will boost other local tongues, all invaluable national treasures. So, the worry is not so much that Nepali children are hooked on Hindi cartoons. It is that many of them are now unhealthily glued to smartphones and are perhaps losing command of their native tongues.

 

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 How Hindi is gaining many young speakers in Nepal

 

 In staffrooms of schools around Kathmandu, children replying to teachers’ questions in Hindi has become a topic of discussion. Anima Bhattarai, who has been teaching primary-level children for the past eight years, says she hears many children speaking to each other in Hindi

 

 

 At a grocery shop at Talchikhel, Lalitpur, Sarah Singh Katwal, 6, is begging with her mother to buy her a packet of ‘Motu Patlu’ chips. I lean down and ask her why she was insisting on that particular brand of chips and she says she loves watching the Indian sitcom “Motu Patlu” on Nickelodeon. “Do you know how to speak Hindi then?” I ask. “Mujhe aata hai” (“I know it”), she replies and laughs.She then talks excitedly about the cartoons she loves, namely “Chhota Bheem”, “Pokemon”, “Doraemon” and “Chota Singham”, all of which she watches in Hindi. She knows by heart which channels broadcast these shows. Her mother, Sarita Katwal, 39, wishes Sarah watched more English shows. Why, I ask? Because English is an international language, Katwal replies. “Sarah doesn’t just watch Hindi cartoons on TV, she watches cooking shows and Barbie doll shows with Hindi commentary on YouTube.” Katwal reckons her daughter perhaps understands Hindi better than she understands English.

 

Likewise, her son, Aarya Dhoj, 12, even has his own YouTube channel ‘Mello Tube’ where he uploads shots of him playing video games with English commentary. Aarya Dhoj, says his mother, learnt to give commentary from the Hindi shows he watches.

 

What about Nepali cartoons? Does Sarah like them? Sarah says she does not find Nepali cartoons enjoyable. Sarita, the mother, replies that the variety of cartoons available in Hindi is missing in Nepali.

 

Shrishan Raj Upadhyay, 7, can speak Hindi astonishingly fast, says his mother Devika Sharma. For the past 19 years Devika has worked as a primary school teacher. She is familiar with the idea of children liking Hindi cartoons: “Children in the school I teach in Gokarna also speak some Hindi.” But she has not heard anyone speaking Hindi as fast as her son. Sometimes he even uses complex Hindi words that she cannot comprehend.

 

Hot topic of Hindi

In staffrooms of schools around Kathmandu, children replying to teachers’ questions in Hindi has become a topic of discussion, according to primary school teachers. Anima Bhattarai, 29, who has been teaching primary-level children for the past eight years in Boudha, says she hears many children speaking to each other in Hindi. “Instead of sending their kids to play outside, parents these days prefer to give their children mobile phones on which they can watch Hindi cartoons and channels,” Bhattarai says.

 

A kindergarten teacher at the school she teaches shared that when she shows English rhymes to children, they ask her to show Hindi rhymes instead. Bhattarai says children may be attracted to Hindi and Nepali rhymes because they are easier to understand than English rhymes. Her son, Swikar, 7, can also speak Hindi fluently. “He even talks to family members in Hindi which is awkward so I try to show him more English cartoons.”

 

“Mai tumhe maar dunga” (‘I will kill you’) and “Areey buddhu” (‘Hey dumbo’) are common things that Anushka Shrestha, 20, who teaches Upper Kindergarteners, hears in the playground every day. “Children learn from other students and from cartoons,” she comments.

 

Ranjana Nepali, 38, another primary school teacher with 18 years of experience, says that children speak Hindi at her primary school in Nakkhu. “Even though we do not allow children to speak in Hindi, they do so unknowingly from time to time,” she shares. “When I started teaching 18 years ago, children did not speak in Hindi. They started doing so only when YouTube got popular. Before that, children usually watched cartoons in English like Tom and Jerry or Moomin.”

 

When she meets parents during admissions, they tell her their kids do not eat food until they are shown YouTube videos. “Children are usually more disciplined at school,” she shares.

 

Foreign language a plus

The most important thing is that children should be able to speak Nepali well, says Chaitanya Mishra, a sociologist. Learning regional languages of Nepal is important too. He says that the more languages we learn, the better it is for us. “We are becoming more cosmopolitan so learning new languages, especially a neighboring country’s language, is a plus for us. We grew up so ethno-centric, but now we have to learn to go beyond that or we will not progress,” he says.

 

Madhu Bikash Khanal, a school psychologist who has worked with school children for two decades, also thinks children learning other languages is a good thing. According to WHO and UNICEF, early childhood is a vital point for development in a person’s life. Children start to learn language by hearing and speaking when they are about 2. They also pick up a language quicker when they are between 2 to 6. In developmental psychology, according to Khanal, the critical age for language development is until around 9. After this, it gets harder to learn a new language.

 

But there also are downsides to watching these foreign cartoons. Khanal says many children have forgotten their mother tongue. Of late he has seen children watch more and more Hindi shows. This is not the proper way to learn a language, he adds, because without instructions they tend to mix up different languages.

 

Sunita Bhattarai, 57, from Baneshwor says that her three grandchildren keenly watch Hindi cartoons. Their mothers let them because then they can get on with their own chores. “No such cartoons during my time!” she laughs.

 

Khanal stresses the importance of having better Nepali cartoons. “It would be better still if there were cartoons in various regional languages of Nepal,” he says. “When children watch cartoons from other countries, they start emulating other cultures, while forgetting and failing to understand their own”.