Every age invents its own tools, and every civilisation names them. Names are not merely labels; they are acts of ownership, identity, and intellectual confidence. Yet in Kashmir today, a quiet but serious linguistic question is unfolding before us. New inventions enter our lives every day, but they arrive wrapped almost exclusively in English. We use them, depend on them, even teach them, yet we rarely name them in our own mother tongue. This reality raises an uncomfortable but necessary question: is linguistics, particularly Kashmiri linguistics, failing to keep pace with modern innovation?
Historically, Kashmiri has never been a weak or inadequate language. On the contrary, it has demonstrated remarkable adaptability. For centuries, Kashmiris have named objects, tools, professions, and practices according to their lived experience. Words emerged organically, shaped by environment, culture, and necessity. A vehicle became gaadie. Tiler became albaen. A needle was sechan. Even something as complex and modern for its time as an aeroplane found expression in jahaze. These examples reveal an important truth: Kashmiri has always possessed the intellectual flexibility to absorb and localise new realities.
The problem, then, is not linguistic incapacity. The problem is linguistic inertia.
When we encounter words like computer, software, internet, mobile phone, artificial intelligence, or satellite, we accept their English forms without question. They slip into our daily speech unchanged, unchallenged, and untranslated. Over time, they harden into linguistic facts. Children grow up believing that such concepts simply do not belong to Kashmiri. The language retreats from the domains of science, technology, and higher knowledge, confining itself instead to emotion, folklore, and domestic life. This is not a natural decline. It is a manufactured one.
This phenomenon reflects a deeper crisis in our approach to language planning and linguistic responsibility. Kashmiri linguistic scholarship has largely remained descriptive rather than creative. Dictionaries are compiled, grammar is analysed, phonetics are discussed, yet the pressing task of coining new terminology remains neglected. Language is not preserved by documentation alone. It survives through use, innovation, and authority. When a language stops naming the future, it slowly loses its claim over it.
Institutions that carry the moral and academic responsibility of safeguarding Kashmiri cannot remain silent spectators. Departments of Kashmiri in universities, research centres, and cultural bodies must ask themselves difficult questions. Why do we not have standardised Kashmiri terms for modern inventions? Why is there no authoritative body that recommends and popularises Kashmiri equivalents for emerging technologies? Why do our textbooks, classrooms, and academic discussions surrender so easily to English vocabulary?
Across the world, languages have confronted similar challenges and responded with determination. French has official language councils that coin new terms. Icelandic consistently creates native words for modern concepts rather than borrowing from English. Even many Indian languages have academies that actively work on terminology development. These efforts are not driven by linguistic pride alone; they are rooted in the understanding that language is a carrier of knowledge. If knowledge enters only through a foreign tongue, intellectual dependence becomes inevitable.
From a knowledge perspective, the consequences are profound. When a child learns science or technology entirely in English, their cognitive engagement becomes limited to borrowed symbols. Thought itself begins to operate in another language. The mother tongue is reduced to a medium of informal conversation, while serious thinking migrates elsewhere. Over time, this creates a psychological hierarchy of languages, where Kashmiri is seen as insufficient for modern life. No language deserves such an injustice.
What is urgently needed is an institutional and intellectual awakening. We need a dedicated linguistic body comprising Kashmiri scholars, scientists, educators, and language practitioners. Its task should be clear: to coin, review, and recommend Kashmiri terms for new inventions and concepts. These words need not reject global understanding; they can coexist with English terms while offering Kashmiri alternatives that gradually gain acceptance. Language change is slow, but it begins with intention.
Academicians must also step out of isolation. Linguistics cannot remain confined to seminars and journals. It must enter classrooms, media, and public discourse. Teachers, especially at the foundational level, should be encouraged to introduce Kashmiri terminology alongside English concepts. This dual approach strengthens comprehension rather than weakening it. A child who understands a concept in their mother tongue understands it more deeply.
Recent developments elsewhere in India offer valuable lessons. Reports that Bhubaneswar has initiated teaching and learning through the mother language as a mandatory practice should provoke reflection in Kashmir. If education systems can recognise the cognitive and cultural power of the mother tongue, why should Kashmiri remain excluded from such progressive thinking? Our language deserves not charity, but policy.
Ultimately, this is not a battle against English. English is a global tool, and its importance cannot be denied. But global tools should not erase local voices. Linguistic coexistence is possible only when local languages are empowered to grow, adapt, and innovate. Kashmiri must not remain a passive recipient of modernity. It must become an active participant.
The age of innovation demands not just new machines, but new linguistic courage. If Kashmiri is to remain a living language of thought rather than memory, it must name the world as it changes. The failure, if it continues, will not be of linguistics alone. It will be a collective failure of imagination, responsibility, and will.
The author is an Educator at GGHSS YARIPORA KULGAM and can be reached at umairulumar77@gmail.com