Multilingual Practices and Identity Negotiation Among Multilingual Heritage Language Learners in New Zealand

Total Page:16

File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb

Multilingual Practices and Identity Negotiation Among Multilingual Heritage Language Learners in New Zealand Multilingual Practices and Identity Negotiation among Multilingual Heritage Language Learners in New Zealand By Mohammed Yousef Nofal A thesis submitted to the Victoria University of Wellington in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Linguistics Victoria University of Wellington 2020 To Hanadi who will remember the time and place if not the people, Sara, Sireen, Mahamoud, and Salma who filled my life with joy, euphoria and love 2 Abstract While heritage languages (HLs) have been receiving much research attention, there is still a scarcity of studies conducted on local HL communities. However, researchers in New Zealand have been actively engaged with various community languages for over four decades, providing rich insights into the dynamics of language maintenance and language shift within these communities. Although New Zealand sociolinguistic scholarship has covered a wide range of languages and ethnicities, there is no known study on the Indian Hindi community, whose HL is the fourth most spoken language in the country (Statistics New Zealand, 2013). Additionally, previous research has traditionally examined the functional aspects of language use and language attitudes in determining whether language can be preserved, viewing HL communities often as homogeneously formed. In contrast, current trends in the field of sociolinguistics aim to examine the connections between individuals and their languages (i.e. identity), taking multilingualism as a norm and focusing on dynamism in intraspeaker and interspeaker language use. This thesis addresses these issues by exploring how the realities that heritage language learners (HLLs) live connect to identity negotiation and development in social interaction. In particular, this thesis focuses on a group of learners of Hindi as a heritage language in New Zealand – a group that is under-explored. Grasping the relationship between the HLLs’ experiences and how they develop and negotiate heritage-related identities necessitates a micro-level analysis of language use by casting an eye on language practices in the language maintenance school and the home, for they constitute two key spaces of exposure to the HLs and cultures. Moreover, examining how HLLs draw upon indexicality to conceptualise their languages provides rich insights into their identity negotiation and development. The primary data for the analyses is mobilised in three dimensions adopting an ethnographic approach. The first dimension includes limited-participant observations for one school term, making a total of 20 hours of observation out of which 12 hours were recorded. The observations look at language practices in a multi-site Hindi School (HS) where families of Indian descent from various linguistic, ethnic, cultural and national backgrounds come together forming a constellation of communities of practice (Lave & Wenger, 1991; Wenger, 1998b) to stay connected with their Indian heritage. I also conducted semi-structured interviews with eight parents and stakeholders in the HS to enrich the analysis and check my interpretations of the observed and recorded practices. 3 The second dimension embraces recordings of home interaction within three families with the aim of exploring language practices in the home. A total of eight hours of recorded data were collected in different conversational encounters (e.g. in the car, at the dining table and playtime). The families participating in this research have unique characteristics in terms of their heterogeneous configuration. The first family exemplifies a transnational adoptive family which is a unique family structure that has not been researched in New Zealand. The other two families reflect multicultural New Zealand Indian families where the parents do not speak the same HL. Finally, the data in the third dimension comes from the learners through linguistic reflection drawings (Krumm & Jenkins, 2001; Seals, 2017b). Twenty HLLs participated in the drawing activity which aims at examining how they process meaning-making through the use of language-colour association and views the linguistic repertoire as embodied (Bucholtz & Hall, 2016; Krumm & Jenkins, 2001). By employing the concept of communities of practice during in-depth discourse analysis, the HS data suggests that the shared practices within the school contribute to the construction of the learners’ multilingual and national/cultural identities, emphasising the Indian identity as an overarching one (i.e. Indianness), rather than privileging other regional, national or religious identities. Additionally, the analysis of the home data suggests that no matter how committed community members are, the HL is not always actively used at home. Rather, the three families in this study take part in a wide range of language practices that index their Indian identities. They introduce aspects of the Indian culture, which is mostly indexed via music, food and cultural lexical items in their discourse (Friesen, 2008; Shah, 2013). While HL literacy skills (e.g. numeracy and the reading of literary texts) were elicited, English linguistic features that are often associated with Indian English were used to construct Indian identity. However, at times multiple memberships became problematic because it contradicted other socially constructed identities, depending on the membership that is activated in the interaction settings. The analysis offers insights into the complexities of discursive identity negotiation within the home and the intricate relationship between identity negotiation and multiple memberships. Finally, the analysis of the HLLs’ linguistic reflection drawings through an indexical lens (Ochs, 1993) reveals that the participants use their languages as direct indices to display forms of capital (Bourdieu, 1986), which in turn are discursively used to index national and cultural identities. Likewise, some participants used their multilingual identities as a resource to negotiate national and/or cultural identities. 4 Overall, this thesis sheds light on the complexities of identity negotiation and development in heterogeneous communities where community members have multiple heritage languages. As this research is the first to present non-traditional language school and family configurations in the New Zealand context, it will hopefully enrich the understanding of the dynamics of heritage language education and identity negotiation in such superdiverse settings. 5 Acknowledgements يا رب لك الحمد كما ينب يغ لجﻻل وجه ك وعظيم سلطان ك، ويوا يف سابغ نعم ك وجزيل إحسانك First and foremost, all praise is due to God’s noble face, His immense authority, and His glorious blessings as much as it suits His glory and great power, and as much as it meets His countless blessings and abundant beneficence. It is a chance of a lifetime to acknowledge the help and support I received throughout this journey. I must confess that if I were to mention those whose souls, voices and actions shaped this work, many would be left unnamed. To my beloved family, thank you for encouragement, support and endless love all the way of my pursuits. I am especially grateful to the reason of my being, my parents, who have burnt the candle at both ends, raising me and instilling in me humanistic and knowledge-seeking to reach to this stage at the expense of their wellbeing, though happily. To them, I would like to say “your efforts were in no vain”, so thank you. To my wife, Hanadi, and my children, Sara, Sireen, Mahmoud and Salma: It would be very remiss of me not to apologise for not being physically with you over the past three years. I apologise for every moment you felt sad for not having me with you. I am truly indebted to you, Hanadi, for doing your best to raise the four lovely, though hyperactive, kids on your own in my absence. My brothers Ahamed, Othman, Hasan, Ali and Ibrahim, and my sisters Jazia, Wafa’, Thana’ and Safa’: there are no words to express my gratitude adequately for your love and care. I cherish the matchless love my children and I received over the years. I was fortunate enough to have not one but two wonderful supervisors, who believed in me when I was not at my best, pushed me to the best of my abilities and opened my mind to new things. Their invaluable insights, comments and suggestions profoundly shaped this thesis. My sincere gratitude goes to primary supervisor A/Prof. Corinne Seals and my secondary supervisor Prof. Meredith Marra for their continuous support, patience, motivation, and immense knowledge. Thanks for reading and commenting on the countless number of drafts at all stages of my study. I would also like to thank the thesis committee: Dr Margaret Gleeson, Dr Arianna Berardi- Wiltshire, and Dr Kendall King, for their insightful suggestions and constructive feedback. 6 To my friends at VUW, Mohammed Al-Zeer, Mohammed Ali Hashmi, Yasir Altaf, Abdelmalik Hasanain and Baligh Al-Hilali for being on my side over the years of study. Their advice, support and discussions enriched my understanding from different perspectives. I shall not forget to thank my friend and mentor Prof. Bader Dweik for teaching me how to lead when yesterday’s enthusiasm becomes today’s yawn; to my friends Saleh Al-Abwini, Tareq Refa’i, Ahmad Mansour, Abd Makawi, Nasir Qandil and Ehab Abu Ijmail for emailing and calling, giving me the feeling of being home. My appreciation goes also to Hanadi Qawar for her support and the rich discussions we had over the topic. I would like to thank Victoria University of Wellington for supporting this research through the three-year Victoria Doctoral Scholarship and the Victoria Submission Scholarship. Special thanks are extended to the School of Linguistics and Applied Language Studies family for the supporting and inspiring environment, particularly, Janet Attril, Bernie Hambleton, Matthew Vink, Alastair Baldwin, Carlos Espinoza, and Patrick Coelho and many others who tirelessly work for our benefit. Finally but most importantly my appreciation goes to my participants who accepted and welcomed me in their community. I also thank the Hindi School, namely Sunita Narayan, Vijeshni Rattan, for their enthusiasm, encouragement and efforts to make this research successful.
Recommended publications
  • Turkish College Students' Willingness to Communicate In
    TURKISH COLLEGE STUDENTS’ WILLINGNESS TO COMMUNICATE IN ENGLISH AS A FOREIGN LANGUAGE DISSERTATION Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University By Yesim Bektas Cetinkaya, M.A. ***** The Ohio State University 2005 Dissertation Committee: Approved by Professor Keiko K. Samimy, Adviser _______________________ Professor Joseph A. Gliem Adviser Professor Alan R. Hirvela College of Education Copyright by Yesim Bektas Cetinkaya 2005 All right reserved ABSTRACT English, which is defined as an international language, is used by more than one and a half billion people (Strevens, 1992) as a first, second, or foreign language for communication purposes. Consequently, the purpose of teaching English has shifted from the mastery of structure to the ability to use the language for communicative purposes. Thus, the issues of whether learners would communicate in English when they had the chance and what would affect their willingness to communicate gain importance. Recently, a “Willingness to Communicate” (WTC) model was developed by McIntyre et al. (1998) to explain and predict second language communication. The objective of the present study was to examine whether college students who were learning English as a foreign language in the Turkish context were willing to communicate when they had an opportunity and whether the WTC model explained the relations among social-psychological, linguistic and communication variables in this context. The present study was a hybrid design that combined both quantitative and qualitative data collection and analysis procedures. First, a questionnaire was administered to 356 randomly selected college students in Turkey.
    [Show full text]
  • Origins of NZ English
    Origins of NZ English There are three basic theories about the origins of New Zealand English, each with minor variants. Although they are usually presented as alternative theories, they are not necessarily incompatible. The theories are: • New Zealand English is a version of 19th century Cockney (lower-class London) speech; • New Zealand English is a version of Australian English; • New Zealand English developed independently from all other varieties from the mixture of accents and dialects that the Anglophone settlers in New Zealand brought with them. New Zealand as Cockney The idea that New Zealand English is Cockney English derives from the perceptions of English people. People not themselves from London hear some of the same pronunciations in New Zealand that they hear from lower-class Londoners. In particular, some of the vowel sounds are similar. So the vowel sound in a word like pat in both lower-class London English and in New Zealand English makes that word sound like pet to other English people. There is a joke in England that sex is what Londoners get their coal in. That is, the London pronunciation of sacks sounds like sex to other English people. The same joke would work with New Zealanders (and also with South Africans and with Australians, until very recently). Similarly, English people from outside London perceive both the London and the New Zealand versions of the word tie to be like their toy. But while there are undoubted similarities between lower-class London English and New Zealand (and South African and Australian) varieties of English, they are by no means identical.
    [Show full text]
  • Discourses of Multilingualism, Identity and Belonging: the View of Arabic Bilinguals in the UK
    Featured Topic Journal of Social Science Education Volume 17, Number 4, Winter 2018 DOI 10.4119/UNIBI/jsse‐v17‐i3‐1774 Discourses of Multilingualism, Identity and Belonging: The View of Arabic Bilinguals in the UK Fatma Said University of York, UK Purpose: This sociolinguistic paper discusses the relationship between language and belonging from the perspective of Arabic‐English speaking bilinguals. It explores what knowledge of language(s) means for the minority language speaker and investigates the challenges, consequences and opportunities multilingualism poses for its speakers in a globalised era that is fraught with re‐imagining nationalism, country, security, loyalty, and belonging. The project reported in this paper aimed to (1) understand the symbolisms the Arabic language held for its speakers, (2) understand the ramifications knowledge of Arabic had for these bilinguals; and (3) explore how second generation Arabic heritage speakers define their identities and feelings of belonging to the UK. Method: Sixty‐two people took part in the project; data was collected through a short survey followed up by interviews that further explored issues of multilingualism, identity and belonging. Data from interviews and qualitative responses from the survey were analysed thematically in light of Ingrid Piller’s emerging linguistic social justice framework (Piller, 2016). Finding: The findings suggest that English and Arabic are equally important to speakers; additionally Arabic is highly symbolic for reasons of religion, family, and cultural ties. The results however, also point to the apprehensiveness speakers have in using Arabic in public because they fear that they may be deemed too different, weird, abnormal, dangerous, disloyal or untrustworthy (Tonkin, 2003).
    [Show full text]
  • Foreign Language Anxiety in an Intermediate Arabic Reading Course: a Comparison of Heritage and Foreign Language Learners
    Foreign Language Anxiety in an Intermediate Arabic Reading Course: A Comparison of Heritage and Foreign Language Learners Dissertation: Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University By Dima Alghothani, B.A., M.Ed Graduate Program of Education The Ohio State University 2010 Dissertation Committee: Dr. Alan Richard Hirvela, Advisor Dr. Mariko Haneda Dr. Keiko Samimy Copyright by Dima Alghothani 2010 Abstract This mixed-methods, qualitative dominant study investigated the issue of foreign language anxiety in an intermediate Arabic reading course. The first, quantitative phase of the study collected data from twenty-two students using the Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety Scale (FLCAS) and the Foreign Language Reading Scale (FLRAS) as well as a background questionnaire. The second, qualitative phase collected data from five participants: three Foreign Language Learners (FLLs) and two Heritage Language Learners (HLLs) via interviews, classroom observations, and participant journals. The nature of the anxiety that both types of learners experienced varied due to their differing backgrounds. Although the HLLs had lower scores on the FLCAS and FLRAS in comparison to the FLLs, they still experienced anxiety that was at times debilitating. Furthermore, the qualitative data shows that the low levels of anxiety that the HLLs felt may have been a disadvantage to them, as it prevented them from feeling a type of facilitating anxiety, associated with emotionality rather than worry (Scovel, 1978), that may have motivated them to put forth more effort and achieve what they were truly capable of. These findings reiterate the importance of qualitative data, particularly when examining a phenomenon as complex as foreign language anxiety.
    [Show full text]
  • Standard Southern British English As Referee Design in Irish Radio Advertising
    Joan O’Sullivan Standard Southern British English as referee design in Irish radio advertising Abstract: The exploitation of external as opposed to local language varieties in advertising can be associated with a history of colonization, the external variety being viewed as superior to the local (Bell 1991: 145). Although “Standard English” in terms of accent was never an exonormative model for speakers in Ireland (Hickey 2012), nevertheless Ireland’s history of colonization by Britain, together with the geographical proximity and close socio-political and sociocultural connections of the two countries makes the Irish context an interesting one in which to examine this phenomenon. This study looks at how and to what extent standard British Received Pronunciation (RP), now termed Standard Southern British English (SSBE) (see Hughes et al. 2012) as opposed to Irish English varieties is exploited in radio advertising in Ireland. The study is based on a quantitative and qualitative analysis of a corpus of ads broadcast on an Irish radio station in the years 1977, 1987, 1997 and 2007. The use of SSBE in the ads is examined in terms of referee design (Bell 1984) which has been found to be a useful concept in explaining variety choice in the advertising context and in “taking the ideological temperature” of society (Vestergaard and Schroder 1985: 121). The analysis is based on Sussex’s (1989) advertisement components of Action and Comment, which relate to the genre of the discourse. Keywords: advertising, language variety, referee design, language ideology. 1 Introduction The use of language variety in the domain of advertising has received considerable attention during the past two decades (for example, Bell 1991; Lee 1992; Koslow et al.
    [Show full text]
  • A Critical Period for Second Language Acquisition: Evidence from 2/3 Million English Speakers ⁎ Joshua K
    Cognition xxx (xxxx) xxx–xxx Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Cognition journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/cognit Original Articles A critical period for second language acquisition: Evidence from 2/3 million English speakers ⁎ Joshua K. Hartshornea,b, , Joshua B. Tenenbauma, Steven Pinkerc a Department of Brain & Cognitive Sciences, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Building 46, 77 Massachusetts Avenue, MIT, Cambridge, MA 02139, United States b Department of Psychology, Boston College, McGuinn Hall 527, Chestnut Hill, MA 02467, United States c Department of Psychology, Harvard University, William James Hall 970, 33 Kirkland St., Cambridge, MA 02138, United States ARTICLE INFO ABSTRACT Keywords: Children learn language more easily than adults, though when and why this ability declines have been obscure Language acquisition for both empirical reasons (underpowered studies) and conceptual reasons (measuring the ultimate attainment Critical period of learners who started at different ages cannot by itself reveal changes in underlying learning ability). We L2 acquisition address both limitations with a dataset of unprecedented size (669,498 native and non-native English speakers) and a computational model that estimates the trajectory of underlying learning ability by disentangling current age, age at first exposure, and years of experience. This allows us to provide the first direct estimate of how grammar-learning ability changes with age, finding that it is preserved almost to the crux of adulthood (17.4 years old) and then declines steadily. This finding held not only for “difficult” syntactic phenomena but also for “easy” syntactic phenomena that are normally mastered early in acquisition. The results support the existence of a sharply-defined critical period for language acquisition, but the age of offset is much later than previously speculated.
    [Show full text]
  • Practical and Theoretical Issues in the Study of Heritage Language Acquisition*
    to appear in the Heritage Language Journal in late 2011 Practical and Theoretical Issues in the Study of Heritage Language Acquisition* William O’Grady and On-Soon Lee, University of Hawai'i at Manoa Jin-Hwa Lee, Chung-Ang University Abstract A promising source of insights into heritage language learning comes from the broader study of the role of input in language acquisition. We concentrate here on the possibility that qualitative differences in the proficiency of heritage and monolingual language learners can be traced to a qualitative difference in the input available to each group. By examining a series of representative phenomena (case, differential object marking, and disjunction), we illustrate how shortfalls in experience can shed light on the many instances of partial acquisition and of attrition that are reported in the literature on heritage language learning. 1. Introduction The last several years have seen the growth of interest in the phenomenon of heritage language acquisition, which is characterized by an unusual pattern of exposure to the parental language. In the typical case, heritage learners receive ample exposure to the home language early in life, only to have that exposure end or undergo a dramatic reduction within a matter of years—often at the point where formal schooling begins. It is by now well established that children in this situation manifest linguistic deficiencies in the heritage language in a wide range of areas, including vocabulary (Polinsky & Kagan, 2007), gender classification (Polinsky,2008a),
    [Show full text]
  • Immigration During the Crown Colony Period, 1840-1852
    1 2: Immigration during the Crown Colony period, 1840-1852 Context In 1840 New Zealand became, formally, a part of the British Empire. The small and irregular inflow of British immigrants from the Australian Colonies – the ‘Old New Zealanders’ of the mission stations, whaling stations, timber depots, trader settlements, and small pastoral and agricultural outposts, mostly scattered along the coasts - abruptly gave way to the first of a number of waves of immigrants which flowed in from 1840.1 At least three streams arrived during the period 1840-1852, although ‘Old New Zealanders’ continued to arrive in small numbers during the 1840s. The first consisted of the government officials, merchants, pastoralists, and other independent arrivals, the second of the ‘colonists’ (or land purchasers) and the ‘emigrants’ (or assisted arrivals) of the New Zealand Company and its affiliates, and the third of the imperial soldiers (and some sailors) who began arriving in 1845. New Zealand’s European population grew rapidly, marked by the establishment of urban communities, the colonial capital of Auckland (1840), and the Company settlements of Wellington (1840), Petre (Wanganui, 1840), New Plymouth (1841), Nelson (1842), Otago (1848), and Canterbury (1850). Into Auckland flowed most of the independent and military streams, and into the company settlements those arriving directly from the United Kingdom. Thus A.S.Thomson observed that ‘The northern [Auckland] settlers were chiefly derived from Australia; those in the south from Great Britain. The former,’ he added, ‘were distinguished for colonial wisdom; the latter for education and good home connections …’2 Annexation occurred at a time when emigration from the United Kingdom was rising.
    [Show full text]
  • A Literature Review on Code-Switching
    1 Code-switching as a Result of Language Acquisition: A Case Study of a 1.5 Generation Child from China1 Yalun Zhou, Ph.D.2 Michael Wei, Ph.D.3 Abstract Despite individual differences, all bilinguals share the ability to act in their native language, in their second language, and to switch back and forth between the two languages they know (Van Hell, 1998). Chinese is the largest Asian American ethnic group in the United States. Their use of code-switching is an increasingly important issue in understanding their language choice and language development. This study on code-switching between a 1.5 generation Chinese child and her parents will add perspectives on the growing literature of Chinese American families, their language interaction and language development. Introduction There are several definitions for code-switching. Gumperz (1982 b) defined code-switching as “the juxtaposition within the same speech exchange of passages of speech belonging to two different grammatical systems or subsystems” (p. 59). The emphasis is on the two grammatical systems of one language, although most people refer to code-switching as the mixed use of 1 This paper was presented at the 2007 Annual Conference of Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL), Seattle, Washington. 2 Yalun Zhou, Ph.D., Assistant Professor, Director of Chinese Minor Program, Dept. of Communication and Media, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, [email protected] 3 Michael Wei, Ph.D., Associate Professor, TESOL Program Director, School of Education, University of Missouri-Kansas City, [email protected] 2 languages. Milroy and Muysken (1995) stated that code-switching is “the alternative use by bilinguals of two or more languages in the same conversation” (p.7).
    [Show full text]
  • The Critical Period Hypothesis for L2 Acquisition: an Unfalsifiable Embarrassment?
    languages Review The Critical Period Hypothesis for L2 Acquisition: An Unfalsifiable Embarrassment? David Singleton 1 and Justyna Le´sniewska 2,* 1 Trinity College, University of Dublin, Dublin 2, Ireland; [email protected] 2 Institute of English Studies, Jagiellonian University, 31-120 Kraków, Poland * Correspondence: [email protected] Abstract: This article focuses on the uncertainty surrounding the issue of the Critical Period Hy- pothesis. It puts forward the case that, with regard to naturalistic situations, the hypothesis has the status of both “not proven” and unfalsified. The article analyzes a number of reasons for this situation, including the effects of multi-competence, which remove any possibility that competence in more than one language can ever be identical to monolingual competence. With regard to the formal instructional setting, it points to many decades of research showing that, as critical period advocates acknowledge, in a normal schooling situation, adolescent beginners in the long run do as well as younger beginners. The article laments the profusion of definitions of what the critical period for language actually is and the generally piecemeal nature of research into this important area. In particular, it calls for a fuller integration of recent neurolinguistic perspectives into discussion of the age factor in second language acquisition research. Keywords: second-language acquisition; critical period hypothesis; age factor; ultimate attainment; age of acquisition; scrutinized nativelikeness; multi-competence; puberty Citation: Singleton, David, and Justyna Le´sniewska.2021. The Critical Period Hypothesis for L2 Acquisition: An Unfalsifiable 1. Introduction Embarrassment? Languages 6: 149. In SLA research, the age at which L2 acquisition begins has all but lost its status https://doi.org/10.3390/ as a simple quasi-biological attribute and is now widely recognized to be a ‘macrovari- languages6030149 able’ (Flege et al.
    [Show full text]
  • English in Australia and New Zealand
    English in Australia and New Zealand James Dixon, Narrative of a Voyage to New South Wales and Van Dieman’s Land in the Ship Skelton During the Year 1820 (1822) The children born in these colonies, and now grown up, speak a better language, purer, more harmonious, than is generally the case in most parts of England. The amalgamation of such various dialects assembled together, seems to improve the mode of articulating the words. Valerie Desmond, The Awful Australian (1911) But it is not so much the vagaries of pronunciation that hurt the ear of the visitor. It is the extraordinary intonation that the Australian imparts to his phrases. There is no such thing as cultured, reposeful conversation in this land; everybody sings his remarks as if he were reciting blank verse after the manner of an imperfect elocutionist. It would be quite possible to take an ordinary Australian conversation and immortalise its cadences and diapasons by means of musical notation. Herein the Australian differs from the American. The accent of the American, educated and uneducated alike, is abhorrent to the cultured Englishman or Englishwoman, but it is, at any rate, harmonious. That of the Australian is full of discords and surprises. His voice rises and falls with unexpected syncopations, and, even among the few cultured persons this country possesses, seems to bear in every syllable the sign of the parvenu. Walter Churchill (of the American Philological Society) The common speech of the commonwealth of Australia represents the most brutal maltreatment which has ever been inflicted upon the mother tongue of the English-speaking nations.
    [Show full text]
  • Fo'o Fganh Leesyu
    Volume 32 n Issue 2 n April-June 2018 fo’oekWjh’kl] fganh 18&20 vxLr]lEesyu 2018 Vishwa Hindi Sammelan 2018 Celebrating Hindi in all its glory STRENGTHENING ODISHA DIARIES MORE THAN SACRED FIND PEACE TIES WITH EUROPE EXPLORING KALINGA INDIA’s mosques YOGA FOR THE MIND UPCOMING EVents ACross INDIA DREE FESTIVAL The Apatani tribe of Arunachal Pradesh’s Ziro region celebrates this agricultural festival with traditional dances, folk songs and other cultural performances. WHEN: July 5, 2018 WHERE: Ziro, Arunachal Pradesh InDEPENDENCE DAY This year, India will observe its HEMIS FESTIVAL 72nd Independence Day. Grand One of the biggest festivals to be celebrations will be held at the Red organised in Ladakh’s monasteries, Fort in New Delhi. this commemorates the birth of Guru Padmasambhava. WHEN: August 15, 2018 WHERE: Across the country WHEN: June 23-24, 2018 WHERE: Ladakh, Jammu and Kashmir Image: nelive.com RATH YATRA This festival celebrates the journey of Lord Jagannath, Lord Balabhadra and Goddess Subhadra from the Jagannath temple to the Gundicha temple in Puri, believed to be His aunt’s house. WHEN: July 14, 2018 WHERE: Puri, Odisha CHAMPAKKULAM BOAT RACE AMARNATH YATRA The oldest snake boat race in the state Thousands of devotees from of Kerala, this kicks off the annual boat across the world undertake this race season on River Pampa. Massive challenging annual pilgrimage boats vie for victory as participants in Jammu and Kashmir to offer hum traditional boat songs. prayers to Lord Shiva. WHEN: June 28, 2018 WHEN: Till August 26, 2018 WHERE: Alappuzha, Kerala WHERE: Jammu and Kashmir FOREWORD The 11th Vishwa Hindi Sammelan (World Hindi Conference), to be held from August 18-20 in Mauritius, will bring together Hindi enthusiasts from across the world on a platform that honours the heritage of the language and takes it to the world.
    [Show full text]