The child makes pre-linguistic noises before he/she utters linguistic sounds as he/she does scribbling before writing. Though singing is not speaking as drawing is not writing, it helps production of linguistic sounds including Suprasegmental ones like rhythm. Nursery rhymes come in between pre-linguistic babbles and acquisition of language. Practice with nursery rhymes is a pre-school experience and excercise, and it prepares the child to be ready for schooling. The nursery rhymes are similar to pre-literacy skills of drawing to prepare the child for the school.
While there is growing children’s literature in Indian languages, much attention has not been paid to nursery rhymes. This gap is often filled by nursery rhymes in English particularly in urban middle class homes and this is encouraged in the English medium nursery schools. It is necessary for a child as part of her socialization process to experience and to learn sounds of her native language. This experience is the first step towards love for his/her language.
To counter the influence of the hotly sought English medium in the nursery and primary. schools, it is very necessary to provide good nursery schools in Indian language media. This will be more effective than legal measures. Nursery rhymes in Indian languages will be an important component of such nursery schools.
With these ideas in mind, the Institute prepares nursery rhymes in various Indian languages including tribal languages through workshops in which creative writers and teachers of language and linguists participate. They have found it rewarding experience as we have. With great enthusiasm and devotion and concern for the child and for the language, they created literally hundreds of rhymes in these workshops. The entire collection will serve as a repertoire or resource book for the teachers and parents to draw from. We also expect that short selected books of rhymes with attractive visuals could be brougth out be placed in the hands of the children themselves. We also hope that audio cassettes will be prepared to accompany the printed book.
We will be happy if these rhymes are sung in homes, in schools and in the streets. This will be a significant step for planting Indian languages in the young minds for them to grow.
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