In the latest episode of Channel Arbitrary’s Nepal Reacts, the hosts Avash and Ishan asked some of the former Miss Nepal title winners and the current Miss Nepal pageant participants to recite the Nepali alphabets, Ka, Kha, Ga, Gha. And as some of them were able to quickly recite all the consonants, rest of them had quite a tough time trying to remember them. After all of them were done trying, they were asked why exactly could or couldn’t they remember those alphabets. The most common answer was, “As we don’t really study them as we reach higher grades, we tend to forget them.”

Then Rojina Shrestha, a Miss Nepal 2017 contestant, said, “We’re forgetting our national language.” And another contestant, Kritika Giri, said, “If we still remember the English alphabets clearly, why can’t we remember the Nepali alphabets that we learned pretty much at the same time.” And that was the answer that hit us, that hit us hard.

Now think about this; you wouldn’t feel embarrassed to tell anyone that you don’t remember Ka, Kha, Ga, Gha because you’re pretty sure nobody will judge you for that. You don’t know Nepali alphabets? Not a big deal at all. Now tell us, can you say the same about the English alphabets? No, not really. Because you know you will be judged and the people would be like, “What? ABCD pani aaudaina?”

So the question that is raised is, are we really giving English language more importance than Nepali language? The truth is, English is now not just a language in Nepal but has become the scale to measure someone’s ‘class’. Give it a thought.

With some funny edits, this episode has become even more hilarious. We know that it was meant to be a fun episode, but still, it was important to talk a little more about this thing. Anyway, watch the episode here.