Will English kill off India's languages?

[Splurgenxs]

Credit has to go to India here. It is not uncommon for Indians to be multilingual (three or four languages). Most Indians are at least bilingual. Indians in most parts of the country learn Hindi & English at school, they also learn their mother tongue at home, then they also learn the regional language of the state they are living in. Hence, an ethnic Gujarati kid born & raised in Mumbai will in most probability know Gujarati (from his home), Marathi from growing up in the state, as well as Hindi & English in school. It is truly remarkable, & Indians have to be given a lot of credit for that. Ethnic identity is very important in India, in Pakistan, it isn't as important as national identity is. In Pakistan, most people are bilingual or 'trilingual' as well; but speaking four languages isn't as common.

But I have observed that once someone learns a new language, it has some affect on that person's proficiency in another language(s). For example: while Hindi is the official language of India (& in most parts of India), most Indians are not as fluent at speaking it, & a similar case can be made about English. My point being: while it is good to learn as many languages as you can (I am a fluent speaker of English, Urdu-Hindi, Punjabi, Bhojpuri, & to an extent, Gujarati); if you know Hindi in India, you can get your way around using it in most parts of India. However, if you are not fluent in Hindi (or English) at all, & only know Gujarati; then you will have a hard time getting around in most parts of India outside Gujarat. Which explains why Gujjus like to stick around with one another wherever they go. Some languages hold more 'weight' than others, & it is better to be fluent in a few 'important' languages than not being very fluent in a lot of 'less important' languages. My personal opinion.

there are no down sides to being bilingual.

in my personal experience ..it take only about 3 to 4 month for a person to re familiarize whit a language they kno but might have lost its grasp.

i personally know 4 languages and write 3...

to add to tht
Being bilingual may delay Alzheimer's and boost brain power | Science | The Guardian

 

[53fd]

well,thats how it works man.

I would say apart from English/Hindi

Learn One language from each place.

Marathi-must learn serves well,even thouhg only in mumbai.

Learn Tamil/Telugu

Bengali

Try Punjabi but not so easy and forget about Haryanvi,even the Jats forget it and re-invent it often.

In India, you can survive on two languages. Hindi & English. Hindi is spoken everywhere in North India, & to a limited extent in South India. If you are in some part of Tamil Nadu or Karnataka where Hindi is not spoken, most people there will speak English, so you can survive on English there.

 

[Polemos]

What's the problem with regional bias? Dr. Sun Yatsen was Cantonese and he picked Mandarin, the language of Beijing in the north, to be the standard dialect. You pick the one that has the most existing speakers, duh.

Anti-Hindi agitations of Tamil Nadu - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

[Manas]

Indian writer in English expect VS Naipual and few others rest are boring.

To naive english speaker ,our best enlish writing would across as align and funny and its style as archaic .

Its extremely difficult to be creative in foreign language. You always produce second best stuff.

Even those with great command over English language easily misses the fluency in of a native speaker .

Last but not the least ,Booker awards given to promote english language in india just like India girl were crowned miss univer/mis world at one time by cosmetic multinational companies .

 

[53fd]

there are no down sides to being bilingual.

in my personal experience ..it take only about 3 to 4 month for a person to re familiarize whit a language they kno but might have lost its grasp.

i personally know 4 languages and write 3...

to add to tht
Being bilingual may delay Alzheimer's and boost brain power | Science | The Guardian

In my opinion, while it certainly has its advantages, I still maintain a person loses certain fluency over other languages when learning a new language, especially in a later stage of life (not childhood). It's better to be fluent in 2-3 important languages, than be less fluent in 4-5 less important languages.

 

[Shabz Nist]

I think English ought to be made the national language and compulsory in all schools. Most people are already comfortable with it, it is relatively easy to learn , to understand AND,

it is also extremely versatile.

 

[Manas]

In India, you can survive on two languages. Hindi & English. Hindi is spoken everywhere in North India, & to a limited extent in South India. If you are in some part of Tamil Nadu or Karnataka where Hindi is not spoken, most people there will speak English, so you can survive on English there.

Anyone you are most likely to interact understands Hindi in south india ,thogh may admit it or can speak it themselves.

Not most people of south India can speak English but only educated ones can ,many with rather heavy accent.

 

[RezRoll]

Then Mandarin Chinese gets you access to the most people. Only 700 million people speak English. 1.3 billion speak Mandarin Chinese.

I doubt that figure.

Sounds more reasonable if you told me that was the figure of people who spoke English as their first language. Anyway, I'm pretty sure English is the language spoken in the most amount of countries, be it as first or second language.

I've tried learning Mandarin, but it was a tad too tough. My mother encouraged me to learn Mandarin, she said it'll be useful in the future, unfortunately I was too young to take it seriously then.

 

[Star√ation]

In Korea, there are billions of dollars invested into English education, yet English skill is very low.

In China, English is introduced in middle school, is a test subject in high school, and is a widely used requirement (though not by all universities, including famous ones like Zhejiang University) as a graduate requirement. English skill is still extremely low, with 0.2% of people being even considered "speakers".

Same for Japan.

East Asian countries have very low English rates and I'm proud of that. It shows that we are not being brainwashed by the Anglo Saxon fascist regimes.

Perhaps, the biggest obstacle preventing East Asians from English fluency is their symbolic writing system.
But nationwide English fluency also has its all pros and cons, for example: mastering English help you in approaching the latest in science and technology but English speaking people are just to easy to be influenced by Western culture and ideology.
In Vietnam I can see quite a few English speaking Vietnamese will pay visit to temple in the New Year as our tradition had it instead of celebrating Valentine Days, Christmas Day...
It turned out that people who did their best in preserving and practicing our traditions were the ones had least contact with Western culture.

 

[53fd]

About China, I've noticed that even though Mandarin has gained a lot of prominence in China (& is spoken by pretty much every Chinese person today), when you go to Southern parts of China, you will find a lot of other dialects pretty much incomprehensible with Mandarin; like Cantonese, Hakka, Hokkien, Tibetan & others. I believe Mandarin has its dominating presence in North China.

 

[harpoon]

Then Mandarin Chinese gets you access to the most people. Only 700 million people speak English. 1.3 billion speak Mandarin Chinese.

Eventhough I am not sure about the nos, English speakers are spread throughout the world while 1.3 billion Mandarin speakers are confined to a single country.

 

[Subramanian]

Anyone you are most likely to interact understands Hindi in south india ,thogh may admit it or can speak it themselves.

Not most people of south India can speak English but only educated ones can ,many with rather heavy accent.

yeha but in TN,even people in small cities with bad accent can help u out.

 

[Manas]

But I wonder why India chose a Western language, as their official language of Government, instead of an Indian one.

Because we don't want to kill off our regional languages at the cost one national language thats not the native language in partsof india . Its actually to safeguard our 25+ regional languages

We don't have any national language in India .

At the center we have two official language ,its Hindi and English . Both get equal priorities as many parliamentarians aren't proficient in English.

The province level its regional language that get highest priority and then its English . Hindi and English is used as spoken language everywhere to communicate among two different language speakers.

 

[Star√ation]

Exactly the case in India. Like Singapore, India too has a varied ethnic mix. English may have been a colonial hangover at one time, but it is now the language of choice for us. One more reason for the adoption of English is that there could could be no allegation of regional bias in preference for a particular native language.

The case for Singapore and India were quite different.
Singapore is a young, small island nation.
India is a large, old civilization whose history has been settled down for thousands of year.
No one will wonder a damn why English are official language using in Singapore or S.Africa but everyone here wonders that how such a big country rich in their own tradition and long history like India could easily adopt English as such level.
Suppose that it was colonial legacy but India is now an independent country. When a country regain independent, it will often try to eliminate all traces left behind in colonial era which is considered as sorta humiliation.

 

[GURU DUTT]

The case for Singapore and India were quite different.
Singapore is a young, small island nation.
India is a large, old civilization whose history has been settled down for thousands of year.
No one will wonder a damn why English are official language using in Singapore or S.Africa but everyone here wonders that how such a big country rich in their own tradition and long history like India could easily adopt English as such level.
Suppose that it was colonial legacy but India is now an independent country. When a country regain independent, it will often try to eliminate all traces left behind in colonial era which is considered as sorta humiliation.

Many thanks brother for your kind words about my motherland Thanks Again . now about the second part you might not beleve it but thats the main indian tredishion to adopt foriegn practises & slowly making them there own like we adopted pardha from foriegn muslim cultures though india is the land of-Svayamvars(husband/spouse by girls/boys choice) & kamasootra(sex edycation) hope you got my point , Thanks Again .