Will English kill off India's languages?

[Developereo]

so quality (US accent) and low cost makes it a better option in the call centre market

According to the article, Filipinos are more expensive. The big draw, as you mentioned, is the familiarity with American culture.

As for accent, Filipinos have a strong accent; nobody would mistake them for an American although, with their grasp of American culture, they could probably pretend to be a recent immigrant.

But in the data category of the BPO business
India still makes it mark

That's correct.

 

[Roybot]

Telstra uses Fillipino call center these days. I can't understand a thing they say

Luckily Telstra uses LogMein, where these call center operators can log in remotely to any computer and fix the problem.

 

[Subramanian]

I am telling you my experience with South Indians over the last 10-15 years. They don't like to speak Hindi unless absolutely necessary. That's what they told me.

That would be only Tamils.There are lot of them in Australia,the ones who have not stepped foot outside TN ever.

 

[Developereo]

Interesting side note: In the early days, Texas held a referendum to chose an official language. English won narrowly at 51% over German, 49%. Today you'd be hard pressed to find many Texans speaking German.

 

[Shardul.....the lion]

For my chinese friends, this is list of indian languages with number of native speakers

Language Native Total

1. Mandarin 845 million (2000) 1025 million
3. English 328 million (2000–2006) —
4. Hindi-Urdu(Hindustani) 240 million (1991–1997) 405 million (1999) 490 million total speakers
6. Bengali 181 million (1997–2001) 250 million
10. Punjabi 109 million
14. Marathi 75 million
15. Telugu 70 million
16. Tamil 66 million

Other languages (30-50 million)
Gujrati, Malyalam, Bhojpuri, Awadhi, Kannada, Maithili, Oriya and Marwari

So I dont think so English can ever kill indian languages.

 

[untitled]

Interesting side note: In the early days, Texas held a referendum to chose an official language. English won narrowly at 51% over German, 49%. Today you'd be hard pressed to find many Texans speaking German.

Not just Texas..... The referendum was also held by the newly independent states too

 

[MINK]

Is there something special about that?

In China, people will know their local dialect (Shanghainese for example), the national dialect (Mandarin), and often a non-Chinese language like English as well.

Anyway, there is nothing wrong with standardizing one language, most countries do it anyway.

In America/Britain/Canada/Australia etc.... if you want to participate in the educational system, you will have to speak English.

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

Do you know the difference between dialect and language? 'true_indian' said most Indians are multi-lingual that DOES NOT mean they speak 2-3 dialects of a same language (as you mentioned ). That MEANS they speak 2-3 different languages. We have 1652 languages in India and you can't compare it with Chinese which merely have less than 10 varieties.

 

[53fd]

True. It is all Chinese anyway.

If you ask a Mandarin or Cantonese speaker what language they are speaking, the answer is the same. They will both say, "I am speaking Chinese."

It makes sense for everyone in a nation to be able to communicate with each other in the same dialect.

I believe at the end of the day, every Chinese speaks Mandarin, & speaks it well. Even the Uyghurs in Xinjiang speak Mandarin. It is good to have a common medium where everyone can understand each other.

 

[Tshering22]

it is clear that any threat to Indian languages has the potential to provoke a violent backlash.

That's the answer. There you go; answered to his own question. I doubt our languages are going to be in any danger than English itself is these days with so many regional and international "versions" coming up mixed up with local words. Though my Denzongkha is weak, I am strong in both mother Indian language Sanskrit and official language Hindi. Can understand very, very basic Tamil language (thanks to my two tamil friends), can understand other dialect-Hindi local sub-languages.

So I doubt that our languages will ever "die". Unlike rigid western languages, ours keeps evolving into new form. For lakhs of years, we spoke Sanskrit, which again refined from time to time in ways we may not fully know. And today it is called "regional languages". Tomorrow it may evolve into something more refined or maybe simply return back to Sanskrit. The world is after all like the Dharmachakra itself.

 

[harpoon]

I believe at the end of the day, every Chinese speaks Mandarin, & speaks it well. Even the Uyghurs in Xinjiang speak Mandarin. It is good to have a common medium where everyone can understand each other.

English serves that purpose in India very well. Go on...you can accuse of being 'colonial slaves' Blah Blah..but as the saying goes "If it works, why fix it".

 

[Tshering22]

I believe at the end of the day, every Chinese speaks Mandarin, & speaks it well. Even the Uyghurs in Xinjiang speak Mandarin. It is good to have a common medium where everyone can understand each other.

More than 85% of Indians understand Hindi, thanks to Bollywood over a period of years. I have been to Karnataka, Kerala and Hyderabad where almost everyone speaks and understands Hindi. Even Chennai has some sizable local Hindi speakers as I have noticed personally. Here in Sikkim, we speak better Hindi than many metropolitan cities. Arunachalis speak fine Hindi as well. Only a couple of places where it is politicized is slightly in Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, Assam and Nagaland. Apart from a few handful pockets, almost everyone understands Hindi.

After our country opened up, there was a great deal of mixing among people of each state, because of which majority Indians found Hindi as easiest of all derived-languages as a common medium to communicate.

Though all regions of India has different regional accents of Hindi, we still understand each other pretty well (except maybe really interior parts of the country where no exposure is seen).

Heck! even political lunatics like Raj Thackeray spoke in pure Hindi! . What to talk of anyone else!

 

[The HBS Guy]

Survival of the fittest.

That's nature's law. That's how everything in this world works.

If something is not fit enough to survive, it will perish...this is true of species, countries, empires and even languages.

 

[gpit]

...

we have many languages..we are not as cruel as chinese to force one language on all people...each of our language has huge history and it will survive for eons to come..

If you want to be mean… You are much crueler than the Chinese: the Chinese only forced one official language to all, but you forced more than one official language to all your people.

Back to the topic.

Should India founding fathers possess less slavery mentality, they should enforce Hindi as their official language, ditch English. That doesn’t mean local dialects cannot be spoken in various occasions.

If an Indian can master English to conduct his parliamentary debate, why can’t he master Hindi to do so?

If an Indian can communicate with people from various parts of India with English, why can’t he learn Hindi, and communicate in Hindi?

He is an Indian anyways.

I think British colonists’ brainwash through education is very successful.

 

[gpit]

More than 85% of Indians understand Hindi, thanks to Bollywood over a period of years.

...

That's good news!

You really have to ditch English as your official language. That is a shame!

That is a national shame!

Because India is not N. America, not Australia. You have your own stuff.

 

[gpit]

Language is tool to help people communicate. Nothing more nothing less. The more languages you know these days the better.

India has a lot of other things that holds it together.

Wrong!

lanuguage is much much more than just a tool, especially for an official language of a nation.

Lanuguage is a part of your culture, your tradition, how you are influenced and how your believe you are or belong to.