Profe José
Professional Teacher
Hindi or English?

New Government in India wants to promote the usage of Hindi over English in all Indian states.  There's some resistance to this in southern India, where Hindi is less spoken or understood.  What is your opinion?

Jul 9, 2014 10:31 PM
Comments · 10
3

Not even America has English as an official language. It was also the language of the true Americans' oppressors and murderers. 

 

Oh those British!  ha ha ha ha. 

 

India has to come up with something to unite it. There are so many different languages! Right now it is English that is doing the uniting. English is taught in the schools and is the language of business and all things official so people know it. Hindi would mess up the apple cart. Why pick one local language over another? English is so different than the other languages, and so pervasive at this point, that it isn't a threat. People aren't threatened by languages they already know, but forcing everyone that doesn't speak Hindi to learn it; it makes sense that there would be resistance to that. 

 

I think one of the true native languages should be the official language of the United States, who cares what everyone already knows. How about Navajo? Navajo as the official language of the US. I think that would be fun. :D

 

 

 

 

July 12, 2014
3

Actually, the resistance is not because Hindi is less spoken, it's due to political, cultural and historical reasons. They would rather English be the official language than learn Hindi. From their point of view - they've been getting along just fine for thousands of years without Hindi. The cultural reason is that the south Indian languages are not derived from Sanskrit while Hindi is. Language is part of peoples' cultural identity and any attempt to "take it away" will be met with resistance. They see the imposition of Hindi as an attempt to dilute the importance of their language. The historical reason is that 'Hindi-speaking' kings once controlled a very large part of northern India, extending up to present day Afghanistan. The only part which they could not conquer was a portion of south India under the control of the Chola dynasty. The Chola dynasty gave rise to a south Indian identity that, in part, celebrated their triumph over the 'Hindi-speaking' kings.

July 10, 2014
3

This is very similar in my country, the Philippines. English is the medium of instruction or the language used to teach in school - Mathematics, Science, Social Studies and everything except Filipino, however I didn't come from a Filipino/Tagalog speaking city, we spoke Cebuano, the 2nd most spoken Philippine language. I think in places such as Manila where Filipino is the main language, Filipino should be the medium of instruction while in my city and other places where they don't speak Filipino as a regional language, they should teach in the native language. However, most of the Filipinos that don't speak Filipino as 1st language actually learn it as a 2nd language and often are fluent in it.

 

So that is my point, in India's case where not every Indian speaks and understands Hindi, I think they should teach them in their regional language and neither Hindi or English.

July 10, 2014
2

So-called official language is very hard to define if the government does not enforce too much. There could be another alternative to allow more than 2 official languages in a country. Every official document is listed in more than 2 languages to my knowledge. As for regional languages, schools can engage professional teachers to conduct these lessons more.

July 10, 2014
1

Official language is a pretty disturbing problem to some country where there are ethnic problems.

July 18, 2014
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