India is highly anglicized to the extent that English is given much more importance than the respective regional or semi-national languages(in the collective conscience?). It’s the medium of instruction in all national higher education institutes, one needs to learn it to get a well-paying job and often not being able to speak English is looked down upon. Sadly, I’ve seen people judge intelligence on the ability to speak English.
Since India is huge and diverse, English acts as a non-partial standard medium of exchange. I mean pick up people from two random states even if they speak multiple languages, they might not have an Indian language in common, so talk shifts to English(though I’d say Hindi is strong competitor about 60-70% of the country speaks it, but still ~500million people wouldn’t understand it).
Even though I know 3 (maybe 3.5, yours truly recently started learning اردو after he was unable to read signboards in Hyderabad) languages, I am most comfortable in writing and reading in English to an extent that sometimes I have to put an effort to read Hindi or Telugu. Almost every European/East Asian country has resisted adopting English. For example: In France, courses happen in French, all textbooks and materials are in French, it was and still is predominantly used commercial and workplace communications. I cannot imagine this happening in India, it’d be difficult if classes and material in IIT Bombay were in Marathi, or I’d have to use Kannada at work in Bangalore. 28 states and about the same official languages would make it a nightmare for anyone who wants to study/work in different part of India.
We conveniently shifted to English, which works, you just have to learn one language. But does this impact the culture?…I feel it does, it makes me feel disconnected, I haven’t yet read a book Hindi/Telugu but many in English. I do realize the hypocrisy of blaming the system. I’d have to take time out and put in conscious effort, which I am. I recently started out with ghazals/poems. Reading them I realized that there are some thoughts and feelings that simply cannot be translated or expressed.
One always needs an incentive to learn a language and frankly I see none beyond conversational levels for Hindi or Telugu. It might change say if I develop an interest in Sufi Mysticism after one day I realize सब मोह माया है (everything is an illusion). Until then, mortal me would need a higher understanding in English to read, understand and interact at a professional level.
My love for WYSIATI
I love the fact that most Indian languages follow “what you see is all there is” wrt written systems. There’s only one way to pronounce a given word and writing a given pronunciation. That way our written systems are more logical. It’d be a nightmare learning sounds with English letters. Also, all consonants in a row (say क ख ग घ) retain the same base mouth structure making it easier to learn.
Sanskrit started out with laying formal basis, its word/sentence forms are mathematical and it’s highly structured, but its too much effort to start off, Hindi made it more informal. Here’s some सुभाषितानि for the soul.
पृथिव्यां त्रीणि रत्नानि जलमन्नं सुभाषितम् ।
मूढैः पाषाणखण्डेषु रत्नसंज्ञा विधीयते ॥
( Earth has 3 treasures food, water, and wise/good words/deed, only the ignorant considers pieces of stones as gems )
English simply doesn’t have the required letters to represent different conversational sounds, due to this one needs to learn how to say each and every word which is illogical[1] and too much memory intensive[2]. The only benefit I see is that it’s easier to type.
[1] ex: c in cucumber vs cider, t in tamarind vs the. Although english does have common word roots.
[2] If efficient God would program the human speech he’d pick Sanskrit. It’d be very hard to start off.
Linguistic purity?
Another thought that comes to my mind is Indian languages strongly translating words instead of merely loaning, Iceland has done that. But then languages aren’t static, they flow, they mingle. Hindi has so much Persian/Arabic influence that one cannot distinguish between loaned words or pure. I’d be singing मित्र मित्र न भवति instead of दोस्त दोस्त न रहा
Purity cannot be enforced.
Since English is the lingua franca in higher education, it becomes difficult to express/translate ideas in other languages. So, ironically as one gets more and more educated, one loses touch with their mother tongue.
Language on Screens?
It was a whole new world when my I asked my Chinese friend if I could check email on his phone(mine had no network). Everything was in Chinese and it was difficult to even navigate. This is a part of East Asian culture, I have seen this with Japanese and Korean people. Could a similar thing happen in India with Hindi and/or regional languages? What I theorize is that until recently(in a pre-Jio world) most Indians accessing internet knew English so they quickly adapted to the English world. And since there was not much content in Hindi/Telugu etc they preferred the former and this started something like a cycle. Also, habits tend to become sticky, I had briefly changed my phone’s language to Hindi and it was painful, needless to say, I reverted after a day.
Pro’s
Adopting English has helped us in many ways, our IT industry thrives in part because Indians speak English and could connect well with the western world. It also helps when visiting other countries to know English, it works in urban-areas everywhere(except maybe France where people show visible mild hostility). If China replaces it and in our lifetimes it will, we might see a Chinese intermediary, I’d start this post with a ni hao. It’d be fun a learn a tonal language.
So, does India need to strongly enforce language?
iamonlyhuman 