Why Should Hindi be/not be national language of India?

[Vilander]

Its a good idea toward unification.

 

People should be willing to make small sacrifices for the sake of homogeneity. 

 

Path of least resistance should be to make a Hindustani language. Add Hindi/Urdu/Bengali unique terminology from southern languages and come up with an easy script ( based on Hindi). And push for formal adoption.

 

 

[coffee_rules]

13 minutes ago, Vilander said:

Its a good idea toward unification.

 

People should be willing to make small sacrifices for the sake of homogeneity. 

 

Path of least resistance should be to make a Hindustani language. Add Hindi/Urdu/Bengali unique terminology from southern languages and come up with an easy script ( based on Hindi). And push for formal adoption.

 

 

Hindustani is another name for Urdu, Nehruji. 

[Muloghonto]

2 hours ago, Vilander said:

India should use English script. simple. people who want to speak in English can speak and write in English. People who want to speak regional languages can speak in it, and while writing officially use English script just for lolz and have translators translate the sound that comes out while reading the script. it will not reduce the efficiency of Indian babus by much anyway. 

Roman script. 

Roman script sucks as a writing tool. It does not enjoy either benefits of a pictographic script ( like Simplified Chinese), which is universal legibility upon literacy, neither does it enjoy the benefit of an alphabetic script, namely, being phonetic.  Hangol ( the Korean writing system, which looks like symbols but is actually an alphabetic script) or virtually every north Indian language ( dunno about Southie script per se, but would imagine so) are way, way more suited to phonetic communication.

 

Infact, my primary reason for considering English and most European languages as inferior is due to their scripting issues. 

[Tibarn]

22 hours ago, Muloghonto said:

I don't know if you know this or not, but Shin Huang Di ( aka Qin Shih Huang) actually standardized Chinese symbolic script and terminated several alphabet based Chinese scripts. The rationale presented behind a pictographic script, at that time was that since China had many languages, it doesn't matter what language you speak, when the script is pictographic. The symbol for a house or tax or man, is the symbol for it,  regardless of how you pronounce it. Ergo, everyone would be able to communicate via writing (so long as they are literate) and there is no excuse for not following government edict (so long as you are literate), regardless of what language they spoke.

Can't say i agree with the idea per se, but it does bring up interesting questions re: script. 

Chinese and Japanese, (also a few others), are different in that way. The script itself conveys meaning, unlike most other languages' scripts. That is actually beyond the scope of what I suggested, as India doesn't have a major symbolic script. 

 

One could always invent a new symbolic Indian one, but I think that is more complicated than what one would initially think. It could also cause the problem of people forgetting their "Mother Script' 

Edited April 5, 2019 by Tibarn

[Muloghonto]

14 minutes ago, Tibarn said:

Chinese and Japanese, (also a few others), are different in that way. The script itself conveys meaning, unlike most other languages. That was beyond the scope of what I suggested, as we don't have a major symbolic script. 

 

One could always forge a new symbolic Indian one, but that may cause the problem of people forgetting their "Mother Script"

The biggest problem with pictographic script, is that it is cumbersome and hard to read in hand-written form. One has to memorize hundreds, if not thousands of symbols to have a meaningful reading ability and writing so many symbols with hands lead inevitably with discrepancies with reading them. I see & hear about this a lot amongst the Chinese here, where a lot of the Chinese friends i have, at some point or another have complained about this aspect of reading their 'grocery list from missus' ( of course, this is rarity now because of cell phone sent text lists). 

[Tibarn]

Curiosity leads me to this Koschan for those who are so pro-English as lingua franca: please articulate the advantages English would afford on a sector-wise level in the economy of India. It would be interesting to see the articulation of this view!

Edited April 5, 2019 by Tibarn

[Muloghonto]

23 minutes ago, Tibarn said:

Curiosity leads me to this Koschan for those who are so pro-English as lingua franca: where is the evidence that it actually affects the economy in any major way?

 

It would help to take the conversation forward if the proponents of this theory could show exactly which macro-sectors and micro-sectors this advantage would manifest in. I guess I am not asking for evidence per-se, as I think it's apparent it doesn't actually exist, but it would be interesting to see the articulation of this view!

I'd argue that the service sector advantage India has, over China, is predominantly due to having 200-300M proficient speakers of English in our country, a number that is much, much smaller in China. All the tech support, medical support, graphic media & design jobs in India that are interfaced with western companies/extensions of them, i'd say is largely due to this English competency over China issue. 

 

[Vilander]

On 4/4/2019 at 8:33 AM, mishra said:

My argument, is there will be better and easier information sharing, if politicians and their mouthpieces stopped opposing Hindi.

this is why everyone should lead Tamil. 

[Vilander]

11 hours ago, coffee_rules said:

Hindustani is another name for Urdu, Nehruji. 

after they make the new hindustani, urdu will be urdu only. 

[nikred]

Roman script. 
Roman script sucks as a writing tool. It does not enjoy either benefits of a pictographic script ( like Simplified Chinese), which is universal legibility upon literacy, neither does it enjoy the benefit of an alphabetic script, namely, being phonetic.  Hangol ( the Korean writing system, which looks like symbols but is actually an alphabetic script) or virtually every north Indian language ( dunno about Southie script per se, but would imagine so) are way, way more suited to phonetic communication.
 
Infact, my primary reason for considering English and most European languages as inferior is due to their scripting issues. 

Writing telugu in Roman script is a nightmare. A simple word turns painfully long when typed in English letters.
When I try to type a simple thought in telugu using English letters I get tired midway, clear everything and end up typing in English.

Sent from my Redmi Note 4 using Tapatalk

[Lannister]

16 hours ago, someone said:

Irrespective of who wins this 2019 election, there is gonna be increasing voices from all parts of country on separatism based on different religion, languages. Should we even remain as one big nation in gonna be our biggest question next decade.

No such things will happen in a democratic country. This #HindiImposition, along with it's instigators, will soon be thrown into gutters and then everyone can go back to minding their own business. 

[Tibarn]

6 hours ago, Vilander said:

this is why everyone should lead Tamil. 

Tamil and Telugu were the 2nd official languages of Haryana for some 40 years,

https://indianexpress.com/article/explained/haryanas-south-connect-when-it-made-telugu-second-language-in-school-5570917/ 

[Tibarn]

Need more answers to my koschan.

 

 

Also need answers the other way around, why Hindi should be lingua franca in economic terms.

 

After all the answers, I can make a summary of everything in one post!

[Moochad]

@Tibarn I don't care which Indian language is lingua franca, and definititely am against English as a lingua franca. I think we should learn in mother tongues primarily at school levels. That includes ones like Tulu which language warriors fail to mention.  

 

This was my post in another thread.

 

Quote

•  

A link language of 'North' and some South Indian language as link language of 'South'  is doable. Someone in another thread before also proposed a link script for India, which could be even better than a link language.  

  Quote

And we have seen the advantages of knowing, understanding, speaking the language. Why should this extraordinary privilege be denied to rest of the country? I want every Indian to know the language, no need of full proficiency but a basic understanding.  

I don't really agree with the benefits of English specifically. We have heard this for years, yet our economy has been left in the dust by countries with far less English speaking population. It is more of a canard. 

 

That is not to say that I am anti-English either. It is a good language and gives us access to knowledge written in that language as well. If people have the option to learn it and choose to, then it is fine by me. 

 

My problem comes from that it has been shown by a UN study that students learn best in their MTs, so we should enable more of this education on all levels in India.

 

During my medical education, it was apparent that the making of English as de facto medium of medical education was more of a benefit to certain people only, not to Indians in general. I am lucky that I grew up middle class, but all my batchmates were basically upper class and middle class people, often from families with historical wealth. It was rarer to find someone from humble or rural background make it in.  Even of those who qualify from Indian language-medium, many of them struggle when they get into Medical school due to their relative weakness in English language. Many in the physician community with whom I discuss these matters agree that this is a contributing factor to our shortage of physicians in India. 

 

When most of the talentpool of India speaks a single Indian language or speaks mostly Indian languages, then I think our higher education needs to facilitate these populations more than we do now.   

Here is a paper which describes my view

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4117137/

My 2 paisa. 

 

The sob stories that English language proponents present are their own fault!  These are issues of a broken system they created and they try to pass it off on some problem with or lacking in Indian languages or Indian language education themselves or some inherent benefit to English. This is ridiculous. 

 

The people with the so-called English language advantage were people who always had access to English language education, and then they tailored the higher-education policy to favor people who learn in that medium. The demand for English would collapse the moment higher education stops treating it as some sort of requirement or sign of competence.  

 

When children learn in the language they speak at home and the language their family speaks at home, the same language their ancestors spoke for centuries, then suddenly for higher education, English is a requirement? There are countless stories, you can follow Sankrant Sanu for his documentation of this, of absolute topper students who don't get to go into their dream profession because they don't have English skills or have lesser marks in these exams. This is a joke.  That some people think you need to learn English to serve as a doctor shows the ignorant mentality we have been fed as India. In any given day, I hardly have to treat 5% on a 'good' day, of patients who even understand English to any discernible level . This can be seen from their in-take forms.  

 

There is nothing in the field of medicine which can't be taught in Marathi, Gujarati, Telugu, and so on. There is a reason that Japanese, Chinese, Germans learn in their own languages. They allow students the option to learn English if they so desire, it is not a requirement. There is nothing wrong in that being the case in India as well.  

 

English doesn't have an actual benefit in any economic sector outside of some parts of service sector. These sectors where India has gotten an advantage; there is no denying this. But outsourcing of work from the West and such services as call centers and medical tourism can dry up as India shifts from a lower-middle income country to a middle income or higher income country. This is simple logic. We aren't going to remain poor forever, knock on wood, and the low cost labour services we provide likewise will become uncompetitive in the near future. The education system should not be centered around thinking this will be the case. 

 

The majority of people who people in the service sector will 'service' are what? Indian. A banker in Bengal will mostly deal with clients who speak Bengali. A doctor in Maharashtra will deal with patients who speak Marathi. A small part of the service sector where we take advantage of some of our populace's English language skills is not descriptive of the sector as a whole.  

 

 

 

Edited April 6, 2019 by Moochad