The French have been bitter ever since English replaced French as the must-know language for anyone wanting to do business abroad or have an easier time while traveling. Have the winds of fate turned again, though? Might English soon be replaced by something…else? From the Washington Times:
A British language expert predicts that “Hinglish,” or Indian English, will overtake standard English as the most common spoken form of the language globally.
Already one-third of Indians, over 300 million, are speaking the language, according to linguist David Crystal. With the Internet spreading English more rapidly than ever, and Indians at the forefront of the IT revolution, Indian English is spanning the globe and taking over from British and American forms, Crystal told a lecture audience at the British Council in New Delhi Saturday.
This is most disconcerting. I hardly know any Hindi and my English is not the greatest either. Will there be a place for me in the new world order?
“Language expert”, huh?
If anything it will be the reverse. Indian IT success is largely driven by the extent to which they can speak American English and communicate with clients in the US + UK.
Thus you see stories on classes of Indians learning American accents…but somehow I doubt the reverse will happen.
This “expert” lives in a fantasy world.
300 million is a major exaggeration — 70-80 million English speakers is probably more realistic.
And many of those are just functional speakers.
I think the original story appeared in The Times of India, which automatically means its suspect. Its good for shock value though.
A few things:
Crystal referred to it as Hinglish, but I’m assuming he means Hindi-accented English, which is just another variety of English English, or British English, or American English.
I haven’t been to India, but I’ve lived in Ghana, where the language hierarchy is similar (British English historically on top), and most speak at least a bit of English (some don’t speak any African languages at all), with varying degrees of accent from their respective mother tongues. While a lot of these folks have seen enough American television to produce a convincing American accent, most don’t speak with one to go about their day to day lives. It’s a sociolinguistic thing — people tend to speak like those they identify with.
That said, Hinglish is mutually intelligible with other varieties of English — the importance of this is that there’s no real reason to change your accent if you’re understood well enough. (And generally only the people who plan to get into more global or international work will tend to dampen their accent, not always consciously either.) Folks might use more ‘American’ accents if they have to interact with Americans, but at home or anywhere else, they tend to speak however they like. In other words, those IT folks, unless they feel like distinguishing themselves from family and society in general, probably won’t lose their Hinglish accent in all areas of their life unless they consciously work on it.
Crystal was just pointing out that the world’s largest group of English speakers will have a Hindi accent, based on the fact that India as a nation has one of the largest populations in the world, and that a lot of these folks speak English. He didn’t say that people would have to start actively learning it (why would you need to learn an accented version of something you already understand?), nor did he say that it would require knowing Hindi.
“300 million is a major exaggeration — 70-80 million English speakers is probably more realistic.
And many of those are just functional speakers.”
I agree.
Second gc. The success of Indian IT is because they speak English that is understood better by the US.
I know of two people who have quit their day jobs to set up voice/accent training schools for the call centre aspirants.
I don’t see Hinglish being the global language. Come to think of it, Hinglish doesn’t even dominate India.
There’s Tamlis, Mallish, and many other variants.
An snippet from a post I made somewhere else a while ago:
Not sure about this ‘bitterness of the French’. I live here, – they’re definately less bitter about the dilution of their empirical influences than are say the British.
I should add that the utility of certain languages is obviously tied to the geographic spread of these languages. E.g. Hindi isn’t much use as a first/second language outside its ‘native’ home (the subcontinent, minus some possible minor exceptions…). English as a first or second language is unquestionably the most useful…
I should add that the utility of certain languages is obviously tied to the geographic spread of these languages. E.g. Hindi isn’t much use as a first/second language outside its ‘native’ home (the subcontinent, minus some possible minor exceptions…). English as a first or second language is unquestionably the most useful…
Absolutely. The number isn’t really as important as the mindshare.
Despite their large number of speakers, neither Chinese (+ variants) nor Hindi is going to supplant English as the language of the internet or the scientific community. The capital investment in English is absolutely enormous (keyboards, perl scripts, papers, etc.).
The only thing that could pull English away from the throne would be a successful international campaign of Chinese conquest similar to that of the British Empire. Even then it would take decades…
Though, there is a strong, sustained effort by a few people to make Tamil net friendly. And already, there are more than 30 tamil blogs. Plus 20-30 utf tamil fonts.
And not to mention, A conference on web and tamil everyyear is growing in popularity. I think there’s good scope for tamil on the net. But definitely, English will top others for a loong time to come
It suggest that inorder to make hindi more common amongst the foreigners we will need to change the default hindi script with the european scripts not just english but french, german, russian, portugese, spanish, italian and greek.
The script will be written in common european language and spoken in hindi. This will help foreigners to learn and understand hindi easily. Also, it will help hindi speaking people to understand european languages.
Also it will be a meger of all european language. This will help the whole human family to come together and discard this language barrier once and for all.
Language was created for communicating with other human being and not to differentiate.
Inturn if all the languages become common then this will improve the business of all countries.
Just like how greek symbols are used for scientific terminology we can include some of the characters that belong to other european language and develope a common human language.
Also this will reduce the headache of students who have the burden of learning different language.
Thus, I suggest to make a common european script which is spoken in Hindi and called as Hinglish and discard that traditional age old devangiri script and further more improve the standard of India and stylise Hindi.
By creating Hinglish written in Roman script and speaking in Hindi we can not only stylize Hindi but also unite North and South India difference about the national language. North wants Hindi and South wants English.
Hindi in Modern Era by Raj Shekhar Toronto, Canada January 22, 2005
“Kyon Na Hindi Men Likhen?”
This question reminds me of the following lines from Ghalib’s Poetry: “Kyon Na Firdous Men Dozakh Ko Mila Len Ya Rabb! Sair Ke Liye Thodi Si Faza Aur Sahi !”
These days, this generation communicates in mixed Hindi and English or to say “Hinglish” and it is up to the individual to maintain the purity of the language. Of course, it depends on the individual’s choice or comfort with the language to express his or her inner feelings and views in English or Hindi medium. Someone might find it like nothing but “Heaven” or “Hell” or somebody would wish to merge the heaven with hell in order to write Hindi in Roman, the way as one writer recently suggested. But it would be like an illusion to have fresh air in Hell, for many people who believe in keeping the Hindi language as a powerful source of medium and our Indian identity. Incidentally, as far as our lingua franca is concerned, writing in the Roman script was first suggested by Subhash Chandra Bose in his first presidential address to the Congress in 1938 session. In his opinion, distinction between Hindi and Urdu was artificial one, separated by the script and Subhash Bose proposed mixing Hindi and Urdu as spoken by large portions of the country as common language. He was aware that people in India would strongly favour either Devnagri or Arabic/Urdu script and he was aware that there would be no provision for exclusion of any scripts. He suggested to adopt Roman script to unite the both sectors as well as to him a common script would bring India closer to the International community. Like many younger generations of Hindus and Muslims, at that time he was obviously impressed by Kemal Pasha of Turkey who, as a dictator, had forced his modern visions and policy of secularism as well as using the Roman script as he wanted his country to “elevate” to European culture in looks and behavior. It is worth mentioning that even after so many years, the European Union has not included Turkey in its family group of nations of Europe! In my opinion any language takes its own time to develop and grow. Although, it is not possible to bring out in translation the beauty of any language, using script other than its own would not limit in expression to a certain extent. However, slowly it will open the door to corrupt or deface the language itself. The English language adopts foreign words and behaves as if it belonged to their own lingua franca, which makes it a very smooth in usage and ends up in increasing its popularity as well. Similarly, to improve Hindi for non -Hindi speaking population or expand its uses in day to day work one should work to simplify it by adopting new words if possible but not at the cost of butchering the language itself. I am not a linguist or any professional writer in any language, but what I see in Hindi (books and print media), it has gradually adopted English style numbers/figures, punctuation marks like period/dot(.) instead of (I) as purnaviram. In the name of “modernizing Hindi”, many Hindi lovers like myself feel kind of horror when we hear the adoption of the Roman script now. Probably no literature is richer than the Sanskrit. However, we know that a simpler form of language from Sanskrit emerged in successive generations like Pali, Prakrit, and many more in our history to present day Hindi language. Over five hundred years back Sant Tulisidas was ridiculed by then Sanskrit Scholars for not writing his RAMCHARITMANAS in Sanskrit. However it is known to everybody the wide acceptability his Ramayan in the minds and hearts of millions of people even today, because it is written in simple language than Sanskrit. Who knows what future holds for modern Hindi? But any encouragement to replace the script will be eventually a fatal one as without its own script any language is not a language but just a dialect. We are fortunate in belonging to India “a rainbow nation” where there are so many equally beautiful and rich languages beside Hindi being shared by millions to communicate expressions and feelings and all these literature vibrate with vigor and have a place in the hearts and the minds of millions. One should take further steps, not to just keep Hindi alive but promote its beauty in younger generation so that we don’t find Hindi in the history books in the future or let this be spoken like like “Bombaiya Hindi” as spoken by the actors in so called several “Hindi” movies like Munna Bhai MBBS- Bole to roman men likhenga aur apun bolenga bhi to apun ko aisa lagta hai bhaay, hindi ko Vat lag jayenga-kya bolta hai? As they say English rulers left India but the English- ness remained in India. Another way to look at this angle would be to quote Mr. Atal Bihari Vajpayee as he jokingly said: “English rulers were not driven out of India, rather they fled India to save their English language from the Indians.” The length of time that English has been in India, its importance and its range both socially and geographically, its place in sociolinguistic link could not be ignored. An estimated over 30 million people regularly use English (to be more accurate-Indian English) language in India; making India the third largest English Speaking country in the world. It is not easy to separate the use of English in India from the general multilingual flux. In addition to the great variety of mixed and adapted usage of hybrids, many words from other languages are constantly drawn into English and today English and Hindi are the link languages in a complex multilingual society in India as well as many countries with population originating from the Indian sub-continent. Keeping these facts in mind, it is very important that there should be no more pressure on Hindi language to drop its Devnagri script which is like a backbone of any language to hold and keep the language alive.
Comments:
I read the comment/reply letter by Raj Shekhar on the issue of writing Hindi in Roman script which was an eye opener for me. Coming from non- Hindi speaking background and learning Hindi myself, I realized and learned so many facts in a such short but informative letter. Other readers should also learn so many good points as made by the writer against using Roman script. – Olivia King 1/22/05
I have just read this article and felt compelled to comment. This is an excellent article – the poignancy of what is happening to Hindi is well expressed and with sensitivity. To not be able to use one’s mother tongue – in particular Hindi – well is often looked upon as a sign of being advanced. However, a person from a Hindi speaking background who cannot communicate well in Hindi in the script and punctuation system that is germane to the language has lost connections with his/her roots. It is no surprise that such people do not even know their adopted “mother tongue” English well. Please develop these ideas further – they are invaluable. – Raghbendra Jha 2/17/05
Chinese but only because of the number of people who live there. English is not so difficult and the USA speaks that language.
Well, I have been thinking of this for a long time.. Sanskrit script is beautiful, but if we write Hindi in Roman script, more and more people would be able to learn HIndi. Whenever I want to learn any foreign language, the first thing I tend to find out, whether it is written in roman script or some other. Coz if any language is written in Roman script, atleast one can get something by reading it. And, true, this would unite India, and not only them, but as proposed during independence, by some leaders, our national language should be Hindi mixed with Urdu(Hindustani), which is argubably the language spoken by most people in India, and this should be written in Roman script. This would satisfy the Hindus, Muslims, Christians, North, South, every1!!! In recent years, so many languages have been converted to Roman script, for example Bahasa Malaysia(Malay), Bahasa Indonesia, Turkish, these were written in Arabic script, but now changed to ROman script, so why cant we do that in India… thanx guys
Indians are sensible and considerate though their considerations have been exploited but days have brightened and so world will have to consider hinglish
Hey, 1. First of all, I think by Hinglish, Abhi is referring not just to the accent.
Most of the English speaking Indians learn English in school (Not everyone, in fact most of them don’t, ends up working in a Call Center, so please don’t have this mis-construed notion (by generalizing 🙂 )…
Tamil is not gonna over-take Hinglish or Hindi for that matter, though it does appear that Tamil speaking people are the only ones who don’t want to speak Hindi (India’s National Language (1st language), though we have a huge list of National languages as such, but Hindi was the one chosen for the medium of communication in the whole nation and not just some states.
Numbers + spread dictates everything. So in a way, the “Expert” isn’t really making a not-so-believable statement. But yes, it’s a bit difficult to fathom, but he is in no way unjustified in his reasoning…
Hinglish will never overtake English … what a bullshit !
Some language must overtake English. It is too difficult for poor to learn.