Valare Upakaram, Google

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Indic_screenshot.jpg Via the “web clips” which perch above my 5,090 unread GMail messages, news that Google’s email is now down with some brown languages:

Until now, there hasn’t been a good way to send email to friends and family in Hindi, my native language and their language of choice. That’s why I’m happy to announce a new feature for Gmail that lets you type email in Indian languages. If you’re in India, this feature is enabled by default. If not, you’ll need to turn it on in the “Language” section under Settings. Once enabled, just click the Indian languages icon and type words in the way they sound in English — Gmail will automatically convert them to their Indian language equivalent. [link]

3410684214_542408482e_m.jpg Oh, if only there were some way for me to type Malayalam words the way they sound in English to me…and have GMail (or anything else, for that matter) automatically convert them to the correct Malayalam-in-English spelling equivalent.

For example, sometimes while I’m writing, blogging, tweeting or commenting on your Facebook crap, I feel the compulsive need to refer to the side dish I loved most as a small child: a fried, potato-y concoction which I’d spell “oorelkarunga merehkwerty or in a similarly butchered fashion.

Do you know how that shiz is actually spelled?

urulakizhangu mezhukkupuratti

Yeah (Thanks for the correction, sumithar!).

Unfortunately, when I’m trying to pronounce some of these words internally, so that I can sound them out slowly in order to spell them awkwardly, I hear them the way I did when I was four, which is neither helpful nor accurate. Just try and use a search engine to look for a correct spelling when Malayalam spellings are so wacky, and by wacky, I mean REALLY DIFFICULT.

For example, if you have Hindi selected, “namaste” will transliterate to “नमस्ते.” We currently support five Indian languages – Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, and Malayalam, and businesses and schools using Google Apps should see this in the coming weeks. [link]

My father always said it’s not lady-like to gloat, but after seeing four Dravidian languages on a list of five total, I’m gloatin’. 😉 Blame my traumatic college days, when almost everyone was of North Indian descent, and the only brown languages I heard were Punjabi or Hindi– even from the handful of other Southie kids! All that aside, this feature sounds pretty cool to me. Like GMail wasn’t already great enough…

127 thoughts on “Valare Upakaram, Google”

  1. This is a really great application. I can’t wait for it to be available in google talk, too. My productivity will surely increase 5-fold.

    And that’s not to mention how good it feels to suddenly be able to speak 4 dravidian langauges at the click of a button. 🙂

    But more seriously, it might be unfair, but it sometimes bothers me that groups specializing in developing Indian computing consistently ignore Urdu. I know its much easier to develop software for related scripts (hence bhashaindia’s gujarati, hindi, panjabi, etc), but at the same time, it seems that part of the point is to make technology and information accessible to all the people of India, including those that do not speak English. If we concede that, then there is hardly a group that needs more attention than Urdu speakers (and Kashmiri, Sindhi, and so on). The vast majority of India’s official languages can be conveniently typed using microsoft bhasha, and now google, software, but it doesnt look like anyone is even thinking about TRYING to extend their reach to Urdu, even if its number greatly outstrip those of say, konkani. Or am I being unfair?

  2. It will only take a few weeks to touch type using the default utf layout (vowels on the left, consonants on the right), but it has the virtue of not having to guess the how to spell and you can type in multiple languages (the keyboard layout for kannada is the same for telugu/mallu/hindi etc.).

  4. I’ve used variations of these tools but the Malayalam alphabet has never lent itself to easy transliteration. Given there are 4 variants in each of the ka, cha, da, tha and pa sounds it’s difficult to figure out which combination of English letters to use.
    But I was pleasantly surprised to see that nja converted to the first sound in the Malayalam word for “I” and nga to the last sound in mango. Can’t quite get the alternate spellings drop down to work on a reliable basis- seems to show up when I try to backspace.

    btw, anna, you’ve spelt potato the tamil (thamizh) way- it’s urulakizhangu (note the missing i before the k). Of course the pronunciation is different too- no native tamil speaker can pronounce the ‘nga’ (or the ‘nja’) sound in Malayalam 😉

  7. sorry i’m mistaken it will not convert it into malyalam in english but malayalam.

  10. Of course the pronunciation is different too- no native tamil speaker can pronounce the ‘nga’ (or the ‘nja’) sound in Malayalam 😉

    is this really true? e.g. what are some examples of the words that exemplify these sounds?

    anna, i couldn’t help but notice the fact that all 4 main south languages were included. but i guess that was bound to happen, given the high IT representation..

  11. replying to 10 ak Well, as I said, the malayalam word for “I” written in English as njaan is the first stumbling block. Tamil simplifies this to naan. Words like manjal (yellow/turmeric), manju (mist/fog) etc are pronounced by Tamil speakers as if the “j” was actually the English j sound. Well manju doesn’t exist in Tamil, they say ‘pani’ instead.

    Maanga, I’ve already spoken about…The rhyming word thenga, where the ‘g’ is pronounced by Tamilians like a hard ‘g’ is another example.

  12. Responding to 9, SM can implement this feature in Malayalam for sure, because a lot of the transliteration code is open source. It was developed by Cibu, who is now with Google. He is very helpful, get in touch if you want to fiddle around with this.

    On 11, another Malayalam sound people find difficult it “zha” as in kozhikode, it is pronounced with the tongue position similar to “sha”, but making the tongue go kinda drunken.

  13. urulakizhangu mezhukkupuratti pic is mouth watering Anna…add to that the malayalam from google..makes a good dinner.

  15. They should have labelled it as HINDI/NEPALI/PUNJABI or just DEVANGARI SCRIPT because these north Indian languages are all written in the same way.

  16. @Chaitan #9: Wouldn’t that defeat the purpose of having one forum for everyone to discuss stuff?

  17. @15: the algorithm for suggesting Devnagari characters is more complex than just a simple mapping. For example, try typing “daal” and “danda” which produce दाल and डंडा. It is based on the language Hindi, not on Marathi or Nepali.

    For searching, they have a Google Suggest in Hindi, Bengali, Gujarati, Kannada, Malayalam, Marathi, Tamil, and Telugu, which is linked from http://labs.google.co.in.

  20. My father always said it’s not lady-like to gloat, but after seeing four Dravidian languages on a list of five total, I’m gloatin’. 😉

    I guess the south indian techie stereotype is true.

  21. //urulakizhangu mezhukkupuratti//

    u ru La i kiza ng ku me zu k ku pu ra t ti in Malayalam = ഉ ര� ളൈ കിഴങ�ക� മെ ഴ�ക�ക�പ�രത�തി

    u ru La i kiza ng ku me zu k ku pu ra t ti in thamiz = உ ர� ளை க� கிழங�க� மெழ�க� ப�ர ட� டி

    ( thanks to: http://www.higopi.com/ucedit/Tamil.html)

  23. not a spam….I have always used this website http://www.quillpad.com for typing Indian languages. It is very easy to use, let’s you choose different words and pronunciations, very good transliteration engine..shall I say better than the Gmail version…they have a mobile version too

  26. sumithar – i was referring more to the statement you made that tamilians are incapable of pronouncing these sounds. agreed, these sounds do not appear in tamil for those particular words (although there are many similar words in tamil that use nja with a small ‘n’ instead of the large ‘N’) but of all desis, from what i’ve seen, it is the tamilians who manage the best when speaking in malayalam.

    anna – those potatoes do look amazing – so good i might even make some today and eat it with some thayir sadham! but i was curious – is mezhukkupuratti a particular style of cooking vegetables like e.g. thoran?

  27. @18: Thanks!! Thats incredible, even in my wildest dreams I didnt think they could come up with something that would put in the ain ع without having to type anything special!

  28. They should have labelled it as HINDI/NEPALI/PUNJABI or just DEVANGARI SCRIPT because these north Indian languages are all written in the same way.

    Punjabi is written in the Gurmukhi script (in India) or in the Shahmukhi script (a variant of the scipt used for Urdu) when written in Pakistan (although Punjabi is very rarely used as a written language in Pakistan in any case).

    As for Urdu, Kabob Sahib, I’m sure Pakistani-based entities (both governmental and non-governmental) are working on Urdu software and computer applications and so forth? No?

  29. @28: Punjabi is rarely used as a written language in Pakistan? What makes you so certain of this? I happen to know for a fact that there is a rich tradition of literature in Punjabi in Pakistan and literature is still being written in Punjabi.

    Also, Urdu is just as much an Indian language as anything else. I don’t understand why just because it’s Pakistan’s official language, that implies that when working on transliteration tools in Indic langauges, Urdu should be left out.

  30. As for Panjabi literature in Pakistan…as I understand it, Panjabi writing in Pakistan is up and coming at the moment. Of course, there has always been poetry, story telling (قصہ گوئی), even television in Panjabi, but its hard to deny that it really isn’t used for writing all that much in Pakistan. You aren’t going to find any Panjabi newspapers, only a smattering of magazines, and not too many novels. but you are right, there are now plenty of works coming out in Panjabi, and this is sure to increase over time. But if you are going to the Panjab expecting to see it being widely written, you are in for some disappointment.

    On the second point, Kabir, I agree with you, and was going to say the same thing to Amitabh. It is Urdu’s terrible luck, and that of the Urdu speakers of India, that this has become such a convenient line for people who are not interested in investing in Urdu – or who have a political/ideological issue with it. The mutilation of Urdu is one of the saddest stories of partition and independence, and this kind of thinking only perpetuates that. Amitabh, you are right, though, that Urdu is being developed in Pakistan. This Urdu dictionary (http://www.crulp.org/oud/default.aspx/) is just incredible, and there is nothing to rival it in ANY Indian language that I have seen. (Unfortunately, the site was left unfinished – it ran out of funding.)
    But there are two issues here: firstly, when anti-Pakistani McCarthyism is still rampant in India, it is not that simple to ask India’s Urdu speakers (and governmental employees in, say, Kashmir) to start downloading and relying on Pakistani produced software. Secondly, when there are HUGE corporations (I’m talking about Google and Microsoft here) working on “Indic languages,” there is really no reason for Urdu to be so sidelined.

  31. I found this out a couple of days ago in my GMail acct – its really really helpful. I can’t write hindi but sending emails in hindi to family in india and to my parents is really useful! At first I thought you type in the english word and it would translate and write it properly.. but then i realized that you have to actually spell the hindi word out in english.

  32. It is Urdu’s terrible luck, and that of the Urdu speakers of India, that this has become such a convenient line for people who are not interested in investing in Urdu – or who have a political/ideological issue with it. The mutilation of Urdu is one of the saddest stories of partition and independence, and this kind of thinking only perpetuates that.

    I am not shedding any tears for Urdu. Urdu speakers have been able to convince the whole of Pakistani Punjab (which has more people than native urdu speakers in India) to adopt Urdu as their national language. So Urdu will be just fine. Urdu would have always been the ugly cousin to Hindi in India anyway so its death is not a big deal especially as its flourishing in Pakistan.

    As for India, Urdu will become as prevalent as Sanskrit in the next 40 years in India. Written Urdu will in fact completely die off before 2050. The under 30 generation of Muslims in North India cannot read or write Urdu. They dont learn Urdu in schools, dont read comic books or magazines in Urdu, dont read newspapers in Urdu so they are not going to learn written Urdu. Outside madrassas in UP/Bihar, Urdu is not taught in schools. With time (hopefully) the percentage of Muslims kids going to Madrassas will fall down below 1%. (I believe its around 5% right now).

    I am much more interested in the status of spoken Urdu in India. Every time I go to India, more and more native Urdu speaking Muslims are usually more and more Hindi words. I think with the explosion of cheap cable tv and accessibility to Hindi newspapers, the lingo is changing from Urdu/Hindustani to Hindustani/Hindi. I think it will be interesting to see how long will it take for Urdu to completely die off as a spoken language in India.

    when anti-Pakistani McCarthyism is still rampant in India, it is not that simple to ask India’s Urdu speakers (and governmental employees in, say, Kashmir) to start downloading and relying on Pakistani produced software

    There is no nefarious conspiracy to keep Urdu down in India. The market place is speaking on Urdu and its really as simple as that. Btw, the Kashmiris in the Valley dont speak Urdu. They speak Kashmiri. If they live outside the valley, they will speak Punjabi.

  33. I don’t understand this constant identification of Urdu as a “Muslim” language. Languages don’t belong to any one religion. Urdu has a long history in India and during its heyday both Muslim and Hindu poets wrote some great poetry in the language. Firaq Gorakhpuri is one hindu poet that comes to mind. Muslim poets also used the imagery of Radha/Krishna in their poetry. In fact this whole division of one language (Urdu/Hindustani) into two (Urdu and Hindi) only occured under the British at Fort William College. Of course, then partition and independence led to a greater seperation. Urdu in Pakistan became more Arabicized and Hindi in India became more Sanskritized.

    And if Urdu is dying in India, how do you explain the continuing popularity of ghazals and poets like Ghalib (Jagjit and Chitra sing Ghalib comes to mind). I take lessons in Hindustani music and have often met Indian people who like singing Ghazals and who ask my parents the meaning of words in Urdu.

    Urdu is just as much an Indian language as anything else. It’s not a “Muslim” langauge. It’s this kind of political thinking that will unfortunately lead India to lose a valuable and beautiful part of its cultural heritage.

  34. Urdu is just as much an Indian language as anything else. It’s not a “Muslim” langauge. It’s this kind of political thinking that will unfortunately lead India to lose a valuable and beautiful part of its cultural heritage.

    I am not suggesting that Urdu is a Muslim language. However, the people in India who write in Urdu and read Urdu are almost all Muslims. Of course there are Hindus who read/write Urdu in India just like there are Hindus in India who read/write French or German.

    For Urdu to be a viable language in India, you would need either schools where the medium of instruction is Urdu or where Urdu is taught as a second language in otherwise English/Hindi schools. There is no demand for that from Urdu speakers in India. In the end as I said before the market place will speak. Urdu will always remain an option for the enthusiasts as will be German or Chinese but to sustain Urdu at any other level will require governments in states like U.P. to mandate the teaching of Urdu in schools. Most people want to send their kids to schools where the medium of instruction is English so the only places where that can happen is the Government run schools where the medium of instruction is Hindi. I guess you could offer Urdu as a second language there. It will be foolish to have schools where the medium of instruction is Urdu as the kids who come out of those schools will not be able to function in the society.

    I think what you might be failing to realize is that the Urdu speakers in India dont really care about preserving Urdu. They want their kids to get educated and get good jobs. Teaching them Urdu will sure help them in reading Ghalib without translation but that doesnt help you buy a nano.

  35. Kabir: Here is a Status Report on Urdu in India. Be careful that people who identify themselves as Urdu speakers does not translate into people who can actually read or write Urdu.

    From the report: This deliberate and steady linguistic genocide has crated a situation when children of Urdu speaking families cannot communicate with or write to their parents and vice versa and reached a point where the younger generation cannot even speak its mother tongue at home or with the family.

    Thus, Urdu faces the prospect of becoming an ethnic language as far as Hindi-speaking States are concerned. Soon it will be limited to those whose parents take special pains to teach Urdu by sending them to local Maktabs and Madrasas or by arranging private tuition at home.

    Leaving aside the hyperbolic ‘genocide’, it mirrors what I have been saying.

  36. Well part of the problem with Urdu was that the whole thing became very politicized. Urdu used to be a comprehensible language for hindi speakers. Try listening to the news in Urdu now. It’s impossible to understand because it is so arabized. Of course hindus went down the same road and totally sanskritized their news. But as pafd notes, the market will speak. Aaj Tak emerged a few years ago and it is purely market driven and does not bother to conform to any ideology with respect to how sanskritized their hindi should be. The only problem with market driven forces is that they end up catering to the lowest common denominator and do not care about other standards. So it is not enough to just use urdu words without the rest of the attitude. My ideal is the language as spoken by say Begum Nawazish Ali (which is the only Pakistani tv I’ve seen).

  37. Paagal,

    I agree with you that Urdu speakers in India generally don’t care about preserving Urdu. They want their kids to get good jobs, which means achieving fluency in English. The same situation exists in Pakistan as well. The children of the elite go to English-medium schools and then hopefully abroad for college. In fact, I probably know more about and show more interest in Urdu poets like Ghalib and Faiz than my cousins who grew up in Pakistan do. But, market forces aren’t everything, and I feel perhaps government or some cultural entity needs to take some action to make sure that part of India’s heritage does not die simply because there is no market demand for it.

    Divya (# 36) is right to point out that part of the problem is the politicization of the languages. The Urdu used on PTV now is much more arabicized than it used to be and Hindi on Doordarshan is probably much more sanskritized. But then you have the Hindustani used in Bollywood which is a language understood by people in both India and Pakistan.

  38. But then you have the Hindustani used in Bollywood which is a language understood by people in both India and Pakistan.

    Majority of north Indians speak Hindustani – which is a mix of Hindi, and Urdu.

    More so, Hinglish – a mixture of Hindi, Urdu, and English. You will surprised that people with no formal language use small english phrases, and lots of words in north India very often.

    The written Urdu script in India maybe on decline, but the spoken language as a whole is quite strong.

  39. For Urdu to be a viable language in India, you would need either schools where the medium of instruction is Urdu or where Urdu is taught as a second language in otherwise English/Hindi schools. There is no demand for that from Urdu speakers in India. In the end as I said before the market place will speak.

    Nice thread. From what I’ve read, it–Urdu– is the medium of instruction in the well-attended Deobandhi schools. As a matter of fact, the students have no other skills except Urdu, Persian and Arabic.

    Urdu is alive and well in India–albeit in a bastardized fashion. For instance, I am trying to re-learn Hindi. I am doing this through Bollywood on Youtube and google news in Hindi. What I believe I am learning is Urdu not Hindi. If I wanted to learn Hindi sans Urdu, I would have to listen to the dialects–the Meera bhajans (in Braj bhasa), some Bhojpuri movie or something. Bollywood Hindi is more Urdu than Hindi with English thrown in here and there. The language wars on Youtube tell the story.

    Kabir:

    But then you have the Hindustani used in Bollywood which is a language understood by people in both India and Pakistan.

    I’m not so sure. I don’t understand the Urdu words but I do the Hindi words.

    Ajeeb daastaan hai yeh Kahaan shuruu kahaan khatam Yeh manzilein hai kaun sii…

    When I was going through the lyrics, I had to look up daastaan, manzilein–the Urdu words that is.

    I remember a conversation with a Lebanese. As is usual in Francophonia, he was exhorting me to learn French. He then said, everyone should know English, French, Arabic–that will cover the entire world. It was a unique perspective. What about Chinese? Hindi? Large numbers of people speak those languages too. What happens when you travel to China? Will you speak in Arabic? So when people say, oh yes, in India we do this or that–they mean they do this and that. I learned Hindi as a child. I never learned words like dastaan and manzilein. My mother’s family settled in Lucknow and Delhi a long time ago (they’re actually from the south) so Hindi could as well be my mother tongue. And I’ve never heard these words.

  40. The written Urdu script in India maybe on decline, but the spoken language as a whole is quite strong.

    I think that will change too. With every successive generation, the spoken Urdu will incorporate more and more Hindi/Sanskrit words reflecting the popular culture of Hindi newspapers, cable tv and comic books.

    Aaj Tak emerged a few years ago and it is purely market driven and does not bother to conform to any ideology with respect to how sanskritized their hindi should be.

    So what kind of Hindi do they use?

    In fact, I probably know more about and show more interest in Urdu poets like Ghalib and Faiz than my cousins who grew up in Pakistan do

    Thats an important point too. You are obviously the Pakistani version of Amitabh. (Amitabh the SM commenter).

  42. blockquote>Urdu is alive and well in India–albeit in a bastardized fashion. For instance, I am trying to re-learn Hindi. I am doing this through Bollywood on Youtube and google news in Hindi. What I believe I am learning is Urdu not Hindi. If I wanted to learn Hindi sans Urdu, I would have to listen to the dialects–the Meera bhajans (in Braj bhasa), some Bhojpuri movie or something. Bollywood Hindi is more Urdu than Hindi with English thrown in here and there. The language wars on Youtube tell the story.

    The language wars on Youtube are really funny and disturbing at the same time. Urdu speakers try to claim “Hindi” film songs as Urdu and Hindi speakers claim the opposite. In the end, why should it really matter? The song is beautiful in any case. And as we have been mentioning, those songs were written in Hindustani, so that a majority of people could understand them. If you are producing commerical cinema, you would want to appeal to as broad an audience as possible.

    I’m suprised you were unfamiliar with words like “dastaan” and “manzil”. I thought they were pretty common words.

    If you read the Wikipedia article on Urdu, it tells you that Urdu and Hindi are standardized registers of Hindustani. Linguists classify them as basically the same language, sharing most of the same basic grammar and vocabulary. Wiki also says that both Standard Hindi and Urdu are standardized registers of Khariboli. To me, the main difference seems to be Hindi and Urdu are written using different scripts and the Hindi uses more Sanskrit vocabulary while Urdu uses more Arabic and Persian vocabulary. It’s mostly a political move by certain sections of Indian and Pakistani society to deny the common heritage and basis of both languages.

  43. Popular North Indian lingua franca …………an ad for Aaj Tak (cable channel)

    It is Hindustani/ Hinglish – some examples in the ad, Awaz (voice in Urdu), Sorry (English)

  44. The Urdu script which is not of Indian origin will die down. Urdu laguage which itself is Indian will survive. Now that urdu may not be same as Pakistani Urdu. It will have less number of persian/arabic word. And anyway there is no definitive line which separates Hindi with Urdu other than the script. Why cant the laguage North India speak loan some arabic words and still call itself Hindi? Aajtak uses tons of words which are of persian/arbic origin as well of Hindi origin. And thats the language most north Indians speak at this time irrespective of their religion.

  45. The Hindi/Urdu debate is quite interesting. I think of Urdu/Hindi as the same language stretched across a spectrum. Somewhere in the middle is the street Hindustani spoken in North India, and that is the language used by the popular news channels and in films. The extremes of the spectrum are pure Sanskrit at one end and Persian+Arabic on the other. I speak Hindi and Urdu quite well, and when speaking with Pakistanis, I just slide down the spectrum, and use more Persian words. With other people, say a pandit in Haridwar, I might have to Sanskritise my language. Ghalib’s poetry was heavily Persianised. Not so for others, eg. Meer and Nazir Akbarabadi. As for the script, it is a political issue. One of my friends from Lucknow (incidentally a Brahmin) is an accomplished Urdu poet, but didn’t know the Urdu script for a long time. PAFD, don’t worry, there is plenty of interest in Urdu in India, specially in the Awadh region. It is not likely to die out any more than Hindi. Just go to any railway station in UP, and look for Urdu pulp fiction.

  46. I’m suprised you were unfamiliar with words like “dastaan” and “manzil”. I thought they were pretty common words.

    My folks are the last of the brown sahibs. What I know about India and Indian culture has come second hand–from books and now the internet. I’m trying to make amends. The hindi I leaned even then was textbook hindi. No one in our social circle would have been caught dead speaking a “vernacular”. So I never really got the opportunity to learn the “street language”.

  47. Of course there are Hindus who read/write Urdu in India just like there are Hindus in India who read/write French or German.

    Not the same experience at all, e.g., I can tell (without dwelling on it for a nanosecond) when I’m speaking what i believe is Hindi and when I’m speaking broken French, whereas I find that when I’m among Pakistani friends, they will tell me I’m speaking nothing but Urdu when I think I’m speaking totally in Hindustani.

  48. My folks are the last of the brown sahibs. What I know about India and Indian culture has come second hand–from books and now the internet. I’m trying to make amends. The hindi I leaned even then was textbook hindi. No one in our social circle would have been caught dead speaking a “vernacular”. So I never really got the opportunity to learn the “street language”.

    chances are that had you grown up in a part of india where hindi is the majority indian language, you would have heard hindustani, rather than just pure hindi, but also prob. would have been able to tell the difference between the sanksrit and urdu influences of hindustani. though it’s prob. wise not to search for any shudh (pure) hindi words in film songs – in that area, urdu clearly prevails in lyrics.

    fyi – i just finished making both kaakarakaya/paavaka/karela fry and the mezhukkupuratti above. have not cooked desi food in ages, so thanks for the incentive, anna 🙂

  49. fyi – i just finished making both kaakarakaya/paavaka/karela fry and the mezhukkupuratti above.

    now that set me off -so bloody hungry. and it is only 9 AM here 🙂

  50. This deliberate and steady linguistic genocide has crated a situation when children of Urdu speaking families cannot communicate with or write to their parents and vice versa and reached a point where the younger generation cannot even speak its mother tongue at home or with the family.

    This unfortunate situation prevails for some speakers of many if not all Indian languages. You can’t buy a Nano with Hindi or Gujarati or Tamil alone either (there are some exceptions, specifically business people who don’t know too much English but are still doing well – but you can be damn sure their kids will know English). It is market-driven, but it is also institutional and infrastructural. It’s a social pathology, a policy pathology, and it’s also the urban elite’s turning its back on its mothertongues. I hate the term ‘vernacular’ with a passion (the term itself is neutral, since even English is the vernacular in England or America; but the connotations the term has in India are very negative).

    As for Hindi-Urdu, unfortunately a small group of people have been left in charge with deciding how these things go, and then their actions impact all the other, much more numerous people who are affected. Modern ‘shuddh’ Hindi (hate that term too) was essentially formulated by a few, generally upper-caste Hindus who deliberately Sanskritized the hell out of it…removing not only all Perso-Arabic vocabulary (no matter how widely used on the street and in homes) but also a lot of real, indic, desi words (tadbhav words) and replacing then with dead Sanskrit terms that only their small coterie knew. Very short-sighted, as they essentially killed Hindi in the long run. Why would you learn this ridiculous, artifical, cumbersome Hindi when you could learn an international language like English, with immense economic and social appeal? Hindi should have been embraced AS SPOKEN, Perso-Arabic loanwords and all, and developed into a useful, modern tool for its speakers.