Doubtless many readers saw the recent article in the New York Times, profiling Katherine Russell Rich, author most recently of a book called Dreaming in Hindi — a memoir of a year spent in Rajasthan, learning Hindi.
Something about the article in the Times bugged me, starting with the following passage:
One store owner insists in English that she is not actually speaking Hindi; when Ms. Rich explains, in Hindi, that she studied the language for some time in Rajasthan, he retorts, in English, “They don’t speak Hindi in Rajasthan.†(This happens not to be true.)
When Ms. Rich returned to New York from abroad, she spontaneously spoke Hindi to a friend of a friend. “He told me that when I spoke Hindi to him, it was like a body blow,” Ms. Rich said. “I think to Indians, sometimes it feels like I’m eavesdropping on a private conversation, like I’m breaking the fourth wall.” (link)
Wait, couldn’t it also be that the people Rich has been accosting, taxi drivers and convenience store clerks, might simply find this persistent American annoying, and have refused to speak Hindi with her mainly to make her go away? Lady, I’m sorry if your being in New York means your newly-acquired Hindi is going to start getting rusty. But I got a job to do, and that involves speaking English to patrons as I sell them stuff, not teaching you how to pronounce “lajawab” correctly. Next in line, please?
The question has to be asked: why does Katherine Russell Rich want to learn to speak Hindi? Is it to communicate with Hindi speakers while living in India? That would be a perfectly fine reason, indeed, an admirable one. But I suspect that sadly her real desire was to a) get paid for writing a book where she can talk all about her Hindi lessons and her impressions of Rajasthan, only to b) promptly move back to Manhattan, where she’ll irk Hindi speaking New Yorkers with her persistent demands that they speak Hindi with her?
Another annoyance in the article is the presumption that people refuse to acknowledge a white woman who speaks Hindi because we desis like to gossip about Americans in our secret language:
To some people from India, Ms. Rich learned, it is insulting to be addressed in anything other than English, a language of the privileged. And for some immigrants, domain over a language unfamiliar to most Americans must feel like one of the few riches they can claim. (link)
I really don’t know where the author of the article got this idea. (Why not ask an actual Indian, Hindi-speaker before making the speculative statement that “domain over a language unfamiliar to most Americans must feel like one of the few riches they can claim”?)
Finally, there is the obligatory dis on second-generation, “heritage” students who take Hindi classes at their universities:
“A lot of Indians who were born here or moved here when they were very small want to rediscover the language,†he said. (Ms. Rich said that she had overlapped with such students at New York University, and that many were already proficient in the language, less interested in their heritage and more interested in an easy A.) (link)
I’ll have you know, Ms. Rich, that most second gen, Indian-American college students do not take Hindi for this reason. I myself took Hindi at Cornell, and my professor gave me a “B” in intermediate Hindi (I deserved it, but it still smarts: certainly not an “easy A”).
In fact, most Indian-American college students actually take Hindi to meet, and flirt with, other Indian-American college students. So there.Katherine Russell Rich has also produced a short, promotional YouTube video related to the book and this New York Times article, which as of this writing has had all of 127 hits, even with a link from the New York Times:
If you weren’t annoyed by Katherine Russell Rich before, I suspect you may be by now.
Katherine Russell Rich also has an amusing, but not exactly wonderful, first-person story about making out with a New York City fireman in an elevator here.
Doesn’t seem like she’s being that rude or insensitive but maybe a little annoying.
“…. and these types are more than likely to hook up with a Desi boyfriend/fiance/husband and claim that there is no eve-teasing in India (or that it is done only by a very few, “low class” ruffians, something their Desi boyfriend/fiance/husband tells them), all the while living in the West and visiting India only once every 3 years – first class all the way and being chaufered around by their in-laws who keep them in a protective bubble so that they never experience the negative aspects of it.”
Really cute, Pardesi Gori. Way to twist my words from a completely different blog, and come here to this blog to mock me. Now I can see why your name is the catchphrase of doom here on SM.
YOU AND I HAVE HAD COMPLETELY DIFFERENT EXPERIENCES IN INDIA. My in-laws are upper-middle-class Jains. I go to visit them once every year or year and a half. Should they have purposely taken me somewhere where I would have had the same bad experiences that you have? Would that have pleased you? Would you be happier if every western woman married to an Indian had nothing but negative things to say, like you do?
I have never denied that eve-teasing exists, either. It is a terrible scourge, but it is not a reason for western women to avoid all Indian men, as you have claimed elsewhere.
And now, I am no longer going to feed the troll.
i think learning a language ONLY through communication with parents, as opposed to peers and the general milieu, makes the understanding of most american born or raised brown people of their ancestral language a little weird, and it makes sense that people would want to take courses to flesh it out. additionally, many can not read, and without reading one’s vocabulary can’t really grow.
for myself, the only bengali i ever spoke regularly was with my parents, and my siblings when they were under the age of 10. after they hit their tweens we didn’t really have the linguistic flexibility in bengali to talk to each other above the level of childhood interests. i know one of my younger brothers tried to teach himself to read bengali so as to supplement his vocabulary (though i think that was a phase).
an interesting experience i had in bangladesh in 2004 was that my uncle would sometimes laugh and say that i used phrases in a manner which was old comilla dialect that barely anyone used anymore (this is the district my parents are from). and of course more informal terms, like terms of endearment for infants and toddlers have changed, so that my family uses words which fell out of circulation around 1980.
The ideas went over your head, clearly. Anyway, my invitation stands. Good night and good luck.
63- good point.
Indira- great advice! I would except I’ve been rather busy writing real articles – maybe next year :->, if I can do something “exotic” enough for the sigh, I have to fix my life chicklit crowd…
Poor Mrs. Rich — as a non-native speaker of Hindi and Tamil, I feel some sympathy for her after reading this (tho’ I haven’t seen the video yet). However, it’s true that when I speak to someone in Tamil and they say “I don’t speak English” — which has happened to me here in Chennai — I’m pretty sure it’s because my accent and/or grammar are the problems — not because the people I’m addressing think I’m invading their private space.
Funnily, when my Gujarati husband, who was born and raised in Calcutta, tries to speak to Bengalis in Bengali, because it’s a nostalgic thrill for him, they almost always answer in English. It’s not that they mind it; it’s an automatic thing, I think, that they recognise that he’s not a Bengali, and therefore move to a more common language.
Classy comeback. Are you normally that sexist, or do you only employ misogyny while being sarcastic?
to save a google search for the curious and not-so-clever like me: “oestrogen” is just a spelling variation of estrogen, not something you didn’t know about. 🙂
Considering women more sensitive and empathetic is not misogyny in my opinion.Perhaps the statement did come across as slightly gender prejudiced. Women can be quite insensitive too.
You implied that women’s hypersensitivity clouds better judgment and Rahul’s comments exhibit the same hormonal tendencies. I’d venture that statement is more than “slightly gender prejudiced.” Your kind of slur has been a time-honored technique to thwart women and sexually marginalized persons from ascending to leadership positions. Political correctness is often grounded in good reason.
Yeah, I think that is fair enough; its just strange because even though I spent a lot of my childhood abroad, it would have been impossible for me not to speak Hindi; since at home my parents wouldn’t speak in English half the time – it wasn’t as comfortable enough for them. The pressures to fit in for second generation Indians must be more though I assume, especially in Yankland.
Please don’t be so hypersensitive, Demi. I assure you that I never have and never will thwart a woman or a sexually marginalised person from ascending to leadership position.
Lupus, if not for all the other evidence in this thread where you kept being smacked down, the argumentative sleight in this comment might’ve made me think you were brilliant! You should continue thinking with your secondary head like your last minute save this time (ignoring the fact that you called Rahul oestrogen filled, which was several implied insults, not just one), instead of all that testosterone inspired lashing out you indulged in earlier!
annoyed, yes, but also offended. Her baseless suggestion that the man at the store “Romeo” talks about customers in Hindi, for example, was a big turn off. I struggles to watch the rest of the video. Silly anecdotes made into generalizations. If this is representative of her book, I’ll pass.
“an interesting experience i had in bangladesh in 2004 was that my uncle would sometimes laugh and say that i used phrases in a manner which was old comilla dialect that barely anyone used anymore (this is the district my parents are from). and of course more informal terms, like terms of endearment for infants and toddlers have changed, so that my family uses words which fell out of circulation around 1980.”
This is very similiar to what happend in my family with Croatian… my great grand parents cam from Croatia in the early 1900s, they taught their kids to speak Croatian at home. (But that generation didn’t teach the younger generation because they liked to be able to talk in Croatian while playing cards without their kids understanding, hehe). But in the 90s, my grandma (who grew up speaking Croatian) went back to Croatia with my mom and some other relatives to visit. And realized that she basically spoke “Old Croatian” which hadn’t been spoken since the early 1900s… so talking to her was like talking to a strange time warp!
Yeah, that article was annoying – in that same “Eat, Pray, Love” kind of way… it seems to be quite a genre of hip, white, New Yorkers going to India to discover themselves through food/language/service/etc.
Dude, I doubt your opinion counts for much when important decisions are made in this world 🙂
Dude, I doubt your opinion counts for much when important decisions are made in this world 🙂
And yours does? If his opinion doesn’t count then don’t worry about “estrogen” based insults on a blog, in which no matter what we all right, according to your logic, it doesn’t matter 🙂
The pressures to fit in for second generation Indians must be more though I assume,
This wasn’t an issue for me. My friends thought it was cool that my parents spoke another language and that I could understand. I took it for granted, until the cool factor came in. My parents on the other hand, I believe felt that there was no need to learn Malayalam, as I suppose they thought it’s not a world economic language and it’d be best if we focused on one language. I think they regret that now, as they themselves can’t express everything in the way they want to express to me, b/c sometimes you just can’t translate a good ol’ mallu saying with anything else. I regret that I can’t read or write malayalam – I regret that I can’t read malayalee literature – I can speak everyman’s talk, but that’s about it.
in which no matter what we all right,
Meant to say:
in which no matter what we all write
What does a heritage learner of Hindi mean exactly to the author of the NYT article? I bet most of the kids in those classes speak Gujurati, Punjabi and other N. Indian languages to their parents, I think immigrants from the “Hindi heartland” UP/MP are relatively small in number
louiecypher #120:
Obviously I don’t know what it means to the author, but the definition of the term has, from what I understand, two broad branches.
The first is more focused on linguistic skill itself – so a heritage language learner would be someone who’s been exposed to a language at home, but isn’t fluent/literate/as-skilled-as-he-or-she-wants-to-be, etc.
The second is more identity focused – a heritage language learner is someone familiar with the culture(s) in which the language is spoken. This broadens the definition and makes it more fraught in the South Asian context, since under this definition someone like me, who was born in India and has spent a significant part of his adult life there would be classified as a heritage learner of Hindi, despite knowing only a handful of words and phrases.
From what I understand, the second definition is derived from the idea that in the process of acquiring a language, one also learns about the culture(s) in which that language is spoken, so a student who comes in with knowledge about that place has different needs than someone who doesn’t.
Many Indians living in India outside their native states pickup multiple languages in addition to their mother tongue. The Indian environment is very conducive to that kind of multilingualism. USA and it’s English language environment, on the other hand, has been likened to a Banyan tree that lets nothing grow underneath it and second generation Indians are a casuality of that.
He means he has never and will never thwart a woman or a sexually marginalised person from ascending to any position 😉
Regarding Desis speaking in their native tongues in front of and about people that don’t know the language, or people they think don’t know the language, well, it happens. And it can make one feel really bad. It’s even worse when you do know the language and can figure out what they’re saying. It hurts, Molly Ringwald! But one must desensitize.
It would have helped for her to learn how to properly enunciate the “d” in hindi and the “t” in moti. I the first view, I could not figure out why her being a “pearl” (moti) had anything to do with the mango lassi.
Is cancer a ‘western disease’?
Yes it does happen. But as many have pointed out in comments above, the main reason why Indians talk in their native language is, you guessed it wrong, because it is their native language and would prefer to communicate that way. Pretty much the same way when most Americans who go to India talk in English even if they can communicate in the local language.
That depends on what you consider important. Sure, Obama hasn’t called in a while, but yes, I do get a say in the career progression of trainees in my field. So just to reiterate: I shall not overthrow the regimes of deserving women and sexually marginalised individuals, nor plot their downfall.
Dear Post Graduate with a whatever. Sure I never will. I am even cool with heterosexuals joining in the acrobatics. As long as they do so with other people and don’t make an awful lot of noise while they are at it.
I have to admit to being a little apprehensive about this subject because I’ve spent time teaching myself Hindi, and I’ve tried to use it from time to time in stores or restaurants. It always pains me to think that I’m annoying someone when I do it, though, as Preston said, most people are incredibly gracious. I am in the habit now of only using it if I’m sure they speak Hindi and it’s not the first time I’ve met them.
I would say that maybe she just tries to use it because she doesn’t want to fall out of practice, but I would think that she would find some willing partners in Manhattan.
After watching the video, I agree she’s kind of annoying, but I take pity on her, because I do think she means well, she’s just so self-focused that she can’t see how much she annoys those around her. It almost seems like she’s so desperate to make a connection to someone, anyone, that she’s gone to this length to do it.
For what it’s worth, I learned Hindi for a specific reason: I viewed it as a way to protect my career in IT. When outsourcing started to become very popular I realized that I had two choices: I could be angry and bitter about it and thoughtlessly besmirch an entire people, nation, and industry out of fear, or I could start learning more about India, and learn one of its languages so it became a skill that made me more valuable in the job market.
Also, I was good friends with someone from Delhi and I wanted to be able to curse at him in his own language.
Arey yaar, “moti” means FAT.
Well, when all of the Desis speak good English, and you are part of their company (a uni-lingual English speaker) and they still speak over and above you in X,Y,Z, Desi language, its rude. They are purposely leaving you out of the conversation and making you feel “left out”.
I guess the point I and many here have tried to make is this. What you are saying doesn’t fit with my experience in most cases, with a few exceptions as always. Most Desis in the US that I know , tend to speak in English if there is some one who doesn’t understand their native language in the group. In India it could be that people are more comfortable to communicate in the local language than in English and thus revert to it. Or may be, just may be, they want to leave you out:)
They do speak Hindi in Rajistan..but just a point to pick..most Indian immigrants to the west are primarility Punjabi,Gujati and Bengali..so Hindi is not a first language..in fact Hindi as we assume it has only been around since the 1890s ( Hindu itself is a Western term, after the River Indus, despite what people may be told…check it out). Only 300m of India’s Billion plus speak it. The Hindi of Bollywood films is infact Hindustanni…so maybe the taxi drivers found it irritating that she tried to speak to them in the Indian equivalent of Esperanto?
Hang on a cotten picking mintue…why should Indians be impressed when gori gal talkd in an Indian language…when Indians speak English, you don’t get white people coming up to them and saying “Wow”
Watching that video, I’m convinced her name is Katherine Rasul or Rasala Rich.
She looks like a proud light-skinned Desi aunty all the way, even her features.
I’m also surprised an Indian man told her that her features were not beautiful. In the video she was a few years younger and looked kind of cute. She definetly looks “attractive” by Indian standards – fair skin, dark hair, “healthy” physique. She has a similar look to many Desi aunties that I know.
I find it hard to believe anyone would insult her looks in India.
Here’s a link to this month’s Oprah magazine recommendation, and here’s a link to an excerpt of the book.
Maybe not “WOW” but you do get the, “wow, you speak such good English!”
Hindi has many dialects. There are some words that you would find used only in Rajasthan, particularly villages. Rajastani Hindi is similar to Braj bhasha, in fact, Braj bhasha is what is spoken in the area of Rajastan that borders the Braj region in U.P.
What Kasturi Rasala learned was proper school Hindi, business Hindi, generic conversational Hindi, which uses a lot of urdu words. Notice her “shukriya” instead of “dhaanyavada” in the video.
(Wanderer: our comments about her looks were deleted!)
I’ll be impressed if she can read this…
कई लोक मैनूं कलदार सददे ने? कई कलदास आखदे हन। मैं मशीन हां जिस नूं सठनौकर समà¤à¤¦à¥‡à¥¤ आम मशीन नहीं हां। आदमी वांग मैं चलà¥à¤²à¤¦à¤¾ फिरदा हां। जद इनसान ने मैनूं बणाइआ मकà¥à¤•à¤¸à¤¦ इकà¥à¤• ही सीঽ इनसान मज़दूरी दा कंम नहीं करना चाहà¥à¤‚दा सन। लोक मौज-मसतीआं करना चाहà¥à¤‚दे सन। मालिकां ने पैसे बचाउण लई बंदिआं दी थां कलदारां नूं कंम करन लई रकà¥à¤– लिआ। मशीनां हà¥à¤£ ओह कंम करदीआं ने जिहड़े इकà¥à¤• समें बंदे करदे सन।
-रूप ढिलà¥à¤²à¥‹à¤‚-
Wanderer #132:
I don’t think this has happened to me in the US, but it’s definitely happened to friends of mine
I admit it mainly English People that say stupid things like this
Not.
If you know Hindi, her Hindi is what is spoken by many people, and that IS Hindustani. Shuddha hindi is generally not a conversational language. Shuddha hindi is used sometimes by “pundits” giving religious discourses. Shuddha hindi is NOT taught to foreigners or other Indians who take Hindi classes. There are Hindi classes galore available throughout the Hindi speaking regions of India, and they are not teaching Shuddha hindi, for the most part (unless they specialize in that).
I pointed out her use of shukriya vs dhaanyavada. That is Hindustani (urdu influenced) vs shuddha hindi (sanskrit influenced).
Literati..I’d be more impressed if she could read this…. ¿ਕਲਦਾਰ ਕੇ ਕਲਦਾਸ?
-ਰੂਪ ਢਿੱਲੋਂ-
ਕਈ ਲੋਕ ਮੈਨੂੰ ਕਲਦਾਰ ਸਦਦੇ ਨੇ। ਕਈ ਕਲਦਾਸ ਆਖਦੇ ਹਨ। ਮੈਂ ਮਸ਼ੀਨ ਹਾਂ ਜਿਸ ਨੂੰ ਸਠਨੌਕਰ ਸਮà¨à¨¦à©‡à¥¤ ਆਮ ਮਸ਼ੀਨ ਨਹੀਂ ਹਾਂ। ਆਦਮੀ ਵਾਂਗ ਮੈਂ ਚੱਲਦਾ ਫਿਰਦਾ ਹਾਂ। ਜਦ ਇਨਸਾਨ ਨੇ ਮੈਨੂੰ ਬਣਾਇਆ ਮਕੱਸਦ ਇੱਕ ਹੀ ਸੀ। ਇਨਸਾਨ ਮਜ਼ਦੂਰੀ ਦਾ ਕੰਮ ਨਹੀਂ ਕਰਨਾ ਚਾਹà©à©°à¨¦à©‡ ਸਨ। ਲੋਕ ਮੌਜ-ਮਸਤੀਆਂ ਕਰਨਾ ਚਾਹà©à©°à¨¦à©‡ ਸਨ। ਮਾਲਿਕਾਂ ਨੇ ਪੈਸੇ ਬਚਾਉਣ ਲਈ ਬੰਦਿਆਂ ਦੀ ਥਾਂ ਕਲਦਾਰਾਂ ਨੂੰ ਕੰਮ ਕਰਨ ਲਈ ਰੱਖ ਲਿਆ। ਮਸ਼ੀਨਾਂ ਹà©à¨£ ਓਹ ਕੰਮ ਕਰਦੀਆਂ ਨੇ ਜਿਹੜੇ ਇੱਕ ਸਮੇਂ ਬੰਦੇ ਕਰਦੇ ਸਨ।
PG..so you’re saying that Hindi is really just Urdu? Must be, as I noticed on the BBC the Hindi/Urdu Programmme is the one and the same..it is impossible for two languages to share a language programme, eg you won’t get Spanish/Portugeuse as one programme, or Bengali/Punjabi..The line between these langugaes is vague, I agree with you Shudda is different..It politics that separate Urdu and Hindi..
PG,
Can you explain more the difference between shuddho Hindi and Hindustani? The Hindi spoken in movies is a vernacular, right — complete with Farsi, Sanskrit, and Arabic words? Which is probably why I understand so much of Bollywood movies. So where did Shuddo Hindi originate? Is that what Hindi books are written in? Since you are saying that it is shuddo, I assume that it is the literary, high art version of the language.
Although I disagree with most of what you say (your anger especially is disconcerting), I am impressed with how fluently you know Hindi and…Bangla, well, more like Bengali (Kolkata Bangla).
Bangla, Hindi, Urdu are remarkably similar so it makes sense that you are fluent in all three. If you know one, it is hard to not understand the other. I understand all three, so your interjection of the languages in your posts and handles amuse me to no end b/c they are often so insidery-jokey, which is ironic considering this post and comments it has generated.
I’m not a linguist, but as far as I know, hindi and urdu are more or less the same language, but urdu is written in urdu script whereas hindi is written in deva-nagari script (same as sanskrit).
By shuddho hindi i mean hindi that uses more sanskrit words, such as dhaanyavad in place of shukriya (for thankyou) and prem or priti in place of ishq or mohabbat (for love).
Bollywood films and music use ishq and mohabbat more than prem or priti. Bengali movies and music use more priti and prem than ishq and mohabbat. Words like prem, priti, and others are found in Bangla (bengali) as well (as sanskrit and hindi).
If you are reading literature that is (hindu) religiously oriented in the Hindi belt, it will be written in high hindi, shuddho hindi. Like i said, the pundits and religious speakers generally speak in shuddho hindi, mixed with some words of the local sub-dialects.
I am in the midst of reading Wikipedia regarding urdu, hindi, khari boli and braj bhasha.
136
Lol. This reminds me an amusing tale. My husband (South Indian dbd) claims that he passed his high school Hindi exam by writing all his essays in his mother tongue, but with Devanagiri script and a “hai” at the end of each sentence.
“The notion that this woman is a colonialist is so ludicrous, and they hyperbole of calling grocers and taxi drivers allies and enablers so laughable.”
Yeah, I agree here with Rahul. She’s in her own country after all, and contrary to what appears to be popular conception, India was never an American colony. That doesn’t give her the right to inflict her bad Hindi on all and sundry desis she may encounter, but it doesn’t make her a “colonialist.” Wrong time and place. Now if she were over in India with this attitude, well–that’d be a different story. She just doesn’t really sound too bright or insightful of others, and that always scares me in a journalist with documentarian pretensions.
There are many regions in India where shuddha (translation- pure)) Hindi is spoken routinely specially small town UP and MP (perhaps Bihar too) .A friend from Hoshangabad comes to mind who un-selfconsciously uses words like ‘yadi’, ‘mitra’, ‘bhojan’ etc while many of us would use the Hindustani equivalents.I have an aunt who works for the UP cultural department. I dread holding long conversations with her because by comparison, my own Hindi sounds mongrel. Overall, in my opinion, MP is where you’d find the speakers of the purest Hindi. Hindi and Urdu are the same spoken language stretched to a kind of spectrum. Use a Sanskritised vocabulary, and you get into the Shuddha Hindi end. Use more Persian and Arabic derived words and you are speaking Khalis Urdu. While on either end, you are incomprehensible to the other end. Bollywood lingo is somewhere in the middle.
Do these people tend to be highly religious, like connected to one or another sect, tradition or guru?
I find in holy towns, or towns surrounding holy towns, you get people who are familiar with sanskrit terminology like “mitra” in place of “dost” and “bhojan” in place of “khanna” and “yadi” in place of “yada, yada, yada”.
😉
…corny. but had to.
Agreed. Shuddo versions of the languages are often beyond most people. It’s like speaking with someone who uses only the multisyllable words from SAT and GRE exams or Spelling Bees. “Pulchritudinous” versus “beautiful” kind of thing.
I don’t know what Hindi texts priests in use, but most religious texts used in rituals are often incomprehensible because they tend to use words which are dead for all intents and purposes. Unless one is classically trained, the languages are just not accessible. But I think (am pretty sure) that Shuddo Hindi exists outside of religious uses. Isn’t Hindi news in Shuddo Hindi? A friend told me that it is and that he found it unintelligible.
PG, did you get your language training only through immersion? Did you study it formally?
No, not particularly religious. It is just the way they speak the language. It might be possible that they are more traditional in their social customs like many small town societies are, and that includes religion as a social bond. This friend of mine used to talk about a ‘samaj’ where people from the same sub-caste used to hang around once a month to share their experiences, but like most of us, he visited a temple only on the night before the big exam, or on major festivals. It is true that ones tends to hear purer Hindi around religious places like Haridwar, Rishikesh etc, but that seems to be an independent phenomenon. Here is Preet, preetam, priyatama and prem in the same song title yet another prem… Corny enough to satiate carbohydrate cravings for a month. You are most welcome.
Well, in regions where shuddho hindi is spoken, you will find that even the illiterate people are speaking it. Where I was they were exposed to it via their religious affiliations and also the environment was full of folklore that used shuddo hindi words. There were also very often religious discourses using it over loud speakers and the discourses reverberated throughout the streets, so everyone was familiar with and used words like “bhojan”, “mitra”, and other more “technical” and philosophical words/concepts associated with the dominant religious sect there, etc, whether they were educated formally or not.
Both, but primarily immersion.
The area where I lived had shuddho hindi-ists, sanskrit scholars and lots of bengalee people too, and the three languages often intertwined due to religious affiliations.
For those familiar with the Braj region and its lore, there was a sort of poetic language that develop in that area mixing Brij bhasha, hindi, sanskrit and bengali. This hybrid represents the various groups and cultural influences of that region – again, all due to religion. There’s a name for that particular genre of hybrid poetic language, it escapes me now. I think its “Braj boli” (different from Braj bhasha)