In my previous post about the National Security Agency’s (NSA) wiretapping of U.S. citizens, I quipped:
I’ve also been using a calling card (from what may be a shady NSA front company) to call my parents who are vacationing in India. I should think twice about what I say…
NPR commentator Sandip Roy must have had the same thought. In a humorous piece this morning he plays a recorded conversation between him and his mom who is in Calcutta. At various times he pauses the tape long enough to advise the NSA, what he is NOT talking about.
This just reiterated to me that every single person should have a library of recorded phone conversations with their parents. Even the most mundane conversation can make you smile.
I’m pretty sure I’ve mentioned this here before, but when my dad wants to discuss “sensitive” money/will issues, he instructs me to switch to Tamil, “just so the government doesn’t think we’re conducting some shady money laundering deal.” Ummmm, dad, Tamil to talk about “ACCOUNT $(#%^&#$%^ DOLLARS @)$(&%#(^@!&^%%$&^^ RUPEES %)($%^#$&^*&^%” isn’t suspicious at all. Nope. No sirree, nuh-uh …
Where does 9278.com fall on the shadiness spectrum?
Wouldn’t it be nice if we reflexively spoke our own languages (certainly with our parents at least!) rather than needing to deliberately switch back for certain sensitive topics? This is not directed against Maitri…it applies to all of us. This habit of speaking English as opposed to one’s own language has even penetrated into people’s family circles. It’s one thing if one of the participants in the conversation is not fluent in the Indian language. But if let’s say a bunch of Tamils are hanging out (for example), all fluent in Tamil, why would there be any reason to speak English at all?
Yes, but I would think that for a majority of people that read this blog English is their native language.
“But if let’s say a bunch of Tamils are hanging out (for example), all fluent in Tamil, why would there be any reason to speak English at all?”
That is an excellent point. Continental Europeans, especially French will always speak French even all of them present are not French-speakers. I know someone she is French-American (one of parents is originally from France but she is an East coast American all the way). She really gets excited about her French at the slighest hint.
I was once @ sea, if you sat on a table full of French, maybe one or two of them will kind enough to switch to English, if you are lucky. Once a Belgium friend of mine in Baton Rouge asked if I had read a Hindi book recently. I said “No”. She really felt sad, and then I felt sad too. I asked my parents to send me some novels in Hindi. I haven’t read them.
Same with the Spanish speaking world. My (former) PhD advisor (originally from Spain married to an Irish-American) openly speaks Spanish whenever he gets a chance. Spanish spaeking world has strong brotherhood than spans Europe-North America-South America. Walk into a bar in Houston, and if you do not know Spanish, tough luck.
Lot to do with how we perceive ourselves. State of mind.
Abhi
CA (hint: age of earth) speaks French most of the time and if you do not know French, you must be not be enlightened. In that sense, I really like his attitude. His very powerful American pals practise their French and golf with him. Years ago, he was Minister of Science. Where I work there are lot of French visitors, in the hallways, you hear French often and also other European languages.
Maybe, in 10 years Indians will do that too – once they gain self-confidence.
So funny. 🙂
That was hilarious (I’m partial to the Bangla, what can I say). If only my mom was web-techie enough, I would pass this link to her.
I was excited to see Sandip make the shift to NPR, and even more excited to see his newscast on the South Asian experience make it to NPR & hear about it through SM. Yay.
As far as the NSA is concerned…I’ve already internalized my fear that my phone is tapped. But should I be at all concerned that someone with a US State Department ip address reads my personal blog daily?
Amitabh, try ArabHinTamglish – that’s what we reflexively speak. And there ain’t no translator for that one. Haha, government suckaaazz!
{I should’ve said that my dad asks me to stay in non-English when we speak of such things. Like the guvmint cares. rolls eyes]
living in a pretty small town near dallas, my ‘rents (tamilians, but mum’s from mumbai) mingle with desis from all over india. a personal observation of mine was that tamilians switched to speaking english a lot more than any other brown community. even at home, we end up speaking in english. i think the gujus and the banglas do a great job in training their kiddos to be bilingual. even my east asian friends who haven’t been back “home” in over a decade speak fluent thai/korean/mandarin.
do you think this has to do with whether or not the parents went to an english medium school, or a subconscious urge to assimilate?
Hey Meerkat, I’ve noticed that too. I’m tamil and at home we mostly speak English with some Hindi and Tamil thrown in. (Like Maitri’s family we often switch to Tamil for “sensitive” information). My parents always talk about how the Gujurati community has done such a great job preserving preserving their language and lament the fact that they have failed to teach their children Tamil. Both my parents grew up in North India and went to English medium schools. Growing up they spoke Tamil at home, English at school, and Hindi with friends and neighbors. I know my parents would like to speak more Tamil, but we all think faster in English. I also think this might have to do with the relatively small size of the Tamil population in the United States. There aren’t that many Tamil families to socialize with, so Tamil rarely gets used.
I think you guys have a point there. The English Medium schooling does make a difference. Parents from the north or even Gujrati’s who didn’t go to English Medium schools were forced to speak to their children in their own tongues because they weren’t comfortable with or didn’t know English.
Professionals who migrated from the south and came here as Professors, nurses, educators etc tended to have English schooling and found it comfortable to speak with their kids in it.
I went to an English school in India and many many years before we ever even thought of migrating west my parents would speak English at home instead of Marathi in order to get us to be more comfortable in it. I found no problems assimilating as a result of it when we moved here. We still speak a lot of English but I’m glad I’m still able to speak Marathi.
My brother on the other hand speaks none mostly because my parents never made the effort to get him to speak it. And personally I think that’s high disservice to him.
I was born here but both my parents went to English medium schools. My second grade teacher convinced my parents to force me to speak in English when I took a four month trip to India with them. The school was convinced that speaking Gujarati and English at the same time would mess up my ability to learn English properly. My parents listened and now my Gujarati is bad. I can understand everything but I can’t read or write it and my speech is pretty broken. Ignorant teachers messed me up.
I think you guys have a point there. The English Medium schooling does make a difference. Parents from the north or even Gujrati’s who didn’t go to English Medium schools were forced to speak to their children in their own tongues because they weren’t comfortable with or didn’t know English.
Miss Janet,
You are on the most shakey ground. One of the most elitist English medium schools are in hill stations (all of the mountains in India are in North except the Ghats but they are no real mountains) or cosmopolitan cities of North India and Bengal.
For example, Doon School in Dehra Dun, Modern School in Delhi, Maharani Gyatri Devi School in Jaipur. The bastion of westernized education is Delhi – St. Stephen’s College is the prime example created by Rev. CF Andrews. Haven’t you noticed people like Vikram Seth, Amitav Ghosh are from Delhi?
Historically, if there was a place in India that caught on to English first, it was Bengal. Shanti Nekatan was light years ahead of any place in India.
How about the Anglo-Indians from Mumbai?
I am not saying at any time that South India did not know English – RK Narayan etc.
It is just a lot of comments are poppycock. There is lot of theories here without facts.
Winter capital of British India = Delhi/ New Delhi (North India) Summer capital of British India = Simla (North India)
Where were the IAS (Indian Administrative Service)/ IFS (Indian Foriegn Service) were trained (the backbone of Indian Federal administration) trained?- Mussouri, a hill station near Dehra Dun (N. India)
Where did Britishers/ Brown Sahibs go when it got really hot? Hill stattions. Where are most hill stations in India – North India.
Where are the most IITs in India – Delhi (N. India), Kanpur (N. India), Roorkee (N. India), Guwahati (N. India), Kharagpur (~N. India), Mumbai (~N. India) and Madras (South India). It does not get any “westernized” than IIT. Down there, they even in shit in English.
Facts……….Please South India guys and gals bear with me, I do not mean to down play you guys. I am very sorry. Please………therefore, english speaking @ home is more socio-economic, if anything.
Agree with you on Bengalis. They’ve always been on the cutting edge of progressive living and the babu style long before it spread to the rest of India.
I am only speaking in terms of the desis in the NYC area, roughly around 2.5 million. Immigrants from the northern states tended to have attended regional schools, I’m speaking of my parents generation not our generation. My south Indian friends have fairly decent English speaking parents. It has to me been a stark difference for all it’s poppycock worth.
Yes, but I would think that for a majority of people that read this blog English is their native language.
Also 72% of the visitors are from the US. I think there is a public demand here for a post on the NFL playoffs so that we know which is the most and least favorite team of the mutineers 🙂 Once we get some playoff news here, SM could be a one stop shop for all your needs 😉
Come on Abhi!!! I think you are/were a great kid :). It is a bit unfortunate about the language though.
I am a parent of a 2+ year old. I believe (like most first time parents) that I am a parent of a precocious child :). I also believe that the thoeries postulated by the child psychologists have a shelf life, and one’s child ususally outgrows that shelf life. So, I trust mine and (mostly) my wife’s instincts while parenting. So far, that has worked for us.
These conversations create their own humor, no tweaking necessary. And Roy is right… all the phone calls do sound the same. Actually, sounds like my Bengali grandmother =). Awesome link, Abhi
Kush, I’m not really sure why Jane of all trades comment upset you so much. You seem to be equating English/British with being better. I think most of us wish we spoke our “mother tongues” better. We werenÂ’t saying that North Indians canÂ’t speak English, we were saying that many Tamil families seem to speak English at home. Here we were saying that many Indian communities do a great job passing their language to the next generation, and you turned this into some wacko North-Indian/British pride thing.
But regarding some of your “facts”
There are some great educational institutions in South India and Hill stations exist in the South too (see map). There are snotty prep schools in places like Yercaud, Ooty and Kodaikanal. The University of Madras (Presidency College) is one of the oldest in India, as is Madras Christian College.
Yes, there are more IITs in the north. My South Indian dad attended not 1 but 2 of the North Indian IITs. Lots of South Indians do. You don’t have to be from Massachusetts to go to Harvard.
You may be right, speaking English at home is a socio economic thing. But in my parents generation, only the upper-middle class could afford to send their children to English medium schools. And Meerkat, Jane, and I were very civilly discussing that perhaps the fact that our parents attended English medium schools were one reason why we speak English at homes.
People constantly debate the whole South Asian v. Indian on this website. How can we ever expect people to consider themselves brothers and sisters with Pakistanis and Bangladeshis when then Indians like to divide themselves up further into North Indian v. South Indian?
SG,
I am not at all equating English good, British good. You completely misunderstood me. I am saying “North Indian = regional schools = not English @ home” is absolutley wrong if you look at it from rigorous viewpoint. Traditionally, how did India absorb “English”. Let’s look at this seriously.
There were two institutions: Indian Administrative Services and Indian Army. Please google demographics of Indian Army. Pre-1947, it was pre-dominantly Sikh and Muslim, and pre-1984, it was Sikhs, and even now 8% of entire Indian Army is Sikh. Walk into an Indian army household, they speak English 24/ 7. Shouldn’t be Sikhs be most westernized? Lahore was the most westernized town pre-1947. Still the most westenized people in India are from Indian Army.
All the hill station you gave in South are on the Ghats. Please read my comment #. 13. In comment #.13, I talked about hill station in South being only on Ghats. Ghats are no Himalayas. At least one thing I know is geology. Traditionally, Himalayan hill stations were retreats for ruling class of India, especially Simla.
Look IIT, IISc are national institutes, they have everyone in them. Doon School is a national private school, if you pay they will admit you. IAS/ IFS have always been national services – These places are full of North, South, western, eastern Indians. You are completely misunderstanding the jist of my argument. One of the greatest westernized intellectuals of 20th centiry were Ramanujan, Chandrashekar, and CV Raman – all South Indians.
I brought up Delhi University because it has pre-eminent place in Indian English world. Please google = St. Stephen’s College. It has more produced more Presidents, MP, writers, english speaking intellectuals than any place in India. In some sense, St. Stephen’s College is the Yale of India. God, ask Amardeep Singh.
Didn’t I pre-emptively apologize? Miss Janet was playing to stereotypes and I called her on that. Should we let wrong stereoptypes to be played out? God, my Great Gandfather’s brother was an IAS office, a pucca brown sahib. My grandmother in India speaks “goofy” English to her daughter-in-law who is a Taiwanese American.
Sorry, Sorry. I never intended division. Signing out, peace. I am not at all upset. No hard feelings.
I think English-medium schooling is having a disastrous side-effect which people will only fully realise in a generation or two…the complete marginalisation of Indian tongues. In my own large extended family for example, if you look at my grandparents generation, only the men knew English, that too more as a written language than a spoken language. My grandmothers (and other female relatives of that generation) did not really know English. By my parents generation, all the people, both men and women (my parents and all their 1st/2nd cousins) had gone to English-medium schools and were equally comfortable speaking English and Hindi. In terms of reading and writing, they were better in English (my mom can barely write in Hindi although my dad was quite good at it). But the oral fluency in Hindi was 100% and Hindi was still the spoken language at home and with friends. In my generation, the English adoption was taken further…all my cousins are still fluent in Hindi, but habitually speak A LOT of English, even at home. And now the next generation, the little kids in our family, by and large all speak English most of the time! This is INDIA I’m talking about, NOT the US. The children will speak Hindi to servants, etc. or to their really elderly female relatives who don’t speak English, but generally with their peers or parents they speak English (Hinglish actually, which is not the same as Hindi). From what I understand from friends from other parts of India, this pattern has been happening to most of the languages in India i.e in urban, middle-class (or above) homes, Indian languages among the younger generation, are losing ground. And I should also point out that even when the yound kids DO speak in Hindi (or whatever Indian language) it is qualitatively very different than how their grandparents spoke it. Hindi spoken by these kids has many grammatical features which are based on English. And all this is taking place on a scale which is expanding rapidly. I don’t think it would be an exaggeration to say that a very large percentage of urban India is going to be fluent in English in two generations. If people take me up on this post I will share some more thoughts about this, I have a lot of opinions about the larger social/cultural implications of India’s headlong rush into English, but before I write all that I want to see if people are interested in discussing it.
I was just using Hindi as an example since it is my family’s language; I wasn’t implying that people from non-Hindi areas should be speaking Hindi. I am interested in the preservation of all Indian tongues. But I think what I wrote applies to all the Indian languages. I know that Punjabi is dying out slowly in urban Punjab especially among Hindus (and when spoken is quite weak in terms of accent, idioms, grammar and vocabulary as compared to hard-core village Punjabi), and as was mentioned already by others, many south Indians speak English at home. Most people from Mumbai regardless of their mother-tongue speak English at home (I’m talking only of the educated middle-class and mainly those under 35 years old or so). Many Bengalis speak English at home, and although Gujarat was slow to jump on English, I believe in Ahmedabad and big cities it’s quite fashionable to speak English. Of course I do realise that people do mix a certain amount of their mother-tongue in even when speaking English. The difference is, if they want to they can speak more or less pure English – but they would be hard-pressed to leave English out of their mother-tongue.
huh????????
It does not get any “westernized” than IIT.
I am being tongue-in-cheek, since the day a girl or guy gets admitted to an IIT, they only speak in English, they do all the American things – because they are preparting for TOEFL, and their perfect GRE score, and eventual admission. Ask DesiDudeInAsutin. It gets very hilarious. It beomes a full-time obsession. Very Andy Warholish.
DesiDudeInAustin is a fresh IIT graduate, he will tell you guys.Maybe, he should blog about “folkies” in IIT. Let him speak. If there is St. Stephen’s graduate @ SM, speak out about Presidents in three countries (India, Pakistan, Tanzania) being their alum. Sense of humor @ SM, where is it gone? Sometimes, I wonder…………….
All the hill station you gave in South are on the Ghats. Please read my comment #. 13. In comment #.13, I talked about hill station in South being only on Ghats. Ghats are no Himalayas. At least one thing I know is geology. Traditionally, Himalayan hill stations were retreats for ruling class of India, especially Simla.
errr…ghats are no himalayas? and so? I defintitely don’t think you were touting an north indian better than south indian argument here, But have you ever been to ooty, kodaikanal or near the nilgiris? Simla might have been a regular retreat for the ruling class, but so was ooty for the brits down south. They do have some snooty schools down there. Also there are numerous jesuit institutions down south…
Also there are numerous jesuit institutions down south…
Sure, dude. Kerala has the literarcy rate in India, and even for any developing country. Christianity in Kerala, I do not know this. The whole point was whether North India had English infrastructure or not. The presence of them in South India was never questioned.
Himalayas is the largest mountain chain on earth, so chill out. Do you really rhink I am clueless. I wasn’t being snooty. How many times I have to say that?
Correction: Kerala has the highest literarcy rate in India,……………
Kush, this is what i said –
I defintitely don’t think you were touting an north indian better than south indian argument here
I really don’t think you were getting into a “who is superior” argument here, nor am i.Nor was i accusing you of being snooty, just read my post again. So easy now. I don’t see the relevance of the Himalayas being the largest mountain chain to this discussion.
Derick, let’s call peace.
Very early on I brought on the mightiness of Himalayas = more hill stations = more snooty schools. nobody caught it. Maybe, it is too much to ask.
Seriously, let’s move on other topic. We are not helping each other. I love South India, in 2003 and 2004, I spend weeks in Hyderabad regarding work. Let’s move on. Maybe, I am being defensive.
alright, let’s move on. Clearly some misunderstanding here.. peace.