The British Council Library organised a series lectures by David Crystal, world-renowned linguist who's publications include Cambridge Encyclopaedia of English. Unfortunately I didn't know about the lecture in Pune in advance, so I couldn't go attend it...ICK! I really should get that BCL membership, being too lazy...anyways found these articles in the TOI reporting his lectures in Delhi and Pune :-
The world'll speak in Hinglish'
'One language is dying every two weeks'
They are worth reading - what he says about the spread of English and it's impact on world languages is highly pertinent and something that we should all be conscious of, since our generation is after all the generation that speaks a very hybridised language most of the time, and is losing touch with "Indian realities" in terms of language and culture very very fast...
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4 comments:
Well, Well I don't quite agree on a lot of points here. Ponder over this:
Most of our cable channels are local language - remember how Star Plus has gradually shifted to being an almost 100% Hindi channel... And more Hindi/Local language channels have sprang up than English.
The circulation of Indian language newspapers far far surpasses what English newspapers do...(and continues to grow)
We churn out more movies in our langages than Hollywood and its only growing! (the best part - a lot of these movies target the urban youth!)
And yes, Hindi is not the only Indian language - I often find meself telling my auto wallah "Stop Maadi" :-)(Maadi is roughly the Kannada for the verb "do")..
And I wonder if Mr. Crystal ever saw this ;-)
http://www.microsoft.com/india/officehindi/
I won't refute any of those points you've brought up Deepak.
But I can say from personal experience that there exists a large percentage of young people today in urban centres like Mumbai who are not fluent in their mother tongue, and definitely don't read (or even think of) literature in the native languages. When he says that native languages are dying - he's referring to the hundreds of dialects that existing in India that are slowly being wiped out - it's enough for us to speak Hindi, but to speak Chattisgarhi Hindi or Bhojpuri? How many young people in Lucknow speak the famous Lucknawi today?
The reason that we have so local language channels and that *Plus went the Hindi way owes alot to the fact that a large section of our population is still uneducated and doesn't use English as a lingua franca - and to the explosion of channels.
It's a process that has started - sure enough we are still talking in Hindi/Punjabi/Gujarati/Sindhi etc...but the number of those will dwindle with each new generation, unless we are conscious of what we are doing. I have nieces and nephews who will give me a blank look when I ask them a question in Hindi but respond immediately when spoken to in English...hell look at me - I write, talk, think & even dream in English. So Hindi isn't dying out is it?
Its a change, Its a tranformation in all languages. The distance and vocal divide reduce, languages merge. a few words from here there and from there here. Finally will it all become just one?
Its a change, Its a tranformation in all languages. The distance and vocal divide reduce, languages merge. a few words from here there and from there here. Finally will it all become just one?
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