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Comment by RcouF1uZ4gsC | Hacker News Reader

Based on what friends from South India tell me, it looks like South India in particular is embracing English. Even poor people are sending their children to schools where they can learn English. Most of the people I know, when they text on a phone use the Latin alphabet. India has fully embraced the global system which is based on English. I would guess that within 20 years, more people will speak English on a regular basis than Hindi.

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Part of that is South India tends to be assertively anti-Hindi for various historical/cultural reasons. Given that, English is the only realistic option for communicating outside a given linguistic community.

It's not exactly true. I am from the South and I love Hindi as much as I love my mother tongue (Kannada). However, the reason there are revolts to the degree it becomes National news is primarily because of the thrust of Hindi on locals. What do I mean by that? Imagine a villager or someone not versed in English wanting to fill a form in a Governmental organisation or a Bank. For a long time, most forms were available only in English or Hindi and not in the local language. This naturally pissed that section of the populace as they had no grasp of either of the languages. This felt "imposing" on them.

I call it Governmental failure of either educating the masses with regards to learning Hindi or them being unable to cater to the local needs (not printing enough forms in the local language). This was in turn exploited by the regional parties who converted this issue to a language-war of sorts, trying to portray that the Central government is imposing Hindi and diminishing the local language. These "movements" were used mainly for political gain. The reason you don't see this happen in the North is because for most, Hindi is a natural fallback language as the script is similar (Devanagari) to their Mother tongue, unlike in the South.

>>Part of that is South India tends to be assertively anti-Hindi for various historical/cultural reasons.

We are pro-OurLanguage, whatever that language. If that feels anti-Hindi to you, one can't help.

You almost are suggesting to be pro-YourLanguage one has to throw out their their language.

There are also a few anti-OtherLanguage protests.

For example, this is hardly "pro-OurLanguage" - http://www.thehindu.com/news/cities/bangalore/karnataka-raks...

That is pro-OurLanguage protest.

Also, as long as there is English, its totally useless to learn Hindi.

How is that a pro-OurLanguage protest? The board already had Kannada and English. In addition, Hindi was being added. That is clearly an anti-Hindi protest. Not a pro-Kannada protest.

I will take your comment seriously when Kannada shows up on Delhi metro signage and no body protests, until then its shoving things down peoples throat and holding them responsible for not swallowing up.

Nah, the issue of people learning English in school is totally orthogonal to the use of the Roman script in texting. People used the Roman script for texting when that was the only script available on the mobile phones. Android has really great support for most Indian scripts now (with the notable exception of Urdu) and I'm seeing a resurgence of texting in native scripts.

Learning English is viewed as a "job" thing -- it's what you do to have a good career. And English isn't used in the same ways as native languages are. A lot of the serious literature, art and politics happens exclusively in languages that are not English and using English in these contexts outs you as the equivalent of the "condescending coastal elite" in the US.

South India in particular has a higher literacy rate than the rest of the country, so it might take a while for this to spread.

Isn't English a required subject at Indian schools? It is an official language of India

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