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Comment by primelens | Hacker News Reader

    > India needs to adopt an archive and extinguish 
    > policy with its many regional languages.

My, oh my! I've read some pretty bizarre things on the net and this is right up there with them. Many smaller regional languages in India are under pressure and if they eventually go extinct then that's unfortunate but perhaps that's the way it is. But to suggest that languages need to be willfully stifled let alone in the case of major regional languages for the imposition of Hindi as the lingua franca of the "arts and sciences" is just bizarre.

The republic would fall apart before that happens.

    > but at least for the sake of 95% Indians who 
    > don't really speak English, it would be good 
    > to give them access to the STEM fields without 
    > forcing them to learn a totally different/new language

Learning Hindi would mean learning a totally new language for the majority of Indians. Many would rather learn English as a second language.

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> Learning Hindi would mean learning a totally new language for the majority of Indians. Many would rather learn English as a second language.

For most North Indians (speakers of Indo-Aryan languages), Hindi would probably be a lot easier to pick up than English. On top of that, they get to interact with a large population of fluent Hindi speakers, and get really good at it, to the point of it (potentially) being a language spoken at home.

I've been in Bangalore, and the English of the majority of programmers I've met here is utterly atrocious. They butcher sentences and are incapable of constructing a single grammatical sentence. Personally, I wouldn't criticize them if this hadn't been coupled with appallingly bad coding skills.

One solid reason to promote Hindi is this. They can actually get good at the language. Hindi is also much more likely to transition into becoming their home language than English.

As a north Indian, I can assure you that is not the case. Several decades of living there has not gotten in the way of my butchering Hindi sentences much worse than I butcher English.

PS: Good to know that your sample set for passing judgement on India is a handful of programmers you met in Bangalore.

> PS: Good to know that your sample set for passing judgement on India is a handful of programmers you met in Bangalore.

I wasn't passing judgment on India. I was just pointing out the fact that the majority of programmers in Bangalore speak pretty terrible English. If I were to "pass judgment" on India as a whole, it would be for the lack of sanitation.[1]

I say majority, because I've met some pretty smart programmers through an HN meetup that was held in Bangalore sometime ago.[2] I also personally know a lot of Indians who have excellent English. Generally, I think the level of one's English is directly proportional to how much of a bookworm one is. (This probably applies to native speakers as well.) India has sizable English readership, who probably all can express themselves eloquently in English.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5623809

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5563491

While it is possible that for speakers of Indo-Aryan languages hindi is probably easier to pick up, that says nothing of the ease of learning the language for the majority of Dravidian language speakers.

The only reason that you advocate learning hindi over English is the ease of picking up the language, which I believe is just plain wrong. The English language is structurally much more free, and easy to pick up than a language such as hindi.

That being said, your premise of standardizing one language seems to be resting on the rather flimsy idea that if the majority of people spoke one language, they would speak it well.

A language is (usually) only spoken well when introduced at a very young age, and that seems to be the only determining factor as to whether one particular language should become an Indian standard. (If anything that language should be Sanskrit since it's the most structurally sound language among almost all the Indian languages)

> The English language is structurally much more free, and easy to pick up than a language such as hindi ...

What do you mean by structure here? (If you could give me pointers to Wikipedia article / other articles on what entails the structure of a languages as you describe it, that would be good.)

> they would speak it well.

That could be achieved with education. In the US, there's quite a heavy emphasis on English. College entrance exams (the SAT, the GRE, etc.) test you on English more than anything else. And communication underpins to a significant extend, one's success in almost any field.

The dialect of Indian English takes some grammatical structure from other Indian languages. Some sentences may not be considered technically correct by British English or American English speakers, but are perfectly acceptable by Indian English standards. Some words or terms may have different usages, and pronunciation may differ.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_English#Divergent_usage

> I've been in Bangalore, and the English of the majority of programmers I've met here is utterly atrocious.

Bangalore is a melting pot, of sorts. Having worked here for donkey's years, I have come across colleagues from various parts of India. Colleagues who grew up in bit cities speak perfectly grammatical English; colleagues from towns often bring in their regionalisms. Looking back, I'd say that less than 10% of my colleagues were raised in cities. Perhaps this is what led you to believe that the people of Bangalore butcher English. We generally don't.

> hadn't been coupled with appallingly bad coding skills

This could be a reflection on their attitude towards learning, in general.

> They can actually get good at the language.

Oh yeah? Try learning Hindi. Its grammatical gender drives me nuts.

The rest of your comments (this, and others) are just wild(!) speculation. I'll leave it at that.

> Oh yeah? Try learning Hindi. Its grammatical gender drives me nuts.

Okay, you have a good point here. I don't actually speak any Hindi, and I was under the impression that it was easy to pick up. I've not yet tried to learn Hindi -- been putting it off as I don't see any immediate use to it. (I won't be in India for long.) I didn't know it had grammatical gender. I remember taking some French in high school, and being pissed off at the gender assigned to every object. I don't know why languages do this.

Perhaps a language research institute should be set up to construct a simple easy-to-learn language that sort-of meshes together the major Indo-Aryan tongues (Hindi, Bengali, Punjabi, Marathi, Gujarati, etc.) -- something that would be easy for the speakers of those languages to learn; but also not too hard for speakers of Dravidian languages. :)

As an Indian who has lived in all major cities (IT hubs) in India & some cities in China, I am now at conclusion that English is "The simple easy-to-learn" language for the masses (if others stop being pedantic about correctness of others). Also structure of republic of India will fail apart if any regional language is forced on others. This will not work. I suggest when you look at India look at is europe on a large scale. we certainly have more languages ( both written and spoken) than europe and varied ethnicity & unfortunately misplaced pride on accidents of life ( religion, cast, language, parents, region, past etc)

sir, language is an evolutionary device and not a synthetic thing that may be forced on people as you seem to think. You already reek too much of that idiot from Germany!!

I'm sure you can say the same thing about the Russians and the Israelis, no ? Oh wait, you can't.

>>For most North Indians (speakers of Indo-Aryan languages), Hindi would probably be a lot easier to pick up than English.

Hindi is only something like marginally older than English in India. Within a few years you can almost say English is a better candidate as a common language than Hindi can even dream to be.

>>On top of that, they get to interact with a large population of fluent Hindi speakers

And where is that 'large population'? Delhi, Uttar Pradesh? and then apart from that where? That is not even 10% of India.

>>I've been in Bangalore, and the English of the majority of programmers I've met here is utterly atrocious.

Compared to the British English standards we are something like miles ahead of most Americans or probably a good part of the anglosphere. News papers, publications, magazines, essays almost in any measure India will outscore US or any English speaking country in the world

>>They butcher sentences and are incapable of constructing a single grammatical sentence

Don't get me started, Most Americans can't even pronounce words completely. Most use double negatives frequently while forming sentences.

>>Personally, I wouldn't criticize them if this hadn't been coupled with appallingly bad coding skills.

I see this pretty much everywhere. I don't know what your problem is exactly. You think the outsourcing scenario was scary? That was just the very beginning. There is nothing really stopping India's progress on the world scale, and software is just one tiny little area where India's is making rapid progress.

I wonder what is the true nature of the problem the west and in general white English speaking population has with India. If you are just pissed that a nation you ruled and looted for 200 years is just giving you back a dose of your own medicine. Sorry I can't help much on that end, as I said this is just the beginning. Much is about the come.

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