Oh, Narendra Modi, it’s high time to accept English as India’s lingua franca

As the Narendra Modi government instructs ministries to use Hindi for all social media, what is striking is how many civil servants would naturally opt to tweet about local affairs in English.This expansive adoption of English not just as an official language but as a lingua franca sets India apart from the other BRICs countries.

India may have inherited English from Britain but English is thoroughly indigenized now, and despite the worries of some Hindu nationalists, it no longer is the preserve of the elite: Indians speaking English went from 3% in the 1980s to 30% in the late 1990s.

From the mid-19th century till after Independence, colleges like Presidency College in Calcutta and St Stephen’s College in Delhi produced not only administrators, but politicians, academics, writers and film directors. Although historically the colonials were quite diverse (there were many Scots clerics, officials, officers and entrepreneurs for example), that teachers of the colleges often came from Oxford and Cambridge, and the students’ English had a very conservative “Received Pronunciation”—the standard English accent associated with British public schools of the late nineteenth century.

Later (1970s) graduates of St Stephen’s such as politician Shashi Tharoor and television host Siddhartha Basu have a somewhat different accent, one that has been labelled “educated Indian English” by eminent Indian linguists like RK Bansal of CIEFL (now EFL) university and Braj Kachru of the University of Illinois. This accent has some distinctively Indian features, for example the vowel in words like boat is more like that of British English bought than beau.

Yet this accent reflects little contact with the languages of India. For a long time there was not much middle ground between the extremes of St Stephen’s English and Babu English, but after Independence there was a clear policy for the teaching of English in all schools. Two tiers of state school English were added: English as a subject (with the local Indian language as a medium) or English as a medium of instruction.

http://qz.com/224586/oh-narendra-modi-its-high-time-to-accept-english-as-indias-lingua-franca/

A rare sociolinguistic study conducted in the 1980s by Anju Sahgal and Rama Kant Agnihotri at the University of Delhi showed that the degree to which certain Indian English sounds could be observed corresponded closely to the following educational categories:

1. The “vernacular” educated speakers have the most trilled ‘r,’ and the most retroflex consonants (when the tongue is curled back in the mouth, most notably in the final t of but);
2. the English medium educated less;
3. the “convent school” educated less still.

Since the 1990s, the boundaries between the first and second group have gradually become blurred: increased opportunities in the service sector for English speakers like call centre jobs, have in India, as elsewhere, increased the demand for English.  To supply this demand is a range of new private schools which teach all subjects in English (brilliantly captured by the BBC-Open University series Indian School). These are not the elite English medium institutions of the pas: many are much cheaper, teachers are not native speakers from abroad who taught at the convent schools, and students have the accents influenced by Indian languages.

great read. thanks for posting.

confuzzled dude wrote:India may have inherited English from Britain but English is thoroughly indigenized now, and despite the worries of some Hindu nationalists, it no longer is the preserve of the elite: Indians speaking English went from 3% in the 1980s to 30% in the late 1990s.

http://qz.com/224586/oh-narendra-modi-its-high-time-to-accept-english-as-indias-lingua-franca/

That single, convenient and biggest LIE also not backed by the lone reference (she herself produced in the article) shows that this recommendation deserves no better place than a trash can. The reference blog cites the percentage of English know how thus..

- Under 1%: National Knowledge Commission: Report to the Nation 2006-2009 (2009): "Indeed, even now, no more than one per cent of our people use it as a second language, let alone a first language." (p. 27)

- 3%: David Crystal, English As A Global Language (2003: 46): "A figure of 3%, for example, is a widely quoted estimate of the mid-1980s (e.g. Kachru (1986: 54))."

- 10.4%: Census of India 2001: David Graddol: "the 2001 census data (released in late 2009) reports that 10.4% of the population claimed to speak English as a second or third language" (in the book cited above. I haven't been able to find the relevant table on thecensus website.)

- 18%: the WolframAlpha website link above. Once again, I haven't been able to find this percentage. As far as I can see, that page gives only native-speaker figures.

- 20%: Encyclopedia Britannica (2002). Cited in Crystal 2003 (above, p. 46).

- 33%: An India Today survey (18 Aug 1997): "contrary to the census myth that English is the language of a microscopic minority, the poll indicates that almost one in three Indians claims to understand English, although less than 20% are confident of speaking it." Cited in Anderman and Rogers, Translation Today:
Trends and Perspectives (2003: 160). The page in Google books:http://bit.ly/lpmnjr

Smartha
+1

smArtha wrote:

confuzzled dude wrote:India may have inherited English from Britain but English is thoroughly indigenized now, and despite the worries of some Hindu nationalists, it no longer is the preserve of the elite: Indians speaking English went from 3% in the 1980s to 30% in the late 1990s.

http://qz.com/224586/oh-narendra-modi-its-high-time-to-accept-english-as-indias-lingua-franca/

That single, convenient and biggest LIE also not backed by the lone reference (she herself produced in the article) shows that this recommendation deserves no better place than a trash can. The reference blog cites the percentage of English know how thus..

- Under 1%: National Knowledge Commission: Report to the Nation 2006-2009 (2009): "Indeed, even now, no more than one per cent of our people use it as a second language, let alone a first language." (p. 27)

- 3%: David Crystal, English As A Global Language (2003: 46): "A figure of 3%, for example, is a widely quoted estimate of the mid-1980s (e.g. Kachru (1986: 54))."

- 10.4%: Census of India 2001: David Graddol: "the 2001 census data (released in late 2009) reports that 10.4% of the population claimed to speak English as a second or third language" (in the book cited above. I haven't been able to find the relevant table on thecensus website.)

- 18%: the WolframAlpha website link above. Once again, I haven't been able to find this percentage. As far as I can see, that page gives only native-speaker figures.

- 20%: Encyclopedia Britannica (2002). Cited in Crystal 2003 (above, p. 46).

- 33%: An India Today survey (18 Aug 1997): "contrary to the census myth that English is the language of a microscopic minority, the poll indicates that almost one in three Indians claims to understand English, although less than 20% are confident of speaking it." Cited in Anderman and Rogers, Translation Today:
Trends and Perspectives (2003: 160). The page in Google books:http://bit.ly/lpmnjr

Unless the medium of instruction in Hindi is extended to college level for Engineering, Compute Sciences, MBA etc., all these stats & the arguments for Hindi are idiotic, nonsensical and meaningless at best. Let's take the example of Telugu medium students, they learn both English & Hindi as second & third languages but once they are out of the college what language do they end up using the most to perform their work related tasks, English... no matter what field they're in (probably with a few exceptions). All these Hindi jingoists should shut the f-up until an (working/career) environment that is conducive to sustain with the knowledge of (only) Hindi is created.

Do you even know what percent of population pursues professional (English only offered) degrees? What about those who drop off school at primary, middle, high school or +2. Or all those who pursue degrees or technical or semi skilled training offered in Hindi or other local languages? This number together with all those who are not formally educated beats the English aware population hands down. So that line of yours is a lost cause from get go. 
Also, the argument against English is also to accomplish such an academic and/or working environments(in Govt departments) that don't depend on knowledge of English. Thus what your last line of defense offers is one more reason for looking at English alternatives.

smArtha wrote:Do you even know what percent of population pursues professional (English only offered) degrees? What about those who drop off school at primary, middle, high school or +2. Or all those who pursue degrees or technical or semi skilled training offered in Hindi or other local languages? This number together with all those who are not formally educated beats the English aware population hands down. So that line of yours is a lost cause from get go. 
Also, the argument against English is also to accomplish such an academic and/or working environments(in Govt departments) that don't depend on knowledge of English. Thus what your last line of defense offers is one more reason for looking at English alternatives.

Dude, I was talking about all those graduated from college with a degree, studied in Telugu medium. I've a bunch of cousins who did that; I doubt if they ever wrote a single work related document or correspondence letter in Telugu. I didn't get rest of your rant, I bet the population that can communicate (read/write) efficiently in Hindi, is lot lot less than the advertised 40% Hindi speaking population. So there is no inherent advantage of adapting Hindi till Govt. provide necessary tools to make work environment Hindi friendly.

confuzzled dude wrote:Dude, I was talking about all those graduated from college with a degree, studied in Telugu medium. I've a bunch of cousins who did that; I doubt if they ever wrote a single work related document or correspondence letter in Telugu. I didn't get rest of your rant, I bet the population that can communicate (read/write) efficiently in Hindi, is lot lot less than the advertised 40% Hindi speaking population.  So there is no inherent advantage of adapting Hindi till Govt. provide necessary tools to make work environment Hindi friendly.

Are your cousins working for the Govt. of AP(or Telangana) or local bodies there? If not, there is no relevance of that point to the discussion

Population that can communicate in Hindi is about 20% or more higher than those that can do so in English. And that translates to about an additional 250 million people in India. This is a significant advantage and reach w.r.t Governance carried out in English only. The decree passed couple of weeks ago was to make work environment (in Union Govt and Hindi states) to be Hindi friendly.

smArtha wrote:

confuzzled dude wrote:Dude, I was talking about all those graduated from college with a degree, studied in Telugu medium. I've a bunch of cousins who did that; I doubt if they ever wrote a single work related document or correspondence letter in Telugu. I didn't get rest of your rant, I bet the population that can communicate (read/write) efficiently in Hindi, is lot lot less than the advertised 40% Hindi speaking population.  So there is no inherent advantage of adapting Hindi till Govt. provide necessary tools to make work environment Hindi friendly.

Are your cousins working for the Govt. of AP(or Telangana) or local bodies there? If not, there is no relevance of that point to the discussion

Population that can communicate in Hindi is about 20% or more higher than those that can do so in English. And that translates to about an additional 250 million people in India. This is a significant advantage and reach w.r.t Governance carried out in English only. The decree passed couple of weeks ago was to make work environment (in Union Govt and Hindi states) to be Hindi friendly.

 
Yes they all work in Hyd/A.P, not for govt. Passing a decree abruptly without any assessment of the situation or capabilities of existing personnel is considered a boneheaded move not an attempt to make work environment Hindi friendly. Are they provided with necessary tools/equipment to conduct their work in Hindi without putting additional effort? Also, if the incentive for someone to pursue studies in Hindi medium is working for govt. then I doubt anyone would be much interested.