Roots
Konbae! Gulp… (without the unexpected gulps)…“Now this surely is an improvement over the usual Soju”. Guys, you gotta try it. Everyone’s cracking jokes, and the one leading the way being my manager, Mr. Jeik Kim. The most frivolous of comments by one of the junior engineers being “OK, I’ll bypass the work I get to you Cheng”. And showing off with my Korean vocabulary was fun. It scared the hell out of my team mates. It was like a Chinese-Indian-Korean fun summit, with lots of cultural information sharing and querying.
But then, suddenly, one question dislodged me from my cultural stand. Oh, I forgot to mention about Prabhu, another Indian in my team out here. “How come you two talk in English, and not in your national language?” Now that’s one question I didn’t wanna answer. So, that’s why I think, we should change our national language. Because surely it seems that some people just don’t give a damn about Hindi, right? And what’s so amazing, and I am pretty justified in saying this, is that the government (Central of course) isn’t even bothered about it. The Bangalore moratorium was just one of the many issues where everyone was let down.
It’s sad when I see that we have become so GLOBAL, that we have nothing of our own now. Not even a common language, now that’s a first.
posted by Jayant at 9:17 PM
3 Comments:
I don't really agree with your feelings there! There are two things here:
1) I guess, we often forget the fact that a majority of our population is based in rural communities, where they have only one language, the native one. And growing up in an urban community it is often easy for us to communicate in a neutral, nationally accepted language rather than in the local one.
2) We are not as small as Korea (comparable to Kerla :-) or as restrictive as China. In China too, there are two main flavors of chinese and those who live in the east can only catch 50% of what is speaken on the west. Moreover every other language such as Tibetean was 'rejected' by them.
India has a more culturally diverse history. Everything from our construction styles, dance/music style to food cooking styles changes by a large extent over the demography.
You should see us in the context of EU (not even US is appropriate due to its short history). We have been unifying ourselves at a more broader level than what EU has been struggling to achieve at a more Micro level. You go to France, people know how to speak english but will not reply back in english though they know that you are a tourist! There is a difference in economic value, currency used, Sweden and Denmark are still not as open to accepting Euro! I believe that we are a lot better than many others, in fact every single one of us calls ourselves an Indian, and there does not exist any request for a separate nation except for the one in the NE. There is no other nation that can better exemplify 'unity in diversity', because either there is no Unity or there is no diversity. If English is one of the means, then I for one have no issues with it.
Naaah Prashanth, there is no way you can compare India with EU, infact they are motions in opposite directions, converging nevertheless...EU is tryin to be what India is like, and in India we are turning up to be like EU (different people)...And yes, like in France, there are people out here who know the language, but are to egoistic to speak it, and trust me, that far much worse than the French, because they speak their National language, and English aint there national language, so it doesnt matter if they speak it or not, and if they know it or not...Thats what my point was, because we all can name places in India where they know the language, but dont wanna communicate in it, and dont accept it to be the National language...As for China, there are two different languages, but they all know Mandarin (the common language)...
very true, i think i totally agree with u jayant.being from an army background and meeting ppl from diff parts of the country its made me realise that the one common language that ties the ppl of this country could be better called as english that the national language hindi.ppl feel ashmed in knowing hindi.fine agreed that hindi is not the mother tongue for many and specially who come from rural backgrounds,who have never been to school cant learn a second language,but what about those who can speak their regional language & pefer speaking english as their second language.its like not calling india as one nation and rather calling its states as different countries with different languages..
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