Common wealth vs. English in India

Exactly. Take what you like and condemn what you don't. Appreciate it when you need it, then dump it when you don't. Seems stupid to me.

@vandana7 Yes like having your cake and eat it too.

@crossbones27 I have a hard time understanding speech sometimes, too, even with native speakers.

There will be fewer misunderstandings for sure. I was wondering if the Amazon case with Future Retail in our country is due to misinterpretation of the language.

@BarBaraPrz How interesting. People take it as slap to the face, when it should be a badge of honer because people took the time to try to see where you are coming from. Why I never get mad at accents or hard to understand people. Hell my native language and still so many say I have no idea what you are saying.

I agree. People should focus on convenience.

@vandana7 Convenience doesn't mean they'll lose their "social identity". It means learning new things so they can keep the social identity intact while moving forward with life... How are you and dad today?

Languages are bound to disappear and evolution is also inevitable. We no longer speak Shakespeare's language, do we? So clutching on to something that is not permanent anyway at the cost of something that at present is gonna be extremely helpful seems silly to me. Few may specialize, and those genuinely interested in it should learn and keep the legacy alive for as long as possible. But eventual outcome is gonna be what I said...disappearance of the language.

@wolfgirl569 Exactly. I am for English. I know how badly off I was because I did not know it.

@vandana7 Scholars can help keep the languages alive. The general public I feel would benefit if everyone could understand everyone else.

Resisting English is foolish, don't you think?

@vandana7 It is when you consider working on inviting foreign investments and businesses. You can't expect foreign companies to learn Hindi first before allowing them entry into the Indian business market. Or even maintain foreign relations at any rate.

@vandana7 LOL! Change opinions as it suits them.

Accepting Hindi as national language is fine. Being asked to learn it is another story. Languages and humanities (history included), do not help much in finding well paying jobs. For a person in UP, Madhya Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Jharkhand, learning Hindi is easy because that is their mother tongue. They hear it everyday, and can get guidance at home. They also get Hindi newspaper each day. In South, though I can speak and write Hindi as fluently as you all, I am still against imposing a language that does not get us INTERNATIONAL Jobs. We need those jobs. Though I ask them to take these jobs back. We need these jobs because we are not stopping births. When Yashwant Sinha had to send the gold from Reserve Bank of India outside, it was Software earnings and BPOs, that bailed the country out. We need to take our lessons from there, instead of wasting the resources on learning something that is not gonna fill the belly. For North Indians, learning Hindi and English ..only two languages. Marathi has the same script as Hindi, so even Maharashtrians don't have to struggle learning it. South Indians have to learn Hindi, English, and their mother tongue. Totally three languages. You automatically put the southern children at a disadvantage ...of the 5 hours they get to study, they would end up spending at least half an hour studying what is not gonna fill their belly, just for the sake of national pride. Most of the South Indians know Hindi quite well, thank movies and tv serials for that. They just don't know how to write it. Is that so important? Why must official stuff all be converted into Hindi? I receive my Assessment Order in Hindi and English. We should always have choice in whichever language we use. And English unites us. We cannot change the fact that we were ruled by the Brits. Trying to hide behind the pallu of Hindi is not gonna change that fact. So we might as well learn to accept it, and move on. As long as our people are working for citizens of other nations, we are still slaves. Let us be honest about that too. We have to improve us instead of wasting our student's time learning what is useless for him or her, in a world where information and knowledge is emerging at an extremely high speed. We put our children at a disadvantage when compared to children elsewhere. Why? For national pride? That will go to dogs if we continue to have large current account deficits and vulnerability at borders with China.

Yes, if they want to reject it, they shouldn't participate in common wealth games either. After all, it is a subtle reminder of being British subjects once upon a time, right?

@vandana7 You are right, if they reject the language, they should not participate e in commonwealth games. People are weird.

Hmm. In India, at every 50 kms or so you would find a new language.

@vandana7 I could never speak to any one.

Somebody said common sense is not so common. We Indians are living proof of that.

@vandana7 It's good to know that at least one person has some common sense!!!

English is an extremely flexible language. It accommodates words of other languages. It also can be used to say different things using same words by merely shifting the positions of the words in a sentence. While this can lead to misunderstandings if one is not too careful, it also improves the speed of functioning. People need to practice, and focusing on mother tongue, invariably will lead to mental translation of the sentence. I wish we were not having as many as 22 languages with almost 6 more dialects. As things stand, English is the only language that unites us, but people are objecting to it. I think that is pretty dumb.