Hindi: My first language?
The French-speaking say: Comment a le vous?
The Spanish-speaking say: Como estas?
The Portuguese-speaking say: Como vai?
The Hindi-speaking say: How are you?
Sounds awkward?
Does it really?
It is amazing that whenever I have seen two persons with the same native language interact (be it Spanish, French, Italian or Chinese), they automatically shift to that language; except for native Hindi speakers! Even though Hindi (and its dialects plus Urdu) is the world’s third largest language, it is the only language in world’s top 10 languages whose educated and economically forward persons prefer to converse in English rather than in their own language.
It’s interesting to note that the second Indian language in the top-ten list, Bengali, follows the same trend as its international counterparts. Then why is it different with Hindi? Is the colonial rule still haunting us? Why do Hindi-speaking people lack confidence in their own language even though it is slated to become the second largest language in the world soon?
Maybe this is why the first/native language is called the mother tongue, a language used by our mothers!
The Spanish-speaking say: Como estas?
The Portuguese-speaking say: Como vai?
The Hindi-speaking say: How are you?
Sounds awkward?
Does it really?
It is amazing that whenever I have seen two persons with the same native language interact (be it Spanish, French, Italian or Chinese), they automatically shift to that language; except for native Hindi speakers! Even though Hindi (and its dialects plus Urdu) is the world’s third largest language, it is the only language in world’s top 10 languages whose educated and economically forward persons prefer to converse in English rather than in their own language.
It’s interesting to note that the second Indian language in the top-ten list, Bengali, follows the same trend as its international counterparts. Then why is it different with Hindi? Is the colonial rule still haunting us? Why do Hindi-speaking people lack confidence in their own language even though it is slated to become the second largest language in the world soon?Maybe this is why the first/native language is called the mother tongue, a language used by our mothers!
posted by Bhuwan | 4:30 PM
3 Comments:
Yeah ..True ..Funny is that we don't even have the mastery and confidence to speak English and we switch to Hin-glish.
To my surprise , Tamil is not in the list. I expected Tamil rather than Bengali.
According to a list of top 30 languages in the world, ordered by number of native speakers, Hindi is second; Tamil is 17th after Bengali (7th), Punjabi (11th), Telugu (15th) and Marathi (16th). If ordered by total number of speakers, Tamil is 15th.
good to know ..thanks :-)
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