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  #1  
Old October 06, 2010, 03:05 AM
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Linguistic States - India

Maybe Raji or somebody who knows something about India can tell me what Linguistic States are. I'm studying linguistic situation in India (not in depth) and the book says that in 1956 Linguistic States were formed. I understand that it must be a kind of administrative division, depending on the distribution of the spoken languages, but I'm not sure.

The book also says that there were a great effort to substitute English with Hindi, but they were not able to detach it from English, so it was adopted as the second official language. Why weren't they able to do it? Were English so spread that everybody used to speak English?

Thanks.
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Old October 06, 2010, 05:36 AM
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Maybe Raji or somebody who knows something about India can tell me what Linguistic States are. I'm studying linguistic situation in India (not in depth) and the book says that in 1956 Linguistic States were formed. I understand that it must be a kind of administrative division, depending on the distribution of the spoken languages, but I'm not sure.

The book also says that there were a great effort to substitute English with Hindi, but they were not able to detach it from English, so it was adopted as the second official language. Why weren't they able to do it? Were English so spread that everybody used to speak English?

Thanks.
English is politically and religiously neutral in India. An Urdu-speaking Moslem may be resistant to learning Hindi (which is a similar language with a different alphabet almost like Castillian and Ladino but not quite as close) because Hindi is largely the language of Hindus. English, however unitesthem. Britain's long occupation of India really had a strong linguistic influence over the country (Pakistan too). I know nothing about linguistic states, but I'm sure you assumption is correct.
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Last edited by poli; October 06, 2010 at 05:39 AM.
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Old October 06, 2010, 01:00 PM
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Thank you, poli.
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Old October 06, 2010, 03:48 PM
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Were English so spread that everybody used to speak English?
The middle and upper classes, yes. English was the language of government and education.
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Old October 07, 2010, 12:55 AM
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Yes, it is. But I think that everybody there speaks English.
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Old October 07, 2010, 10:52 PM
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Maybe so, but I have a friend who speaks Gujarati (there are about 46 million people speaking this language in the NorthWest state of India) and she is totally fluent in English (maybe because she has been living in California for decades...)

I am not that sure, however, that everybody speaks English that fluently... otherwise Bollywood would not be doing films in Hindi... and apparently that film industry is even bigger than Hollywood...
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Old October 08, 2010, 12:35 AM
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As far as I know (or I have understood, que todo es posible ), Indian government is making great efforts to spread Hindi, since this language has a literary nature and it is spoken about 40% of population in India, which is not an important average, having in mind that it is an official language. So, films in Hindi are important to spread that lenguage. Or I think so.
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Old October 08, 2010, 05:52 AM
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You are probably right Irmamar. PJT is also right about social class. Upper classes speak English and because India has a large population, hundreds of millions are upper-class English speakers. In the United States if you call for customer service for a computer or other things, you often are connected to someone in India. Some migrate to the United States. I have only met one person from India who did not speak English and he was a land owner who did not come from a poor family. The rhythm of Indian English is quite different from American and British English.

I know that Barcelona has an established population of English-speaking Indians.
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Last edited by poli; October 08, 2010 at 05:55 AM.
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Old October 08, 2010, 12:01 PM
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Thanks. I don't go often to Barcelona, and there aren't many Indians here (in fact, I don't know any Indian person)

But well, thank you.
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Old October 08, 2010, 12:51 PM
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Yo pasé tres días alli y quedé sorprendido ver que muchos dueños de negocios tenían caras típicas de la India, pero hablaron español. No esta seguro si eran indios (tal vez gitanos pesaba yo) Una noche fui a un restaurante donde llegaron algunos americanos muy pero muy blancos y ni una palabra de español hablaron. Los hombres y las mujeres parecían George Washington. En mesero les habló con accento indio-iglés.

http://www.internations.org/expats/m...celona/indians
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