Caveat Reader

Caveat Reader, Readers Beware!!
Ok I'm not a Latin scholar or anything, the only Latin I leant during my schooling was
Perseverantia Et Fide Et Deo.
I know to most Indians it sounds like a spell out of Harry Potter.But it stands to mean simply "Try, Try till you succeed". I tried to live by that in school but look where it got me. Moving on.

Lingua franca
a medium of communication between peoples of different languages.


India has no one lingua franca . It's hard to home on to one language in a country where the people speak near a million. Unlike other in India the language spoken changes every 100 km and the dialect of the language spoken changes every 20Km.
Thus where such a large variation of language and dialect a "common language" a lingua franca is important. As there is diversity in ethnicity the first barrier for communication is one of 'people' to 'people’. Here there is a need for national language the "Rashtriya Bhasha" (national language). That is 'Hindi'.
Many atime when I have been on foreign soil people have asked me strange questions like -

Speaker - So you are Indian.
Akshay - Yes, It's appears so.
Speakers - Do you know how to speak Indian?

Let me interject here see there is no language called Indian. Thus no one can speak Indian.
Even though Hindi is the official national language, English is India's second lingua franca and then there are the others

Comming back to me my language skills which are appallingly bad and thus I gained profiency in only one.
I speak English.
Apalling Hindi.
Even more Apalling Marathi.
Can't Speak French (even after studying it for 2 years).
Can't Speak Punjabi which supposedly is my mother tongue.

Don't know you Mother Tongue ? ... Crime against Humanity ?


Most people India think it Pleasant conversation to dig deep into your personal life and history .
Most people ask you your name and surname then by looking at your name and surname they decipher what geographic corner of India you hail from and then logically decipher your age , education background , bank balance , caste and all this my asking you a series of very tough questions.
Most of the time , one thing leads to another and converstion leads to the following.

Person - Ok , you're Punjabi (person from the state of Punjab ,NW India).
Akshay - Yes I'm .
Person - Do you know Punjabi.
Akshay(dreading that question) - No actually I don't know punjabi.
Person (in disbelief) - But, it's your mother tongue !!!!
Akshay(getting pissed)- I know.
Person - You're parents never taught you ???
Akshay - NO

You get the picture. Not knowing your mother tongue is a serious crime.
As for of you my now thorougly bored by my rambling don't forget I warned you.
Caveat Reader.







Hi, We are templateify, we create best and free blogger templates for you all i hope you will like this blogify template we have put lot of effort on this template, Cheers, Follow us on: Facebook & Twitter

6 comments:

Snehal said...

Seems like you have been viewing a lot of those talk-shows that come on our innumerable 24x7 news channels. Every now and then they debate on how the regional languages are disappearing and how English is adventing .... and eventually it turns towards, how our indian culture is getting westernised!!
But I think, knowing your mother-tongue to the level of handling atleast the basic communication is very beneficial!

Unknown said...

I will never need my mother tongue.
I for one never have been to punjab , therefore never had a need to use it therefore there is no need to learn it.
I have more practical need to learn marathi rather then my mother tongue simply because I have for a more functional use for it.This not westernization debate is a debate where I would like to discuss a language of practical importance versus a language of cultural or heritagal importance.

Monologist said...

wow, yeah i felt your pain.
i look indian
i am indian
however, i can't even speak hindi
so, as you can see my dilema.

i don't think the language should be a barrier though, language isn't culture is it?

Unknown said...

I don't see what language got to do anything with culture personally ,
Culture should transcend language.
Not knowing the language , believe me doesn't make you any less Indian.

Snehal said...

Agreed! The need for learning the local languauge is more than that of learning ur mother-tongue ! ... the need actually is to be able to communicate with the local ppl ....
And yes, though language doesnt really potray the culture, thats how unfortunately the society looks towards it!
I have seen a lot of talk shows debating on the future of marathi medium schools ! And the conclusion they drive at is that the young generation is losing interest in the maharashtrian culture by going to english medium school! Absurd ...

Unknown said...

That psuedo-culturism , I believe that going to an English medium school does not diminish your identity nor those doing to a marathi medium school make you understand the maharashtrian culture any more.