Country like India where language and accent change in distance of every 100 Kilometers one language everyone’s obsessed about is no doubt English. Parents feel pride if there children is studying in English medium school. Intelligence of people judge by there English speaking capabilities. Students whose English is best only gets the opportunity to give speech on special days like independence, republic, farewells, annual functions etc. Many Indian companies jobs eligibility criteria contains “fluency in English is must”. I understand the companies have to deal with foreign client but one day when I was surfing LinkedIn and stumbled upon Physical therapy clinic job eligibility criteria it contained in bold letters “fluency in English is must”. Like English is more important to treat the patients than skills and with no feelings I also like to confess I am also obsessed with the language. Nothing to blame us. Britain rule on us for more than 200 years. Our constitution was also written in Hindi and English.
We are people with deep roots and great traditions. Definitely our national/ first/comforting language is Hindi but if you ask our generations of mid 90’s and 20’s kid we don’t speak completely one language. We speak “Hinglish” (as Mumbai likes to say it). We will start in Hindi followed by English and more English and Hindi and depends on our conversation or mood how we like to end it in Hindi or English. The sequence can be reversed also.
But let me tell you one thing no matter how much we love English if we are talking to our loved once we will be like “Hindi mein baat kar le” (ofcourse they will be using English word and switching to language). You know Hinglish.
बहुत अच्छा और इंग्लिश कितना भी भूलने कहीं भी बोलने किसी से भी बोले या शायद अच्छे से नाम होता है मगर जिस से सच्चे दिल से प्यार करते हैं उसके लिए हमेशा हिंदी ही निकलती है चाहे फिर वह सच्चा प्यार हो या जुड़ी हुई हमसे हमारी मां हो
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Kya baat hai!
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Reblogged this on Ed;s Site..
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Hey. I am not well aware of this Ed;s Site can you tell me more.
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It’s not just the mix up of Hindi and English, Aditi!
It happens almost with all regional languages. Here in South, we combine Tamil and English. Tanglish, you see!
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I’m always amazed at the number of people around the world that speak English. I feel fortunate as a native English speaker and not fluent in any other language, that so many other speak English. I do think that people should keep their native languages alive however they can and see nothing wrong with Hinglish. Great post! Thanks for the insight.
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In India there are so many regional languages but English is speak by 40% population. Even our Constitution was written in both Hindi and English (Thanks to the Britishers you know).
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Great post, Aditi. Living in Dubai in the early 1980s and working with many Indian people I was accustomed to hearing them switching between languages (also in writing personal letters, from some I saw) but one occasion I remember very well was when I was sitting with the manager of a local insurance company. He was a Keralite and clearly having a heated discussion (okay, an argument) with someone on the phone. After a couple of minutes’ raised voice in Malayalam, he suddenly yelled, “What’s the matter, can’t you understand what I am saying?” then promptly switched back to his native tongue. Needless to say, I only understood the one phrase he spoke in English.
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We really love indian accent… it is special❤️
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