Re: New pronunciation of Bangalore


Michael Farris wrote:
ranjit_mathews@xxxxxxxxx napisal(a):



Engineering Education in Tamil

Many students in Tamil Nadu find it difficult to study engineering with
English as medium of instruction. (cut)
... The Indian government blocked it.

Many thanks for that blood-boiling story. The reason given by the
Indian government is patently false (as well as stupid) as a model
program in one state language, if successful, would probably inspire
other states to follow suit. I think _this_ (and not Hindimania) are
the real culprits.
I hope they haven't given up and will keep trying. The fact that the
effort existed makes me feel better.

(warning: inflammatory theorising follows)

India as a single country (as opposed to a EU-ish multinational
organization) is not the most ... rational idea going, and I'm sure the
Indian government realizes this and takes great pains to try to keep
most Indians from realizing it as well.

With my modest background in figuring out skullduggery and
double-dealing, it looks to me like the Indian government could care
less about Hindi but uses it to distract the population from their real
language policy which is to promote English at the expense of state
languages.

In realistic terms state langauges were the big winners in linguistic
competition in the years after independence especially after the
redrawing of state boundaries along language lines.

For 15 years or so, but the medium of instruction wasn't not
necessarily the language of the state of one's domicile. For example,
Madras Christian College High School had Malayalam medium instruction
for Malaylali students and Tamil medium instruction for Tamilian
students and there were other schools with Telugu medium instruction
whereas the state language was Tamil. The medium of instruction changed
to English in "12th grade" in order to prepare one for college which
was entirely in English medium. So, by the time one entered college, it
didn't make a difference which Indian language was the medium of
instruction till 11th grade since college was in English.

But should they grow too strong, demands for autonomy and even
independence could follow.

Perhaps, if the state language were the medium of instruction, but with
mother-tongues as the medium of instruction as was the case, few
linguistic minorities would have wanted the state of their domicile to
become independent. Would a Tamil or Telugu speaker in Bangalore have
wanted to reside in an independent Kannada speaking country?

By pretending to push Hindi, the governtment ensures that
English (the means of uniting the ungainly entity of India in the first
place) gains and state languages (including Hindi) lose.

They actually do push fluency in Hindi and its use for the humanities;
they just don't push its use for all purposes. The Hindi that the
Central Government pushes is not only little spoken in South India;
it's not spoken much in North India either since it's a constructed
language like Katharavousa - constructed from Hindustani and Sanskrit;
it's more widely understood than it is widely spoken.

That's just my perception, please correct my ignorance if it seems
really wrong.

-michael farris

.

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