Making Hindi global News Archive News

For this to happen, the language will have to reinvent itself

Written by Pankaj Dubey

July 14, 2007 12:00 AM IST

3 min read

Every word was once a poem, mutating over time to become sentences and finally metamorphosing into fully grown languages, thereby enabling us to effectively translate ideas into words. The existence of different languages allows for diverse modes of communication, but the 8216;mother tongue8217; has always been the most significant of all.

The three-day Eight World Hindi Conference began in New York on Friday. Seven conferences of this kind have already taken place over the years. Hindi is the second most-spoken language in the world with 333 million speakers. According to SIL International8217;s Ethnologue, about 180 million people in India regard standard khari boli Hindi as their mother tongue and another 300 million use it as a second language. Outside India, Hindi speakers number around 8 million in Nepal, 890,000 in South Africa, 685,000 in Mauritius, 317,000 in the US, 233,000 in Yemen, 147,000 in Uganda, 30,000 in Germany, 20,000 in New Zealand and 5,000 in Singapore, while the UK and the UAE also have notable populations of Hindi speakers.

How can Hindi get its due place? The first step towards increasing Hindi8217;s appeal should be to make it the language of the mainstream by including it as a medium of instruction for technical and specialised courses. The pedagogy of Hindi must be improved to suit the demands of a dynamic world. However, to ensure this, it must be encouraged right from the preliminary level. Examinations should compulsorily be conducted in Hindi, and its use as a language of IIT, IIM and other mainstream institutions will give it widespread acceptability in the market. Thanks to Balendu Sharma Dadhich8217;s efforts to incorporate the latest IT nomenclature in Hindi, the language is slowly developing as a secondary language in the Indian IT world as well, but the pace of this process must be hastened.

Today8217;s youth are in a great dilemma. Although Hindi is their mother tongue, they are forced to learn an alien language 8212; English 8212; at the outset of their education. While English is initially difficult to relate to, the enthusiasm shown towards the language instills a sense of pride in speaking it. In the process, Hindi tends to be used less and less. Moreover, the prevalence of English in technological nomenclature reinforces its importance.

Unless an effort is made to make Hindi the language of the youth, it will be difficult to change this reality. But how can this be done? Simply by invading their territory. The extensive usage of Hindi in youth-dominated spheres could make it the most popular language for them, which is crucial to effect its survival. We don8217;t want Hindi to go the Sanskrit way! Accepting a 8216;new8217; face of Hindi through its assimilation with foreign languages will ultimately add to its popularity. Some may object to this amalgamation, arguing against the adulteratation of the language. But hasn8217;t the existence of Hindi and Urdu created enough ground for other lingua manoeuvres? The best example of Hindi-Urdu integration is the Hindi film industry.

Hindi has the capacity to accept words from foreign languages. The existence of 8216;Hinglish8217;, highly popular among the youth, has already set off this process. Now we need to take it further.

The writer is the resident editor, 8216;Pravasi Today8217;, a magazine for NRIs

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