Language Digest - 3

Sorry for the long delay but somethings in life just cannot wait and semester end seems to be rather full of them. but back we are and here we go.

Madras HC sees little use for Tamil without proper infrastructure being in place. This is in responce to Govt's move to make Tamil as the court language.

In the education field, Kannada and Marathi are now compulsory in their respective states for 10th and 12th standard kids. It is not very clear is this is for state boards only or for ICSE and CBSE also. In Kashmir also, efforts are on to introduce Kashmiri in the private schools.

Urdu medium schools in Delhi are not able to find Urdu speaking Science and Maths teachers and so students are having problems.

Central Institute for English and Foreign Languages has been accorded University status. I hope now the research section on their website will come out of being "under construction".

After schools, it is sign boards in Karnataka.

The national association of the Deaf wants official status for Indian Sign Language.

Even the strong opponents of missionary activities will have to concede that their work in native languages has been phenomenal. The whole SIL and Ethnologue is the result of years of Christian missionary work in the field. The gospel for Asia is now broadcasting in 11 new languages. These guys know how to talk to a man, literally.

In news from the center, independent India is going to conduct its very first linguistic survey. The last one was 100 years back commissioned by the British.

Delhi cops brush up their English skills and learn foreign languages for coming Commonwealth games.

In technical news, C-DAC is launching its software tools package for 7 more languages, Webduniya content becomes available in 2 more languages and ByIndia launches search in 5 Indian languages.

There is more but I think I will end now with two items. First one about how mother tongues and love marriages are getting along and second about how Jharkhand is having problems with its linguistic diversity.

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