Language Digest - 5 (Articles/Editorials)

This is the long promised article only edition.

This one comes from Pakistan, lamenting the bad condition of Madarsa education.

Pakistan again, this time a view in favor of the recent step of making English compulsory. Sounds very much like the recent argument of Prasad about English for Dalits.

Continuing on the common thread of Urdu, condition of Urdu press in India is not something to brag about. There is hardly a Urdu news paper that commands a voice at national level or even in a sufficiently big region. Moreover, it works both ways. While Urdu papers carry mostly Muslim centric perspective of problems, Hindi press lacks it to a large extent. Here is an attempt to start a Hindi paper with a Muslim perspective.

Not sure why this article is called "Hegemony of Hindi" and it is not even well written but it notes an interesting point about mother tongue reporting in census data. Read with a grain of salt.

Marathi or Kokani? As the article says ;
India is home to extraordinary diversity- cultural, religious, ethnic and linguistic. All such differences ought to be harmonized in a spirit of mutual accommodation rather than through coercive methods of homogenization which may only lead to agitations and revolt.
Here is an interesting reading of the role of English in the rise of Indian nationalism.

The half full glass of an optimist never fails to cheers me up. Here is Mrinal Pandey on the state of Hindi.

Lack of scientific and new vocabulary is a major problem plaguing Indian languages and in fact lot of other languages. This piece reiterates the importance of lexicographical work in a language and makes a case for its active pursuit in our universities.It is said that history is written by winners and languages are no exception.

Now for some heavy reading. Historical linguistics has developed as a discipline in last couple of centuries. One of the major accomplishments of the discipline has been a organization of languages in a genetic tree, showing their mutual relations. But this organization also makes strong claims about history in general and in particular about population diffusion in the yore. A. ananth Kumar questions this view.

And to end, here is a question. While a lot of ads appearing on TV are in Hindi and in other regional languages, why is the packaging often only in English? Why o why?

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

बिछड़ते दोस्तों के नाम

यादों की माला के मनके खोते जाएंगे, हम खुद से हर रोज़ बेगाने होते जाएंगे। मिलना जुलना, हंसना रोना, दुनिया भर के हिज्जे, रफ्ता रफ्ता सब अफ़साने होते जाएंगे। "आते हैं उस तरफ कभी तो तुमसे मिलते हैं", न मिलने के यूँही बहाने होते जाएंगे। इंक़लाब की बू है अब पुर-कैफ हवाओं में, बेवजह ही लोग दीवाने होते जाएंगे। भिंची मुट्ठियों, उठे कदम, लहराती बाहों से, बिछड़े साथी का हम साथ निभाते जाएंगे। गले नही  ल गते हैं, अब बस हाथ मिलाते हैं, यार अभागा सभी सयाने होते जाएंगे।
Read more

क्या लिखूं?

छूटे कोई दीन दुखी ना, सबको करो शुमार लिखो, दबी हुई चीखों को बुन कर, कर्कश इक ललकार लिखो। धरम जो पूछे शरणागत का, जात जो पूछे साधो की, हिंदुस्तानी दिल ऐसा भी हुआ नहीं लाचार लिखो। लिखने दो उनको BSE, NSE और GDP, तुम आम आदमी की जेबों में बची चवन्नी चार लिखो। इस शोर शराबे में सहमा सा सच जो तुमको मिल जाए, एक बार लिखो, दस बार लिखो, तुम उसको बारम्बार लिखो। है वक़्त अभी कुछ कहने का, है वक़्त नहीं चुप रहने का, नफरत के तूफानों में घिरते, इंसानों को प्यार लिखो। सुनो अभागा बदल गए हैं यहाँ मायने शब्दों के, देशभक्त ऐसे हैं गर तो, खुद को तुम गद्दार लिखो।
Read more

To bend and not to fold

There are thousands of things in my mind right now that I would like to put on this blog, share with the world. But I hardly manage to find time or the kind of tranquility that I want in order to write. There is one thing however, that never fails to push me to the emotional state where words just seem to flow. Few minutes ago, I watched a video prepared by IITK students called "The Way We Were". There was nothing much in the video. Large part of the video is a music video produced in house at IITK which, I must say, is quite good. The rest of the video is brief snippets of some junta talking about how they feel about IITK and what makes it special for them. It is this part that prompted me to write this post. First to quote a dear friend of mine, the later part in the video looks rather like a "boisterous attempt at self-glorification". I somewhat agree with that and it is this feeling of agreement that forces me to think what would I have said if I was there in th...
Read more