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Linguistically Speaking – English Becomes India’s 'Numero-Uno' Language
Washington Times ^ | Friday, September 23, 2011 | Sonal Jaitly

Posted on 09/26/2011 12:32:44 AM PDT by nickcarraway

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To: nickcarraway

English is the language of success.


21 posted on 09/26/2011 5:07:20 AM PDT by jimfree (In 2012 Sarah Palin will have more quality executive experience than Barack Obama.)
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To: elcid1970
The Basque language is fairly ancient ~ probably goes all the way back to the Ice Age 20,000 years ago when Europe had been pretty much cleared of humans ~ they were clustered in several areas called Refugia which were not glaciated.

One of the main refugia was located right there at the Pyranees Mountains ~ another on the Dalmatian coast and another in the Middle East.

Obviously there were others in the East.

DNA studies show clearly that Europe was repopulated after the Ice Age by people from the refugia.

One of the more intriguing things to come out of the earliest scientific studies of languages was that when folks migrate away from the core area their language remains fairly unchanged from what it was like at the time of migration. The changes take place back in the old homeland.

We have enough time here for European refugia speakers to have spread all the way from Spain to Scandinavia to India and then back, with their core language fairly unchanged ~ and all that before the first Indo-European drew his first swastika in the dirt near the campfire!

In the meantime the original language would have morphed into the Basque we've all come to know and love, which is a far different language than any of the Dravidian group, or the Fenno-Scandian group! It sure ain't Hungarian either.

22 posted on 09/26/2011 5:08:50 AM PDT by muawiyah
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To: nickcarraway

I can honestly say I have never met someone from India that could not speak English, and we have a large population of Indians living here in the northwest. I have also never seen one on an episode of COPS. Now for are neighbors on our Southern border - well you know the answer on that one.


23 posted on 09/26/2011 5:24:44 AM PDT by NavyCanDo (GO MAMA GRIZZLY!)
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To: AfricanChristian
United Airlines subcontracts a lot of its customer relations to both Philippine and Indian entities. From my experience, the Filipinos understand and can readily speak American English, making the easy to work with. OTOH, as a general rule, the Indians speak with a truly irritating clipped diction that leaves off the ends of a lot of words, making dealing with one of them much like having a deep root canal without Novocaine.
24 posted on 09/26/2011 6:51:28 AM PDT by libstripper
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To: MimirsWell
Are you really an African Christian or a very good Chicom troll. Easily one of the best acts I have seen if it was an act ;-)

And who do you think you are? The Thought Police?

I was pointing out that the figures for India, though impressive are not that impressive if you consider that India was ruled by the British for more than 300 years. Several African nations, with much less colonial contact have a far higher proportion of English speakers.

What the data points to is that the Indian education system has a lot of work to do to make India more competitive.

25 posted on 09/26/2011 7:19:33 AM PDT by AfricanChristian
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To: AfricanChristian
Thats what happens if you refer to data from wikipedia. Wikipeadia reports 125 million for India, 90 million Phillipines and 79 million for Nigeria. Although percentage wise Philippines and Nigeria are still higher then India, the stats provided are very deceptive and highly unlikely.

If you had cared to read the finer details..... wikipedia also reports 350 million “english users” in India. It makes no such distinction in case of Phillipines and Nigeria. In case of Phillipines it says “66.7 million people aged 5 years or more could speak English” and in case of Nigeria “(79 million)Figures are for speakers of Nigerian Pidgin, an English-based pidgin or creole.”

26 posted on 09/26/2011 7:22:47 AM PDT by ravager
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To: AfricanChristian
And I have actually been to Philippines, 92% of the population speaking English is grossly inaccurate just from personal experience. Their total basic literacy population is just about that high.
27 posted on 09/26/2011 7:27:34 AM PDT by ravager
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To: AfricanChristian

That doesn’t answer the question. The truth is your username goes a long distance in an attempt to cast your regional and religious identity; something few others out here do. And then most of your responses are to posts on China - with a few grudging ones that concern purely of Africa. Don’t get me wrong - you do display knowledge of Africa. But as you’ll see my list of scalps below - I have gotten good at reading the ChiCom flow - and whether you are ChiCom or not, you are following that flow.

Do as you please and I don’t disagree with your comment on this thread but I am watching you :-) If you are ChiCom, you will slip up and I will be there to extract my scalp.


28 posted on 09/26/2011 7:35:01 AM PDT by MimirsWell (Pganini, cmdjing, andyahoo, artaxerces, todd_hall, EdisonOne - counting my Chicom scalps)
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To: MimirsWell

Okay, I’m a Chinese triple agent on a one man mission to destroy America. ;)


29 posted on 09/26/2011 7:41:24 AM PDT by AfricanChristian
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To: MimirsWell

Okay, I’m a Chinese triple agent on a one man mission to destroy America. ;)

On a more serious note, I’m an African living in Africa. The reason why I post so much about China and know so much about China is because China is Africa’s largest trading partner and most dynamic player.

(More Africans are learning Mandarin than you’d imagine.)

Frankly speaking, I don’t know what keeps drawing me to this site, but I think it is important for Americans to understand how the rise of China affects their nation’s strategic position. I can see it clearly from where I live on the African continent.


30 posted on 09/26/2011 7:46:50 AM PDT by AfricanChristian
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To: AfricanChristian
Nigerian adult literacy rate is roughly at 57% and Indian adult literacy rate as of 2011 is at 74% (recorded a 9.4% increase). It would be a bit of a stretch to assume all 53% of Nigerian population can be categorized as “English speakers”. Very many of them would fall under the category of basic rudimentary “English users”. If you consider the population of “English users” in India.... that number would be 350 million.

Wikipedia defines the term “English users as...
“The distinction between the Speakers and Users is that Users only know how to read English words while Speakers know how to read English, understand spoken English as well as form their own sentences to converse in English.”

As for Indian education system, a large number of schools in India provide education in pure vernacular medium. Its not that they are uneducated. Its just that they have a stronger influence of vernacular language over English.

31 posted on 09/26/2011 7:49:56 AM PDT by ravager
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To: AfricanChristian

Wo ye hui shuo zhongwen, pengyou. Ruguo wo de diannao you zhongwen gongneng de hua, wo keyi gei ni xie hanzi.

China is India’s largest trading partner as well and a neighbour, but somehow we are not as start-struck with them as African Christians seem to be :-)

On a serious note, I agree with most of what you post especially how blind Americans seem to be to either extremes on China’s impact on the global system.


32 posted on 09/26/2011 8:05:24 AM PDT by MimirsWell (Pganini, cmdjing, andyahoo, artaxerces, todd_hall, EdisonOne - counting my Chicom scalps)
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To: AfricanChristian

The strong Chinese influence of Africa isn’t fraught with risks as you may well know from past experiences. In the past Europe came with great promises of trade and development for Africa and we all know how Africa got burnt. In recent past China’s involvement in Darfur (Sudan) hasn’t really been a positive one. If you look at Asia, most of China’s close political allies such as (North Korea, Burma, Pakistan, Syria, Iran) are despotic hell holes amidst a sea of rising Asian economies. It would be prudent for Africa to strike a balance between long term political/economic interest and short term commercial interests.


33 posted on 09/26/2011 8:11:54 AM PDT by ravager
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To: AdmSmith; AnonymousConservative; Berosus; bigheadfred; Bockscar; ColdOne; Convert from ECUSA; ...

Thanks nickcarraway. Sidebar:
34 posted on 09/29/2011 4:30:00 AM PDT by SunkenCiv (It's never a bad time to FReep this link -- https://secure.freerepublic.com/donate/)
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To: nickcarraway
not really. Farsi was the official language of the Mughal Empire. For most of its time the Mughal Empire was confined to the northern parts of India. Only under Aurangzeb did it temporarily take the Deccan.

the Southern parts of India remained speaking their non-Indo-European languages of Tamil/Malayalam/Kannada/Tulu/Andhra

the state of Goa had its state language as Portuguese since it was Portuguese even before the Taj Mahal was built (since 1510).

The North-East of India wasn't part of the Mughal Empire and spoke its non-European languages (belonging to the Tai or Tibeto-Burmese language families).

35 posted on 10/03/2011 1:17:46 AM PDT by Cronos
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To: floridavoter2

english is spreading across the world as it is a simple language to use. Spanish is relatively simple too, though not as simple as English. however English is getting increasingly unwieldy and is already splitting into various “dialects” — for instance if an Englishman told you that he was too knackered to snog his wife, you’d be puzzled — and it gets worse with Franglish, Spanglish, Hinglish, Chiglish etc.


36 posted on 10/03/2011 1:19:55 AM PDT by Cronos
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To: muawiyah; blam
that was by a non-Indo-European group that might even have Dravidian linguistic underpinnings.

To my mind, ever since blam told me about that, it seems so plausible, I'm just waiting for more archaeological proof. I already consider it true but not completely proven.

37 posted on 10/03/2011 1:22:22 AM PDT by Cronos
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To: libstripper

true, you’ve pointed out some of the differences between American English and British English. Of course there is also a difference between the British English of today and the British English of the Victorian/Edwardian era, which is what Indians learn!


38 posted on 10/03/2011 1:24:44 AM PDT by Cronos
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