My return to Italy is getting closer: it is a good opportunity to rethink a lot of things and in small, even Indian language experience.
One of the most interesting is also the most obvious. In India's northwest, between universities and tourism, in everyday life you can get away with no problem using English. Knowledge of English is by no means universal, but all educated people know him and most people know the two or three words to most of the trade.
How widespread? In terms of written language, most of you are also presented in English in a month and a half mia conoscenza del devanagari si è rivelata indispensabile solo in un paio di occasioni, per decifrare qualche scritta importante. Inoltre, io sto in zona universitaria e, se guardo alla finestra, oltre il filo spinato della residenza, oltre il traffico di B. B. Marg, tutti i negozi visibili espongono solo insegne in inglese e in alfabeto latino. A Delhi è una situazione eccezionale, e Delhi è uno dei centri in cui l'inglese è più diffuso... però anche questo fa parte dell'India.
Pochi giorni fa, del resto, il mio amato New York Times pubblicava un articolo di Manu Joseph intitolato India Faces a Linguistic Truth: English Spoken Here . Nell'articolo, exaggerating a bit ', it says that "Inglese is the de facto national language of India" is not just that, but certainly in competition for the most popular language, English has many advantages, for example against Hindi . It happened to me, for example, to receive advice as to try to speak English rather than Hindi, even for the simplest things, including cars and take ciclorisciò. The reason: many drivers, and many workers in Delhi, are immigrants, and do not have much sympathy for Hindi. Delhi is a city that was filled with people coming from Bengal or the Punjab, and immigrants often do not understand or do not like to talk about Hindi. Many writings on the media public are in four languages \u200b\u200band four different alphabets: Hindi (in Devanagari), English (Latin), Urdu (in Arabic script) and Punjabi (Punjabi alphabet).
In this context, English is the language of former rulers: it is simply a convenient language that enables many to communicate on an equal footing, without feelings of inferiority. Presented well, the picture may be too rosy. But the fact remains that, coming from Italy and all menate "defense of Italian", etc., affects the pragmatic way in which the Indians take English. As I like Italian, well, I am very comfortable with the idea of \u200b\u200ban international language of reference that anyone can use. Someone knows better than others, because it is the mother tongue? Well, patience is not sure what to make a difference.
For what I see, then, the Indians there is no feeling of inferiority (as is found at times among the Chinese), nor the idea of \u200b\u200bbeing in some way diminished by the use of English . India has a lot of problems, that Indians do not lie, but I never ever find someone who says, "all the fault of the colonizers / globalization / corporate," and so on. Indeed, in a long train journey to Jaisalmer, I've also heard you preach on autonomy by a sympathetic official ("Wing Commander") of the Air: "Ah, you too have the Americans at home? As in Japan? not be so nice to find someone else to drive!"
I tried to explain that things are not like that, but I do not know if I got to the end. And anyway, of course, the whole conversation took place in English ...
0 comments:
Post a Comment