So, I was taking a stroll with my mom a few days ago when we came across a lady talking to her son who wouldn’t be more than 9-10 years of age in English. The remark I made was, “If people start using English in their daily conversations like this, then what would happen to our native tongue, Hindi? Will Hindi cease to exist? Is that day coming soon?”

People tend to think that since India is the country with second largest population, Hindi must be very widely spoken. According to the stats (here and here), it indeed is true. But it is only 4th most spoken language in the world. It might fall down further in rankings thanks to the thinking of some of the people here. And my fears do seem like they’ll come true soon as this article suggests. Not that Hindi is endangered or anything, as of now. But increasing popularity of English, especially in North India, where people have made knowing English as a status symbol, and all official communication happens in English as well, is definitely harming Hindi.

I, myself, don’t recall the last time I read a proper book in Hindi, or a newspaper. In northern parts of India, those who don’t know English and who don’t talk English are thought to be the same and looked down upon. Which is wrong! I mean, not to brag, me and my family do live in a literate (educated? I have my doubts about that) society where dwell some foreigners as well. And if I am strolling with my family in the colony premises, we talk in Hindi only. I have seen people giving us looks for that (not that we give a damn!) Or people specifically talking in English, so that we don’t understand what they are saying (which has given all of us a hearty laugh many a times XD). Similarly, when I try to converse with some people, especially on phone, people switch to English so fast like speaking Hindi will render them diseased or something.

And hence, we need to learn some lessons from Chinese and Japanese and South Koreans and South Indians. While, many of the East Asians think their English skills are poor and hence shy away from using it (as stated by many of them), I do admire their nature of respecting their languages a lot. On the other hand, a majority of South Indians, I have seen, know English every well, but use it only and only when needed, like communicating with Indians from other parts of India or outside India. Or official communication. I have been on trips to South India, and I have never ever heard people talking in English amongst themselves. And I am pretty sure same would happen if I go to visit China, Japan or South Korea. I am just not very aware of European culture but I do think that same would be the case in the non-English speaking countries there as well. Or probably any other part of the world.

The one thing I fail to understand is, how and when speaking Hindi became a shameful and gawaar (uneducated, illiterate and dumb) thing. The article above, also, points out that Indian English is deteriorating as well. I am witness to this. We used to have such tough grammar lessons in our school time (active-passive voices, narratives and figures of speech were some of the toughest modules we studied during our 6th-7th grades). We used to study Shakespeare and Keats and Wordsworth. Now a days, kids have no real knowledge of grammatical structures, their syllabus pretty much ends at simple continuous tenses. They still study some literature, but majority don’t really know the essence of those works. They just study the subject to score marks. And that annoying ‘you know. at the ending of each sentence to sound cool. (¬_¬”)

I am not saying learning English is bad. Of course not. As a language enthusiast, I can never ever say that. Moreover, English is, kind of, becoming a universal language, so knowing English is definitely advantageous, rather, need of the hour. But in the process, forgetting your own mother tongue is what is problematic.

And, citing the above article again, if people are taking interest in learning Sanskrit or Hindi, that’s a win for the languages and the culture for sure. But it does leave an Indian like me enraged for the languages mentioned there are deeply rooted and always associated to Indian culture. Not that they should be restricted to us or anything. But the things that once used to make us proud are becoming things of past. And I am deeply grieved over that. Many exotic languages are dying, true, and with them, whole cultures. Which is sad as it is. But linguists making such predictions about Hindi is something indigestible but foreseeable as well.

PS: I wrote this post because two of the three languages on the verge of becoming endangered, Sanskrit and Hindi are very close to my heart. I and my sister have won many scholarships and other awards in Sanskrit in our respective school lives. Hence, I have seen the number of people who take up Sanskrit dropping from 2-3 classes of 50+ people each in 5th grade to just 4-5 people in 12th grade. And Hindi is my native tongue.

PPS: Also, this isn’t related to the ongoing political issue of replacing German with Sanskrit in Kendriya Vidyalayas (a type of schools in India) as the third language, at all. Personally, I don’t favour the decision regardless of my above views.