“Today’s aspirational Indians want their children to go to a school where lessons are taught in English. But often the pupils leave speaking a language that would not be recognised in London or New York. Could this Hinglish be the language of India’s future?” BBC reports.
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Wuliangguobinjiu / November 29, 2012
Author Quote“I could not help wondering if these children might be better off learning in their mother-tongues and studying English as a second language.” Unquote
Most of these students work very hard at university level to increase their knowledge of English and do well. About the “call centres” it has nothing to do with the language itself but the culture at either end thinking they are the best. The operators are graduates from cities who very often handle the technical issues which call centres elsewhere in the world are unable to handle. The caller is generally a non-technical knows all so that’s where the cultural identity cribbing starts- they don’t speak English (sic!)
Standard Chinese is one of four official languages of Singapore. Nowadays to find a job in the financial market of Singapore one has to be proficient in Standard Chinese. When would the Indians and the British start learning Standard Chinese to access the global economy?
When I went to China a decade ago my guide was a 10 year old kid who spoke fluent English but neither of her parents both professionals spoke English and her English teacher at school was from Romania.
They study differently; the collective way asking more questions from our point of view.
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justice / November 29, 2012
Never mind what happens in india – all/most of parents in sri lanka desire english education for their children. Ask any villager – north,south,east or west.
They know that english speakers are the ‘elite’ of society and become the cream of same, even become politicians.
Indians are among the leading scientists/doctors/economists etc. of the world.The american electronic & other industries snap up graduates of Indian Institutes of Technology.
India sensibly kept english the medium of higher education.
We can have all children learn english plus one of the other two languages.English can gradually be made the medium of instruction.
If there is ‘political will’,this will happen.We owe it to our future generations.
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Senguttuvan / November 29, 2012
Whereas it is true till about the 1970s we probably had the edge on India in English, they have since become world-beaters. Some of the finest writers and speakers of English come from the country – buoyed by the advantage of entry by muliple thousands of Indian students in the best Universities in Britain and the USA. Colleges in Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, Bangalore, Kolkata turn out excellent English students – some of whom have won coveted English prizes in the world.
Some of the finest English journalists in the Asian region today come from there.
But let us not be disheartened about this. Our leading international schools are turning out good English-speaking students, which is to say there is much fixing our Education Ministry must do instead of having hundreds of officials with prefixes and suffixes to their names.
Senguttuvan
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hema / December 5, 2012
they will choose “englij” he he
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