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Has anyone noticed how everything of value out of India is only in English (the other lang link is blank) ? This sort of thing would be anathema in China; what

Has anyone noticed how everything of value out of India is only in English (the other lang link is blank) ? This sort of thing would be anathema in China; what with all the 'millenium of humiliation' and things. Odd, considering the general indignance showed towards @pmarca (from @a16z) some months back. Edit: @a16z -> @pmarca

sremani 10y ago
Dear Sir, English is an Indian language :) Honestly, its the consensus language, since its already is the commercial language of the world. Knowledge and fluency in English is the basic for cultural and professional sophistication (in India). India during the moguls had similar thing with farsi. BJP(current ruling party) want to impose Hindi, but primarily South and East peripheries have strong linguistic identities usually are not comfortable, so English is the happy compromise.
- ittekimasu 10y ago
  Interesting. I noticed that ISRO is actually in the south; it'd appear that neither the north nor the south have any linguistic identity. (To wit, the French speak English to get on with fellow Europeans but everything important out of France is usually in French. Ditto in Japan.) I've noticed this in Kenya (and Africa in general) as well. People say they're against European imperialism, but really they're not, considering how the state holds what was injected in higher esteem than whatever is native. It seems that most of the indignance pointed to at @pmarca is about (white) guilt shaming. Paulson from yesterday should be glad to hear of this heretic analysis :) Edit: Change @a16z to @pmarca
  - vineet7kumar 10y ago
    > considering how the state holds what was injected in higher esteem than whatever is native. It seems that most of the indignance pointed to at @pmarca is about (white) guilt shaming. If I understand your logic correctly, it seems that you are suggesting that a country or a community should either reinvent every useful thing that was introduced by colonialists or should not take a stand against the ideas of colonialism, racism and discrimination! It's a fact that Britishers introduced a lot of technology in this world and helped bring it to many countries but I feel that it would have been much better if they would have tried to integrate with these countries rather than trying to follow a master-slave approach. Anyways, what's done is done but we can certainly hope that going forward the world can be a more equal place.
    - ittekimasu 10y ago
      Technological/economic structures are separate from cultural spheres; most countries follow a Western model today. It'd have been a great loss if during Meiji period Japan lost all its culture. I'm sure you sensed the sarcasm, but forgive me, I don't think a country which produced Panini, needed the English to teach it to speak. Is this strange "stockholm syndrome" a result of the country's caste system ? Does everyone in India speak English ? If not, is there a linguistic class/caste divide (like South Africa) ?
      - devdas 10y ago
        Less Stockholm syndrome, more necessity in technical fields.
  - kjaga 10y ago
    I do not really understand how learning a language is equated to supporting colonialism. Nor does learning English imply abandoning local languages. Almost everyone in India who speaks English is also fluent in one or more Indian languages. I for one have fluency in 3 Indian languages. Criticizing @pmarca on his comments on colonialism has got less to do with his race and more to do with the contents of his comments. I am certain that a person of any other race or ethnicity making such a comment would have received similar criticism (and rightfully so).
dingo_bat 10y ago
English is the common language of India. You can go to any decent sized city and if you know English, you can get by. I would say the next most widely understood language would be Hindi. I live in bangalore (native language is kannada) and I've almost zero problems talking to people in a mix of Hindi and English.
kartD 10y ago
In India, the north primarily speaks Hindi, with dialects of Hindi being spoken by state (Punjabi, Bhojpuri etc). South India's language (and where ISRO is primarily situated) speaks a variety of languages including Tamil, Kannada, Malayalam etc. So English becomes the neutral language when communication is required between the two halves. On the a16z note, do you mean the Marc Andreessen's colonial comments? I don't remember any squabble with a16z and Indians as a whole.
- sremani 10y ago
  Correction: Punjabi is a full-fledged language whether written in Gurumukhi or Shahmukhi. Uniquely one language with two scripts. Punjabi is not a dialect of Hindi.
  - kartD 10y ago
    Oops, you're right.
  - dmurray 10y ago
    Not uniquely: Serbo-Croatian is written in Latin or Cyrillic depending what country you are in. Turkish is now officially written in Latin, but used to be written in Arabic. And most prominently, though in a different way, Chinese and Japanese have multiple writing systems.
  - wsxcde 10y ago
    There many languages with multiple scripts. Konkani is written in both Kannada and Devanagari. Manipuri is written in both Manipuri and Bengali. For a more controversial example, I'd say maybe Urdu/Hindi are basically the same language written in Devanagari or Urdu. (btw, I just looked at Shahmukhi on wikipedia and it is exactly the same as Urdu).
vineet7kumar 10y ago
I don't see how the choice of a language that is practically the lingua franca of the modern technology and business world is related to being against the ideology of colonialism and people who support that. In my opinion, India's adoption of English as standard language of business is a logical choice as it is not only helpful in faster technological progress of the country but is also understood (in some capacity) by majority of the population.
- ittekimasu 10y ago
  I don't think you understand what 'lingua franca' means. No self-respecting people (in Europe/East Asia atleast) give up their languages for a common medium. See, http://www.flipkart.com/ http://www.flipkart.com/ (only English) vs http://www.rakuten.co.jp/ http://www.rakuten.co.jp/ (English/Japanese) vs http://www.baidu.com/ http://www.baidu.com/ (Mandarin). India is not exactly on the same stage globally as China or Japan, when it comes to Tech, despite what you claim. It looks like http://www.aliexpress.com/ http://www.aliexpress.com/ has support for more Indian languages than Flipkart. Surely supporting different languages for such a unicorn (which often shows up on HN) can't be that difficult a task ?
  - kamakazizuru 10y ago
    "self-respect" is a bit misplaced here. None of the countries you named were ruled or for that matter created by a colonial ruler with another language. India in its current form never existed, its like the EU, there are several states with their own languages, and English is the common one. As for Aliexpress offering several languages - its just the google translate plugin ;).
    - wsxcde 10y ago
      India in its current form never existed, its like the EU This is technically true in that yes, a state with precisely India's borders today did not exist before 1947. But that is a useless claim because that is true for every country in the world. There are have been many many empires, going back all the way back at least 2300 years, and these empires have ruled the majority of the Indian subcontinent. This includes most of modern India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, and parts of Afghanistan. Some of them also ruled parts of Iran, Tibet, and a little bit of Central Asia. And these empires all had linguistic diversity. The idea that one language = one country is a stupid byproduct of European nationalist movements.
mikeash 10y ago
India was completely conquered and ruled by the British for a century or two. China was defeated militarily many times, but was never really conquered, and wasn't colonized aside from a few places like Hong Kong and bits of Shanghai. That's a huge difference in circumstance which I'm sure results in a huge difference in attitudes. China also had an authoritarian government willing to impose Beijing Mandarin as the standard language for the whole country. I don't know that India's government would have been willing or able to do something similar.
- wornohaulus 10y ago
  DOESN'T WANT TO
ittekimasu 10y ago
Okay folk. I understand HN crowd (and apparently the Indian subset too) don't like hearing ill of the British empire. I concede that everything was/is well and that English is the only "rational" choice for every affair in India. Naipaul was right after all; I didn't think this nostalgia was this great, though. The spiritual center of my culture is apparently long dead; I don't really care about what they do over there anymore. Spare a poor soul some up votes.
- wsxcde 10y ago
  You still don't get the point. Recognizing the evils of British imperialism is completely orthogonal to disavowing the English language.
- kartD 10y ago
  You seem really confused. India uses English because we have 28 official languages. English is seen as neutral. Indians nor most other Asians have any love for the British. Rejecting English does not repair the damage they did. And attaching nationalism to the rejection of English is just childish. And if you wanted to bring up this up, I don't see why you had to use Marc Andressen to bring it up. And asking for votes after mis understanding and then mis representing people's points is not going to get you any up votes.
- kjaga 10y ago
  Either offer a rational counter argument, or concede that your comments were poorly thought through. Hiding behind Naipaul's comments does not further the argument in anyway. No one here is arguing that English is the ONLY rational choice, nor is it in reality. India has 18 official languages. English is just one of them.
- ittekimasu 10y ago
  Okay. I can't spend so much time explaining the virtues of "freedom". I also can't spend time trying to reason with "rational" people who like all the post-modernists basically believe in narratives, and not truth (philosophically speaking). - My contention is not about speaking English, "rational" people (I speak English!). It is about how economically dominant a language is; in East Asia/Europe getting a good job without knowing the local language is extraordinarily difficult. Speaking English (without other awesome skills) often lands one a position teaching high schoolers. - This power/economic structure is inverted in formerly colonized African nations as noted by the Kenyan writer Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o. He was kicked out for raising such questions (so much for Kenyan Independence). - It's very apparent that this is the case in India too. Why? - It doesn't look like one can get a Tech job at ISRO (imaginably also Flipkart) having a Engineering degree in one of the native languages. What appears to be Hindi is barely to be found on the menus on its front page. A "lingua franca" is one to which everyone makes a translation from the original, for the world to read. It appears that the original itself is in English, here! - This being the case, I'm not even sure if you can get a degree in anything useful in any of the native languages. - Punching in "India English" threw up the following in the first few results, http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/22/opinion/sunday/how-english-ruined-indian-literature.html?_r=0 http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/22/opinion/sunday/how-english... - There seems to be lots of chatter in the search results on an as yet unnamed invisible hand disenfranchising people linguistically (people are taught in English ??!). - According to Wiki, only 10% of India speaks English. This is the classic workings of a feudal - ironically a pre-enlightenment - state, if not one practicing outright apartheid. It's almost as if India stepped into medieval Europe's shoes where the rich sent their kids to Latin grammar schools; or Tsarist Russia where French was the langue de l'élite (atleast Tolstoy wrote in Russian as noted by the NyT article!). If you want to invalidate my understanding, either show one of the above to false, or show why it's alright by making statements about their benignity (vis a vis a linguistically diverse EU, for instance). Otherwise, please spare me the downvotes and the verbiage. I don't think such political HN threads help anyone (although, they do reveal colors).
asenna 10y ago
Fun fact: People who actually don't speak fluent English are more often than not ridiculed, looked down upon and judged immediately. For some reason, the country treats knowing english as a litmus test - You either know english or you're not really that knowledgable (You've to work doubly hard to prove your knowledge). I might be generalizing a bit but it's truly a widespread thing, I'm sure other Indian HN users can attest to this. - You try to strike a conversation with a girl in Hindi in a bar, you will get laughed at or ignored. But you speak fluent english and you have a much higher chance of having a conversation. - Every parent wants to send their child to an english medium school and it's only the poor ones who don't have many options around who settle for their children to be in a local language school (The quality of teachers would also vary accordingly). - A sportsperson (usually a cricketer), goes up to the post-match presentation to take an award and speaks in broken english, millions of people watching it would start cracking jokes on him. There are countless other examples. Yes, knowing english is good to compete in a global economy but the obsession with the language that the middle/upper class shows is ridiculous. There are several reasons for this trend but it's definitely a direct impact of the British rule. There is a brilliant Bollywood family movie on this topic - English Vinglish (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2181931/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2181931/) I would really recommend you to watch it if you're into good foreign cinema.
- ittekimasu 10y ago
  It almost appears as if there is a class of Indians who learn English first and then barely, if at all, learn any of the native languages. I wonder if the similar GDP per-capita of India, Africa are the result of such shared colonial baggage. I've never seen this stuff never mentioned in the media; I had know about the colonial education/stifling wartime British bureaucracy etc. and assorted ideas from reading Naipaul's book. I didn't think it was this bad. I find it ironic that such elites hold the values of enlightenment Europe to such high standard while implementing the policies of medieval Europe. Best of luck to you; considering the boisterous opposition here, I can only imagine what it'd take to bring political change in such a vast country.
- yomritoyj 10y ago
  The problems you point out are real, but they are the problems of class differences. India has a growing middle class, and this class needs markers to differentiate itself from the lower classes it has only recently left behind. Speaking English acts as a marker now, but if it went away for some reason I'm sure there would be new markers to take its place. Think of the kind of ‘Indian’ culture promoted by the government and the schools: Indian classical music, Indian classical dance, Sanskritised Hindi. They are as alien to the everyday lives of most people in India as English is. But they were created to give the elites and the government of India a high culture of their own which was not tainted by colonialism and whose command they could use to differentiate themselves from the non-elite. The bar situation has an additional twist. Most bilingual people I know would use the Indian language with friends and family and English with strangers. So trying to start a conversation in Hindi may come across as being too familiar too soon.
gammaray9 10y ago
It is as practical a matter as the adoption of Indian numerals by Europe in the 1200s in favor of Roman numerals. English happens to be an Indo-European language and does not seem as 'foreign' to Indians as Indian numerals might have appeared to Europeans. As an aside, English has recognizable weaknesses as a medium of expression to Indian minds, and if a replacement will be found, chances are it will be synthesized in India.

sremani 10y ago

Dear Sir, English is an Indian language :) Honestly, its the consensus language, since its already is the commercial language of the world. Knowledge and fluency in English is the basic for cultural and professional sophistication (in India). India during the moguls had similar thing with farsi. BJP(current ruling party) want to impose Hindi, but primarily South and East peripheries have strong linguistic identities usually are not comfortable, so English is the happy compromise.

ittekimasu 10y ago
Interesting. I noticed that ISRO is actually in the south; it'd appear that neither the north nor the south have any linguistic identity. (To wit, the French speak English to get on with fellow Europeans but everything important out of France is usually in French. Ditto in Japan.) I've noticed this in Kenya (and Africa in general) as well. People say they're against European imperialism, but really they're not, considering how the state holds what was injected in higher esteem than whatever is native. It seems that most of the indignance pointed to at @pmarca is about (white) guilt shaming. Paulson from yesterday should be glad to hear of this heretic analysis :) Edit: Change @a16z to @pmarca
- vineet7kumar 10y ago
  > considering how the state holds what was injected in higher esteem than whatever is native. It seems that most of the indignance pointed to at @pmarca is about (white) guilt shaming. If I understand your logic correctly, it seems that you are suggesting that a country or a community should either reinvent every useful thing that was introduced by colonialists or should not take a stand against the ideas of colonialism, racism and discrimination! It's a fact that Britishers introduced a lot of technology in this world and helped bring it to many countries but I feel that it would have been much better if they would have tried to integrate with these countries rather than trying to follow a master-slave approach. Anyways, what's done is done but we can certainly hope that going forward the world can be a more equal place.
  - ittekimasu 10y ago
    Technological/economic structures are separate from cultural spheres; most countries follow a Western model today. It'd have been a great loss if during Meiji period Japan lost all its culture. I'm sure you sensed the sarcasm, but forgive me, I don't think a country which produced Panini, needed the English to teach it to speak. Is this strange "stockholm syndrome" a result of the country's caste system ? Does everyone in India speak English ? If not, is there a linguistic class/caste divide (like South Africa) ?
    - devdas 10y ago
      Less Stockholm syndrome, more necessity in technical fields.
- kjaga 10y ago
  I do not really understand how learning a language is equated to supporting colonialism. Nor does learning English imply abandoning local languages. Almost everyone in India who speaks English is also fluent in one or more Indian languages. I for one have fluency in 3 Indian languages. Criticizing @pmarca on his comments on colonialism has got less to do with his race and more to do with the contents of his comments. I am certain that a person of any other race or ethnicity making such a comment would have received similar criticism (and rightfully so).

dingo_bat 10y ago

English is the common language of India. You can go to any decent sized city and if you know English, you can get by. I would say the next most widely understood language would be Hindi. I live in bangalore (native language is kannada) and I've almost zero problems talking to people in a mix of Hindi and English.

kartD 10y ago

In India, the north primarily speaks Hindi, with dialects of Hindi being spoken by state (Punjabi, Bhojpuri etc). South India's language (and where ISRO is primarily situated) speaks a variety of languages including Tamil, Kannada, Malayalam etc. So English becomes the neutral language when communication is required between the two halves. On the a16z note, do you mean the Marc Andreessen's colonial comments? I don't remember any squabble with a16z and Indians as a whole.

sremani 10y ago
Correction: Punjabi is a full-fledged language whether written in Gurumukhi or Shahmukhi. Uniquely one language with two scripts. Punjabi is not a dialect of Hindi.
- kartD 10y ago
  Oops, you're right.
- dmurray 10y ago
  Not uniquely: Serbo-Croatian is written in Latin or Cyrillic depending what country you are in. Turkish is now officially written in Latin, but used to be written in Arabic. And most prominently, though in a different way, Chinese and Japanese have multiple writing systems.
- wsxcde 10y ago
  There many languages with multiple scripts. Konkani is written in both Kannada and Devanagari. Manipuri is written in both Manipuri and Bengali. For a more controversial example, I'd say maybe Urdu/Hindi are basically the same language written in Devanagari or Urdu. (btw, I just looked at Shahmukhi on wikipedia and it is exactly the same as Urdu).

vineet7kumar 10y ago

I don't see how the choice of a language that is practically the lingua franca of the modern technology and business world is related to being against the ideology of colonialism and people who support that. In my opinion, India's adoption of English as standard language of business is a logical choice as it is not only helpful in faster technological progress of the country but is also understood (in some capacity) by majority of the population.

ittekimasu 10y ago
I don't think you understand what 'lingua franca' means. No self-respecting people (in Europe/East Asia atleast) give up their languages for a common medium. See, http://www.flipkart.com/ http://www.flipkart.com/ (only English) vs http://www.rakuten.co.jp/ http://www.rakuten.co.jp/ (English/Japanese) vs http://www.baidu.com/ http://www.baidu.com/ (Mandarin). India is not exactly on the same stage globally as China or Japan, when it comes to Tech, despite what you claim. It looks like http://www.aliexpress.com/ http://www.aliexpress.com/ has support for more Indian languages than Flipkart. Surely supporting different languages for such a unicorn (which often shows up on HN) can't be that difficult a task ?
- kamakazizuru 10y ago
  "self-respect" is a bit misplaced here. None of the countries you named were ruled or for that matter created by a colonial ruler with another language. India in its current form never existed, its like the EU, there are several states with their own languages, and English is the common one. As for Aliexpress offering several languages - its just the google translate plugin ;).
  - wsxcde 10y ago
    India in its current form never existed, its like the EU This is technically true in that yes, a state with precisely India's borders today did not exist before 1947. But that is a useless claim because that is true for every country in the world. There are have been many many empires, going back all the way back at least 2300 years, and these empires have ruled the majority of the Indian subcontinent. This includes most of modern India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, and parts of Afghanistan. Some of them also ruled parts of Iran, Tibet, and a little bit of Central Asia. And these empires all had linguistic diversity. The idea that one language = one country is a stupid byproduct of European nationalist movements.

mikeash 10y ago

India was completely conquered and ruled by the British for a century or two. China was defeated militarily many times, but was never really conquered, and wasn't colonized aside from a few places like Hong Kong and bits of Shanghai. That's a huge difference in circumstance which I'm sure results in a huge difference in attitudes. China also had an authoritarian government willing to impose Beijing Mandarin as the standard language for the whole country. I don't know that India's government would have been willing or able to do something similar.

wornohaulus 10y ago
DOESN'T WANT TO

ittekimasu 10y ago

Okay folk. I understand HN crowd (and apparently the Indian subset too) don't like hearing ill of the British empire. I concede that everything was/is well and that English is the only "rational" choice for every affair in India. Naipaul was right after all; I didn't think this nostalgia was this great, though. The spiritual center of my culture is apparently long dead; I don't really care about what they do over there anymore. Spare a poor soul some up votes.

wsxcde 10y ago
You still don't get the point. Recognizing the evils of British imperialism is completely orthogonal to disavowing the English language.
kartD 10y ago
You seem really confused. India uses English because we have 28 official languages. English is seen as neutral. Indians nor most other Asians have any love for the British. Rejecting English does not repair the damage they did. And attaching nationalism to the rejection of English is just childish. And if you wanted to bring up this up, I don't see why you had to use Marc Andressen to bring it up. And asking for votes after mis understanding and then mis representing people's points is not going to get you any up votes.
kjaga 10y ago
Either offer a rational counter argument, or concede that your comments were poorly thought through. Hiding behind Naipaul's comments does not further the argument in anyway. No one here is arguing that English is the ONLY rational choice, nor is it in reality. India has 18 official languages. English is just one of them.
ittekimasu 10y ago
Okay. I can't spend so much time explaining the virtues of "freedom". I also can't spend time trying to reason with "rational" people who like all the post-modernists basically believe in narratives, and not truth (philosophically speaking). - My contention is not about speaking English, "rational" people (I speak English!). It is about how economically dominant a language is; in East Asia/Europe getting a good job without knowing the local language is extraordinarily difficult. Speaking English (without other awesome skills) often lands one a position teaching high schoolers. - This power/economic structure is inverted in formerly colonized African nations as noted by the Kenyan writer Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o. He was kicked out for raising such questions (so much for Kenyan Independence). - It's very apparent that this is the case in India too. Why? - It doesn't look like one can get a Tech job at ISRO (imaginably also Flipkart) having a Engineering degree in one of the native languages. What appears to be Hindi is barely to be found on the menus on its front page. A "lingua franca" is one to which everyone makes a translation from the original, for the world to read. It appears that the original itself is in English, here! - This being the case, I'm not even sure if you can get a degree in anything useful in any of the native languages. - Punching in "India English" threw up the following in the first few results, http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/22/opinion/sunday/how-english-ruined-indian-literature.html?_r=0 http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/22/opinion/sunday/how-english... - There seems to be lots of chatter in the search results on an as yet unnamed invisible hand disenfranchising people linguistically (people are taught in English ??!). - According to Wiki, only 10% of India speaks English. This is the classic workings of a feudal - ironically a pre-enlightenment - state, if not one practicing outright apartheid. It's almost as if India stepped into medieval Europe's shoes where the rich sent their kids to Latin grammar schools; or Tsarist Russia where French was the langue de l'élite (atleast Tolstoy wrote in Russian as noted by the NyT article!). If you want to invalidate my understanding, either show one of the above to false, or show why it's alright by making statements about their benignity (vis a vis a linguistically diverse EU, for instance). Otherwise, please spare me the downvotes and the verbiage. I don't think such political HN threads help anyone (although, they do reveal colors).

asenna 10y ago

Fun fact: People who actually don't speak fluent English are more often than not ridiculed, looked down upon and judged immediately. For some reason, the country treats knowing english as a litmus test - You either know english or you're not really that knowledgable (You've to work doubly hard to prove your knowledge). I might be generalizing a bit but it's truly a widespread thing, I'm sure other Indian HN users can attest to this. - You try to strike a conversation with a girl in Hindi in a bar, you will get laughed at or ignored. But you speak fluent english and you have a much higher chance of having a conversation. - Every parent wants to send their child to an english medium school and it's only the poor ones who don't have many options around who settle for their children to be in a local language school (The quality of teachers would also vary accordingly). - A sportsperson (usually a cricketer), goes up to the post-match presentation to take an award and speaks in broken english, millions of people watching it would start cracking jokes on him. There are countless other examples. Yes, knowing english is good to compete in a global economy but the obsession with the language that the middle/upper class shows is ridiculous. There are several reasons for this trend but it's definitely a direct impact of the British rule. There is a brilliant Bollywood family movie on this topic - English Vinglish (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2181931/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2181931/) I would really recommend you to watch it if you're into good foreign cinema.

ittekimasu 10y ago
It almost appears as if there is a class of Indians who learn English first and then barely, if at all, learn any of the native languages. I wonder if the similar GDP per-capita of India, Africa are the result of such shared colonial baggage. I've never seen this stuff never mentioned in the media; I had know about the colonial education/stifling wartime British bureaucracy etc. and assorted ideas from reading Naipaul's book. I didn't think it was this bad. I find it ironic that such elites hold the values of enlightenment Europe to such high standard while implementing the policies of medieval Europe. Best of luck to you; considering the boisterous opposition here, I can only imagine what it'd take to bring political change in such a vast country.
yomritoyj 10y ago
The problems you point out are real, but they are the problems of class differences. India has a growing middle class, and this class needs markers to differentiate itself from the lower classes it has only recently left behind. Speaking English acts as a marker now, but if it went away for some reason I'm sure there would be new markers to take its place. Think of the kind of ‘Indian’ culture promoted by the government and the schools: Indian classical music, Indian classical dance, Sanskritised Hindi. They are as alien to the everyday lives of most people in India as English is. But they were created to give the elites and the government of India a high culture of their own which was not tainted by colonialism and whose command they could use to differentiate themselves from the non-elite. The bar situation has an additional twist. Most bilingual people I know would use the Indian language with friends and family and English with strangers. So trying to start a conversation in Hindi may come across as being too familiar too soon.

gammaray9 10y ago

It is as practical a matter as the adoption of Indian numerals by Europe in the 1200s in favor of Roman numerals. English happens to be an Indo-European language and does not seem as 'foreign' to Indians as Indian numerals might have appeared to Europeans. As an aside, English has recognizable weaknesses as a medium of expression to Indian minds, and if a replacement will be found, chances are it will be synthesized in India.