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A co-worker of mine once said then he heard a greater variety of spoken Indian languages in the Bay Area than he’d ever heard back in India, where he was born a

by _iyig 7y ago

A co-worker of mine once said then he heard a greater variety of spoken Indian languages in the Bay Area than he’d ever heard back in India, where he was born and educated. Never thought of a polite way to ask, but I’ve always been curious as to how many Indian co-workers of mine share a language other than English - seems like the number could be lower than expected, given the sheer amount of different languages.

karthikvellanki 7y ago
Your co-worker's observation is actually more obvious than we think it is. Since states in India are essentially divided based on linguistic grounds, he would have been exposed to two Indian languages at best - the regional language in his town and Hindi (if the dominant language in the town is not Hindi already). In the Bay Area you'll find people from various states of India.
- skissane 7y ago
  > In the Bay Area you'll find people from various states of India. Doesn't the same thing happen within India itself, due to internal interstate migration? Not everyone who works in (for example) Bangalore's IT industry grew up there.
  - peterburkimsher 7y ago
    On a related note, does that make people in (e.g.) Bangalore speak Hindi more than Kannada? In China, the purpose-built electronics city of Shenzhen is full of migrants from other regions, so the local language is Mandarin even though the surrounding Guangdong province speaks Cantonese.
    - gopkarthik 7y ago
      In Hyderabad which is in a neighboring state to Bangalore, most people speak both Telugu and Hindi. Among white collar workers English is pretty common.
    - sn41 7y ago
      Not really... native Bangaloreans generally make it a point not to speak Hindi. As for people in the IT Sector, "English is the Lingua Franca" (pun intended) :)
    - rusticpenn 7y ago
      The three states surrounding karnatake (where banglore is located) don't speak Hindi...
  - jogjayr 7y ago
    It does, but it's more likely if you're in one of the large cities - Mumbai, Delhi, Bangalore, Kolkata, Chennai. People move for jobs and economic opportunity. Smaller cities have fewer opportunities and thus fewer reasons for out-of-state people to move there.
- umanwizard 7y ago
  Similarly, there is a wider variety of European languages spoken in New York than in a village in France.
Maultasche 7y ago
Just ask them directly. I've simply asked my Indian coworkers if anyone else in the workplace also speaks their native language and they have no problem talking about it. I've learned a lot from asking them about their languages. I've discovered that they generally share the same native language when they are from the same region in India, otherwise they don't. The only exception I've seen so far in Punjabi, since it seems that Delhi also has a significant population of Punjabi speakers who have migrated there from Punjab, which is farther to the west. Sometimes my coworkers do share languages, and that's obvious if I hear them speaking to each other in a language other than English. Sometimes they have to speak English to each other because that's their only common language.

by _iyig 7y ago

karthikvellanki 7y ago

Your co-worker's observation is actually more obvious than we think it is. Since states in India are essentially divided based on linguistic grounds, he would have been exposed to two Indian languages at best - the regional language in his town and Hindi (if the dominant language in the town is not Hindi already). In the Bay Area you'll find people from various states of India.

skissane 7y ago
> In the Bay Area you'll find people from various states of India. Doesn't the same thing happen within India itself, due to internal interstate migration? Not everyone who works in (for example) Bangalore's IT industry grew up there.
- peterburkimsher 7y ago
  On a related note, does that make people in (e.g.) Bangalore speak Hindi more than Kannada? In China, the purpose-built electronics city of Shenzhen is full of migrants from other regions, so the local language is Mandarin even though the surrounding Guangdong province speaks Cantonese.
  - gopkarthik 7y ago
    In Hyderabad which is in a neighboring state to Bangalore, most people speak both Telugu and Hindi. Among white collar workers English is pretty common.
  - sn41 7y ago
    Not really... native Bangaloreans generally make it a point not to speak Hindi. As for people in the IT Sector, "English is the Lingua Franca" (pun intended) :)
  - rusticpenn 7y ago
    The three states surrounding karnatake (where banglore is located) don't speak Hindi...
- jogjayr 7y ago
  It does, but it's more likely if you're in one of the large cities - Mumbai, Delhi, Bangalore, Kolkata, Chennai. People move for jobs and economic opportunity. Smaller cities have fewer opportunities and thus fewer reasons for out-of-state people to move there.
umanwizard 7y ago
Similarly, there is a wider variety of European languages spoken in New York than in a village in France.

Maultasche 7y ago

Just ask them directly. I've simply asked my Indian coworkers if anyone else in the workplace also speaks their native language and they have no problem talking about it. I've learned a lot from asking them about their languages. I've discovered that they generally share the same native language when they are from the same region in India, otherwise they don't. The only exception I've seen so far in Punjabi, since it seems that Delhi also has a significant population of Punjabi speakers who have migrated there from Punjab, which is farther to the west. Sometimes my coworkers do share languages, and that's obvious if I hear them speaking to each other in a language other than English. Sometimes they have to speak English to each other because that's their only common language.