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Can confirm that this is the case in India. In fact it's much worse - due to a long history of colonization, most govt. services and education are exclusive to

Can confirm that this is the case in India. In fact it's much worse - due to a long history of colonization, most govt. services and education are exclusive to English speakers. Due to this unchallenged linguistic apartheid, public education is slowly switching over to "English medium", which is increasingly creating a class of nowhere men, who neither know their own languages nor English. This structural discrimination has knock on effects on the economy which are as yet unknown, and unexplored (due to geopolitical reasons IMO). http://sankrant.org/2011/03/the-english-class-system-2/ http://sankrant.org/2011/03/the-english-class-system-2/ India, due to its deeply colonial state apparatus, is well on its way to losing most of its languages in the coming century. I think this is also the case with African nations - which might explain why the sub-continent (not just India) and Africa share so much in terms of human development indicators.

magic_beans 7y ago
Indian English might be classified as a type of Creole.
saagarjha 7y ago
> Due to this unchallenged linguistic apartheid, public education is slowly switching over to "English medium", which is increasingly creating a class of nowhere men, who neither know their own languages nor English. This structural discrimination has knock on effects on the economy which are as yet unknown, and unexplored (due to geopolitical reasons IMO). Oh, come on: you’re saying that teaching English to Indian students makes them illiterate in both their regional dialect and in English? You’re going to need to cite something like that, and a link that tries to correlate “poor countries often speak European languages” to “they’re poor because they’re not speaking whatever they originally used to” (instead of “their language is probably a byproduct of being colonized, and they’re poor because of that and not because European languages have some inherent linguistic deficiency”). And if we’re talking about anecdotal evidence, I suggest you take a look at the graduates of top “English-medium” institutions of India: many of them are multilingual.

magic_beans 7y ago

Indian English might be classified as a type of Creole.

saagarjha 7y ago

> Due to this unchallenged linguistic apartheid, public education is slowly switching over to "English medium", which is increasingly creating a class of nowhere men, who neither know their own languages nor English. This structural discrimination has knock on effects on the economy which are as yet unknown, and unexplored (due to geopolitical reasons IMO). Oh, come on: you’re saying that teaching English to Indian students makes them illiterate in both their regional dialect and in English? You’re going to need to cite something like that, and a link that tries to correlate “poor countries often speak European languages” to “they’re poor because they’re not speaking whatever they originally used to” (instead of “their language is probably a byproduct of being colonized, and they’re poor because of that and not because European languages have some inherent linguistic deficiency”). And if we’re talking about anecdotal evidence, I suggest you take a look at the graduates of top “English-medium” institutions of India: many of them are multilingual.