Why the shame in speaking Hindi - Page 7

Originally posted by: Mahisa_22

It's like wasting food and saying, "Bruhh, who needs so much food*, when children are starving all over the world. Preferring other languages is fine, but choosing to wilfully neglect your mother tongue is disrespectful to your heritage in my opinion.

Language is an integral part of one's identity. If language was not important, then we won't be having linguistic study courses, debates on linguistics etc. If language was not important, then people in the South states would not revolt for so many years against the imposition of Hindi.

As a Bengali, I have been taught from childhood that your mother tongue was like mother's milk. Rejecting your language is like rejecting your mother. My ideals were strengthened further when as a student of history I learnt how French professors were shot down by Nazis for not succumbing to German imposition; how martyrs in Bangladesh succumbed to Pakistani bullets. February 21, the day when Bengali students died for the Bengali language, is celebrated by the United Nations as the International Mother Tongue Day.

Language matters. The people who died for their language were not idiots. The UN who honours them as martyrs is not an idiot. People who fight to this day to save their languages from disappearing are not idiots. Every human being needs to respect their mother tongue, that is what history teaches us.

People have fought and died for land, women, property, money, respect, religion. That's what people do...people are not smart.

Also the southern states are fighting for their right to choose whatever language they want to speak instead of the central government forcing Hindi on them, especially in schools. Which is exactly what many people on this thread are saying too. The right to choose.

Hindi, Bengali, Punjabi are all derived from Sanskrit. Guess what, Sanskrit is dead. Nobody tried saving the mother of all "mother tongues", but lets save the derivatives because it makes us feel special. A language is nothing but a mode of communication. There's nothing "Motherly" about it.

speaking of the coffee show, KJo has been caught openly mocking others for their "poor" English and speaking English with an "accent" that's different from the usual. So, yeah, in the context of bollywood and their "elite" circles, speaking English is aligned with their social status and class and those who speak in Hindi are considered "downmarket" like Chandni Chowk in Kabhi Khushi Kabhi Gham. Love it when I can come up with a movie name right off the top of my head. 😆

Also, I was not talking about those Bollywood actors who are NOT native Hindi speakers. Only about those who are but still don't speak Hindi. I have been stressing on the words NATIVE TONGUE in every one of my posts. Kapoors are Punjabis but Mumbai resident Kapoors have long switched to Hindi as their tongue, a few generations back. So, for new-gen Kapoors, Hindi is their mother tongue.

Comprehension is not everyone's strong suit it seems. 😆 Much like Kangana, eh? 😉

Originally posted by: aaditi123

People have fought and died for land, women, property, money, respect, religion. That's what people do...people are not smart.

Also the southern states are fighting for their right to choose whatever language they want to speak instead of the central government forcing Hindi on them, especially in schools. Which is exactly what many people on this thread are saying too. The right to choose.

Hindi, Bengali, Punjabi are all derived from Sanskrit. Guess what, Sanskrit is dead. Nobody tried saving the mother of all "mother tongues", but lets save the derivatives because it makes us feel special. A language is nothing but a mode of communication. There's nothing "Motherly" about it.

Sanskrit is dead because it was never intended as the language of commoners, only the highly-educated Brahmin caste and to an extent the Kshatriyas. Sanskrit was always like Latin, to be spoken and preserved by a few. No wonder it died. But the languages it gave birth to, are not.

And I'm sorry, but WHAT? People who died to save their language were not smart? Sure, that's why they have a whole UN day to commemorate them. All those French professors, those valiant students of Bangladesh were just a bunch of dumbos to sacrifice their lives for their language which they loved so much. Yup. So dumb.

He probably got no international fans

@Mahisa, since you bravely😆 blocked me from quoting you... here you go in a separate post.

You said native tongue, so people who have been residents of Mumbai have their own native tongue. or a Tamilian who lived in Delhi would have to forget Tamil and call Hindi her native tongue. Or a Gujarati who lived in New York would have to call English her native tongue. In which case your arguments contradict what you're saying, and you're actually echoing what I said. ie, English is now Indian because many Indians now speak it as their first language.

In any case, native tongue of Mumbai is Marathi, not Hindi.😆

Unless a Bollywood-er is native to Hindi belt, they have no reason to use Hindi above English in their personal life. Not the Kapoors, not Aishwarya, not Deepika, not Sridevi, not Ranveer, not Vidya... you get the idea.

And yeah... people who value a language more than they value fellow humans are not merely dumb. They place value on peripherals instead of humans and how we treat fellow humans. Bit callous.

Originally posted by: Mahisa_22

Sanskrit is dead because it was never intended as the language of commoners, only the highly-educated Brahmin caste and to an extent the Kshatriyas. Sanskrit was always like Latin, to be spoken and preserved by a few. No wonder it died. But the languages it gave birth to, are not.

And I'm sorry, but WHAT? People who died to save their language were not smart? Sure, that's why they have a whole UN day to commemorate them. All those French professors, those valiant students of Bangladesh were just a bunch of dumbos to sacrifice their lives for their language which they loved so much. Yup.

Thats actually a modern myth that Sanskrit wasn't a language spoken by the masses. It was spoken by a large part of India around 10th Century BC. Later on, it became a language used by "scholars" and finally died.

The point is, language was always meant to be functional to help humans communicate better. If people are making it "Sacred" thats only another form of Regionalism. I mean why should a bengali kid born in say Germany learn Bengali instead of English & German. How does that help him in any way? He can learn about his culture, religion without having to learn the language.

Originally posted by: aaditi123

Thats actually a modern myth that Sanskrit wasn't a language spoken by the masses. It was spoken by a large part of India around 10th Century BC. Later on, it became a language used by "scholars" and finally died.

The point is, language was always meant to be functional to help humans communicate better. If people are making it "Sacred" thats only another form of Regionalism. I mean why should a bengali kid born in say Germany learn Bengali instead of English & German. How does that help him in any way? He can learn about his culture, religion without having to learn the language.

I think he can even learn the language if he wants. But his primary focus has to be on communicating with the society around him.

Originally posted by: aaditi123

Thats actually a modern myth that Sanskrit wasn't a language spoken by the masses. It was spoken by a large part of India around 10th Century BC. Later on, it became a language used by "scholars" and finally died.

The point is, language was always meant to be functional to help humans communicate better. If people are making it "Sacred" thats only another form of Regionalism. I mean why should a bengali kid born in say Germany learn Bengali instead of English & German. How does that help him in any way? He can learn about his culture, religion without having to learn the language.

How? Sanskrit was largely exclusive to the upper castes. Even when it finally began to come in written form, it's access was still restricted. Can you show me some links that suggest that it was largely spoken by the masses? Most of the languages you mentioned are not even direct descendants of Sanskrit. Bengali, for example, was derived from Magahi Prakrit. People during Buddha's time largely spoke Pali and Magadhi in North and Eastern India. Assam, AKA Prahjyotishpur, had its own language.

About your second paragraph, I did say that people who are abroad are exempted. I am largely speaking about those who are born and brought up in their homeland and with plenty access to their language.

Not sure if anyone's watched Fabulous Lives of Bollywood Wives on Netflix but Shanaya's brother, who's born and brought up in Mumbai I'm assuming, apparently cannot follow the rest of his Hindi speaking family members or answer back in Hindi cuz he's a 14/15 year old who attends an English speaking boarding school. You'd think that English is his second language, right? I thought they were full of sh%%.