On Wed, Nov 30, 2011 at 5:40 PM, Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen@gmail.com> wrote:

The one thing I have come to understand is that many native speakers of Indic languages are effectively illiterate in their own language. The combination of highly educated people being functionally illiterate had me talking with many people. Given the structure of the Indic scripts, it is possible for me to learn to read the text; it will get me as far as pronouncing something I do not know the meaning of. For native speakers it must be not that hard at all when they surmounted the challenge of learning to read and write English already.

Dear Gerard,

I am intrigued by this, yet struggling to understand what you mean here.

Do you mean that many educated people can speak their own language, but not read or write it? (because they communicate in English instead). If so, that is probably true - but is that what you mean?

For example, my mother tongue is Bengali - I speak it much more than I read or write it (even though I can read and write in Bengali), since I usually read and write in English. However, there are many people in India who have the opposite experience eg who not just speak, but also read and write in indic languages.

Cheers

Bishakha