[Wikimediaindia-l] Supporting the languages of India

[Achal Prabhala]

Hi Gerard,

On Wednesday 30 November 2011 06:21 PM, Bishakha Datta wrote:
>
>
> On Wed, Nov 30, 2011 at 5:40 PM, Gerard Meijssen 
> <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com <mailto:gerard.meijssen at 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

I think the problem may be with the phrase "effectively illiterate". One 
term we use here a lot is functional illiteracy, but (like with the word 
illiteracy) it refers to a very specific problem, a developmental 
education problem. I, for instance, also do not recognise myself in your 
email. My mother tongues are Kannada and Telugu, and I speak a little 
Tamil and Hindi. I would describe myself as illiterate in Tamil, but 
literate in the other three languages. At home, for instance, I speak to 
my family mainly in English, and only sometimes in Kannada and Telugu. 
But, also, I'm one of the convent-educated people that Ravi wrote about 
earlier, and the language I am most comfortable with is English. I don't 
regularly read or write in Kannada, Telugu or Hindi, but I can - and I 
certainly use these languages regularly in speech. As Ravi pointed out 
earlier, I'm a minority and certainly not the core target of Indic 
language Wikipedias (and probably should not be). Everyone is 
comfortable with one language or another, and it's certainly true that 
most people in India (most middle-class, internet-accessing people even) 
are most comfortable reading, writing and speaking their mother tongues 
than not. This is best evidenced by media; in print, radio, television, 
and film; where the Indian-language media outstrips English-language 
media hugely, in terms of either readership or revenue.

Cheers,
Achal

>
>
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