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Why is Hindi missing from internet ? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| Cyrus Diglot Newbie France Joined 5513 days ago 39 posts - 70 votes  Speaks: French*, English Studies: German, Spanish, Mandarin | Message 1 of 39 13 January 2011 at 1:09am | IP Logged | ||
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Despite its huge number of speakers (around half a billion), Hindi remains a less used language on the internet
than, for example, Punjabi. list of internet languages, french wikipedia I took the french page because it shows a longer list of languages than the English one. However, the Spanish and Italian pages do so too, so you can jump to these languages. In the paragraph "Les langues sur l'internet", it is noticed that "Une grande absence de la table ci-dessous est l'Hindi, une des langues les plus parlées du monde et la langue nationale de l'Inde, le deuxième pays le plus peuplé au monde. Cela est dû aux facteurs tels que le manque d'accès à l'Internet par la grande majorité de la population indienne et une préférence pour l'anglais par les utilisateurs qui ont accès à Internet." which means : "A big absence of the table below is the Hindi, one of the most spoken language about the world and the national language of India, second country the most populated to the world. It is due to factors such as the lack of access to the Internet by the great majority of the Indian population and a preference for English by the users who have access to Internet." But I do not understand why those arguments are valid for Hindi and not for Punjabi or even for chinese -I do not think that the four hundreds of millions of chinese users are all wealthy. I saw in a reporting that most of them go on internet in cybercafés or by mobile phone, but do not own a computer. Why don't the numerous hindi speakers do so ? I understand that most of the indians use English on internet. But all of then do not mastering it perfectly, and I was nevertheless expecting that hindi rank higher than esperanto... Then, why punjabi and not hindi ? 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| parasitius Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6003 days ago 220 posts - 323 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin Studies: Cantonese, Polish, Spanish, French | Message 2 of 39 13 January 2011 at 1:36am | IP Logged | ||
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I'm deadly curious about this as well, glad you asked, hope someone knows?? Indian experts?
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Cthulhu Tetraglot Senior Member Canada Joined 7228 days ago 139 posts - 235 votes Speaks: French*, English, Mandarin, Russian | Message 3 of 39 13 January 2011 at 2:18am | IP Logged | ||
Firstly, regarding Hindi versus Chinese, China has a GDP per capita more than twice as high as that of India, a literacy rate 27% higher, and much less prevalent English language abilities, and a population that's 42% urbanized compared to India's 28%. Because of this only a very small portion of India's population has any use for the internet (More could certainly use internet cafes, but have no reason to do so, no spare time/money, and no access), and those that do are far more likely to use English. This reinforces itself over time; Indians use English online, so people don't develop websites or web-services in Indian languages, so Indians keep using English online. Secondly, regarding Hindi versus Punjabi, while the Punjab has a higher level of economic development and higher literacy rate than the Hindi-speaking area as a whole, I suspect the real difference in this case comes from the Indian diaspora; in Canada and the UK at least, people from East and West Punjab make up a significant majority of South Asian immigrants. Of course the vast majority of them would use the internet in English as well, but even a small fraction using Punjabi to chat with each other once in a while or to keep in touch with relatives in the subcontinent would be sufficient to explain the numbers shown. Edited by Cthulhu on 13 January 2011 at 3:29am 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Nudimmud Groupie United States Joined 5197 days ago 87 posts - 161 votes Studies: Greek, Korean | Message 4 of 39 13 January 2011 at 6:03am | IP Logged | ||
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I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that the reason Hindi is so little studied -- and I do think, relative to India's huge population and, of late, rapid economic development, its indigenous languages are comparatively little studied -- is a legacy of colonialism. If you take a look at countries that were part of a colonial system, Latin America, Africa and Asia, many (though by no means all) had their indigenous language supplanted by European languages. Even in cases where this wasn't the case, European languages were still the prestige languages of government and commerce. Thus, even though there are probably not more per-capita English speakers in India than in China (I've read in fact that China has a greater prevalence of English speakers) English is still one of the official governmental languages.
Having a European language be the standard for so long, and the fact that this prevented an indigenous language, Hindi, from becoming the standard, I think seriously retarded the development of language programs and quality materials. ** Edited to correct mistake in first sentence. Edited by Nudimmud on 13 January 2011 at 9:12am 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Cyrus Diglot Newbie France Joined 5513 days ago 39 posts - 70 votes Speaks: French*, English Studies: German, Spanish, Mandarin | Message 5 of 39 13 January 2011 at 3:33pm | IP Logged | ||
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Merci Cthulhu :) That was a convincing answer.
Thanks Nudimmud as well :)
You say retarded, does that means for you that it will end up being a major language of internet ? And how do you see the future of hindi in India ? Will it overtake English and if yes when ? PS : I thank the moderator who moved this subject in the right section and apologize for not did it when I posted. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| lichtrausch Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 5965 days ago 525 posts - 1072 votes Speaks: English*, German, Japanese Studies: Korean, Mandarin | Message 6 of 39 13 January 2011 at 5:21pm | IP Logged | ||
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A couple of interesting articles on the subject that I read recently:
http://www.thehindu.com/sci-tech/technology/article1032224.e ce http://www.livemint.com/2010/12/30210517/The-vernacular-sear ch-conundru.html?h=B 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Cyrus Diglot Newbie France Joined 5513 days ago 39 posts - 70 votes Speaks: French*, English Studies: German, Spanish, Mandarin | Message 7 of 39 13 January 2011 at 11:46pm | IP Logged | ||
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Thanks for the links :) but you added spaces into it (at the end of the first and in "search" in the second) so I just
repost the articles without them : Using Wikipedia to change the languages of the web The vernacular conundrum Edited by Cyrus on 13 January 2011 at 11:47pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| manasvi Diglot Newbie India Joined 5066 days ago 2 posts - 3 votes Speaks: Hindi*, English | Message 8 of 39 16 January 2011 at 10:27am | IP Logged | ||
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The fact that Hindi is missing from internet despite having huge population looks
mysterious at first, but the fact is India has become "a country" 63 years ago, before that there were culturally different states,then Came the English ,and united India as we see it today....cultural/linguistic differences within India are so huge that it seems unwise to promote Hindi as common platform to avoid cultural clash within india however subtle it may be.English has been the preferred language not just it is a language of the educated class but also as common language of all Indians. As far as punjabi is concerned(which i speak to certain extent),as already explained they have huge diaspora in foregn countries and they have the habit of following their customs wherever they go...its just not language but other parts of their culture are popular around the world be it, dance food or music... It might also surprise you that despite being a big It hub hindi is not popular on Internet but again major IT industry are located in south India where Hindi is not spoken. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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