Why is Hindi missing from internet ? (Specific Languages) Language Learning Forum

Why is Hindi missing from internet ?
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Lucky Charms
Diglot
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Japan
lapacifica.net
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Studies: German, Spanish

Message 17 of 39

25 January 2011 at 4:40am | IP Logged

Cyrus wrote:

Think about the cultured Japanese people you met (because it seems that
you did,
didn't you ?) ; are they not proud of their culture ? I mean, you can be very
interested in the culture of the great
power of your time and still be proud of yours.

Hmm, I guess this depends on the person. If you were to interview Japanese people in
their 20s and 30s regarding 'what is culture?', you might notice two ways of thinking.
For one type of person (maybe 75% of young
people today), their idea of a cultured person is someone who travels to Paris a lot,
speaks a few European languages, knows how to use a knife and fork the proper way, etc.
If you talk about tea ceremony or sumo or the emperor or how to put on a kimono or
anything like that, you may get the reply that only old people care about those things.
For another type of person (maybe 25% of young people today), they will think the
height of culture is knowing how to put on a kimono, how to speak beautiful honorific
Japanese, how to write in beautiful calligraphy, and things like that. But as you can
see, the young people who care about these things are in the minority, and most
college-age students will proudly say they know nothing about that. In general, I think
national pride isn't a big part of the Japanese psyche (which is hard to understand for
us, an American and a Frenchman! :P) - my impression is that on average, they are more
concerned about global peace.

Cyrus wrote:

BUT :
when you think about it, what we call here the "american culture" correspond only to
the "popular" american
culture -you won't say me that every japanese and indian people are fond of mark twain-
, I mean fast-food,
"blockbusters" entertainments, songs, and so on. In fact, this is less an
american popular culture than a
global popular culture, since the way the average japanese, french, German,
american ( and urban indian,
chinese...) people are living are more and more similar. In fact, that is not very
surprising.

However, when you come to cultural fields which are a bit deeper, like literature, art,
or even history, I think that
people are first aware of their own, and only then sometimes of foreign ones.

I really like this point. But of course, the worrying part is that this global culture
at present is in great part fueled by American media, which reflects American beliefs
and values (and yes, even the influence of our historical/cultural icons like Mark
Twain!) I hope that in the future, this global culture will be more equally influenced
by non-Western countries, and that the people of the world will continue to have pride
in their local traditions in addition to enjoying this global culture.

Cyrus wrote:

In fact, I really not worry about japanese culture or hindi language -they
are clearly strong or numerous enough
to defend it- I am
much more worrying about small (in demographics terms) culture and languages like
tibetan one (to take a well-
known example) or native sud americans, indonesian, etc ones.

Agreed. For me, this is one of the greatest reasons why the Hindi and Japanese examples
are so troubling. If these well-represented, influential languages and cultures are
losing their individuality and clout even among their own members, then what chance do
the (just as valuable) small and struggling ones have?

Edited by Lucky Charms on 25 January 2011 at 4:44am
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noyb2008
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United Kingdom
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Studies: German, Russian, Punjabi

Message 18 of 39

25 January 2011 at 1:06pm | IP Logged

Move along folks, nothing to see here.

Edited by noyb2008 on 28 January 2011 at 3:50pm
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anothername
Triglot
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Brazil
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Speaks: Portuguese*, Spanish, English

Message 19 of 39

26 January 2011 at 2:37pm | IP Logged

noyb2008 wrote:

I've given up on learning Hindi, something I did years ago. There's no point any more as far as I'm concerned. Unless you are learning a language purely for fun or academic purposes, why waste your time on something of questionable utility? And it is utility that it is the ultimate driving force in one's motivation to become a polyglot - for me anyway. When I lived in South Africa, I thought I'd learn Zulu. I soon gave that up because I realized that I just did not move and live in Zulu-speaking circles and neither did I want to. Ironically, Afrikaans became a much more useful and interesting language for me. Why? Because half my friends were Afrikaaners and - Afrikaaner girls are hot!!! I learn German because I find German culture (especially philosophy interesting). I learn Russian because I find Russian girls beautiful and I want to speak to them in their own language. I learn Panjabi because it is a language rich in idiom, relaxed, often incredibly vulgar (I reckon Panjabi may be one of the world's top contenders for innovative and proliferative vulgar slang) and not pretentious like modern Hindi. I may learn Urdu one day if I get around to it - it's beautiful and some great poetry has been written in it. What would be your motivation for learning Hindi? (I know this is going to piss some Hindi-speakers off.)

Anyway, that is my answer to why Hindi (and Panjabi and Gujurati and...) are missing from the internet and not just the internet. Most Indian language learning materials are of shoddy quality - the few good ones tend to be written by Westerners and are not recent. It's missing because Indians don't want to use it and precisely because they don't want to use it, foreigners don't have to either.

I'm not and indian descendent and I respect your point of view, but I have the feeling that your motivations to give up hindi are restricted to you. Sounds like you are exxagerating here at some points. You are saying Hindi is useless, kind of artificial, but at the same time you somehow praise afrikaans (which is also largely artificial/constructed, and doesn't sound pretty to me), which CULTURALLY is actually repulsive to me. Urdu, as yourself said, has a high degree of academic depuration as well, and to say urdu is pretty and hindi isn't doesn't make sense to me.
Also, to blame the learning materials is an argument that may sound very "sour grapes" (it might be or not your case, but I suspect that could be a bit).

To me, the lack of hindi on the internet has been sufficiently explained by early posters, and it's simply a matter of little prestige of the language inside India (or, better saying, the excess of prestige of English inside India), combined with the fact that most hindi speakers are still poor, with little or no access to the internet.

I hope it will change, when indians abandon some colonial vestiges and stop to deprecate themselves. They should realize they are not inferior to any people, and that should not sacrifice their linguistical identity.
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Lucky Charms
Diglot
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Message 20 of 39

26 January 2011 at 3:19pm | IP Logged

noyb2008,

Thanks for sharing your personal frustrations as well as the history of Hindi and Urdu.

Hindi speakers switching to English and back mid-dialogue, and the powers-that-be
enforcing Sanskrit words that the general populace doesn't understand both seem to be
disturbing trends indeed.

You expressed your opinion that Hindi isn't worth learning, but you don't seem to feel
the same way about Punjabi. After reading that, I assumed that Punjabi and other Indian
languages must not suffer from the same two problems you listed above for Hindi. But
then this quote confused me:

noyb2008 wrote:

Anyway, that is my answer to why Hindi (and Panjabi and Gujurati
and...) are missing from the internet and not just the internet. Most Indian
language learning materials are of shoddy quality - the few good ones tend to be
written by Westerners and are not recent. It's missing because Indians don't want to
use it and precisely because they don't want to use it, foreigners don't have to
either.

I'd like to know: Do the trends you described with regard to Hindi also apply to
Punjabi, Gujurati, and other Indian languages?
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noyb2008
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United Kingdom
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Message 21 of 39

26 January 2011 at 4:50pm | IP Logged

Move along folks, nothing to see here.

Edited by noyb2008 on 28 January 2011 at 3:51pm
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anothername
Triglot
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Brazil
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Speaks: Portuguese*, Spanish, English

Message 22 of 39

26 January 2011 at 6:07pm | IP Logged

noyb2008 wrote:

anothername wrote:

Errrrr - where did I say that I know what other people's motivations are? I don't. I'm just stating what motivates me.

I didn't say Hindi is useless. I do however question its utility. If you use the prevalence of Hindi-learning materials as a proxy for interest in Hindi, then I think I am not alone in this idea. Foreigners don't learn Hindi because they don't want to - they don't learn it because they don't need to. Indians themselves de facto hold this language in contempt. For this, they have only themselves to blame.

I didn't praise Afrikaans (although I do quite like it). I stated why I started learning it. Please read for comprehension instead of imagining what people are saying.

Afrikaans is not artificially constructed as far as I'm aware. No group of Boers clubbed together and said, 'OK - we're going to weed out these words and mutate those ones.' It's a Germanic language with a simplified Dutch grammar, modified Dutch vocabulary/phonology and quite a few local African loan words. Contrast this with Hindi as concocted by pundits in India.

As for your comment on Afrikaans being culturally repulsive, I assume you are referring to its association with apartheid. (Please correct me if I am wrong.) If that is the case, I can only say the following;
-If you can tell me you have spent a significant amount of time in South Africa or in the company of Afrikaaners, then I might have more respect for your opinion. Otherwise I am inclined to think that you know not of what you speak.
-In South Africa, there is a community of about 4 million people called Coloureds (kleurlinge in Afrikaans). They are the mixed race descendants of white Dutch settlers, Cape Malays and local bush people. Afrikaans is their mother tongue, not English, nor any indigenous African language. It is not just the language of part of the South African white community. Perhaps you should start finding English culturally repulsive? After all, it was the language of slave masters for hundreds of years in the USA. Apartheid only existed for about 50 years.

Regarding why Urdu is pretty and Hindi is not? Urdu is pretty (in my opinion) for 3 reasons;

1. Because of its Persianized vocabulary. It sounds much sweeter to the ear. Don't know what I'm talking about? Well most people think Italian is sweet and German sounds harsh. It's not the grammar that makes this difference so much as the sounds. Romance phonology versus Germanic phonology. (Personally, I too think German sounds harsh but I like the sound of it nonetheless. I don't want all my languages sounding the same.)

2. There is a cultural backdrop to this. Urdu inherited a lot of the forms of Persian as it was used in the imperial Mughal court (and which I don't think you find in Modern Persian). This was further developed by Urdu poets and writers leading to a very flowery and ornate register. My Urdu is very poor but here is an example;

'adab arz' - simple translation = 'hello'
-more literal translation = 'a petition for salutations' or something like that

'aap tashrif rakhiye' - simple translation = 'sit down'
-more literal translation = 'please place your honour (i.e. body)'

3. The nastaliq script - in my opinion, the most beautiful of all Arabic-derived scripts and one of the most beautiful in the world. Don't look at a computer-generated example. Find an Urdu newspaper online and you will see what I mean.

By the way, the corollary is not true. I do not think that Hindi is ugly. Just not as pretty as Urdu.

Finally, I wasn't blaming the quality of the learning materials as a reason for not learning Hindi. But I did let my frustration over the poor attention of Indians to the concept of quality as a whole spill over. But that is a whole separate post!

I never said you were saying what motivates other people to study hindi or not. I just stated that your motivations are very restricted to your own experiences, and it sounds like you agree with it.

You did not say hindi is useless, but you strongly questioned its utility - with such emphasis that could convince someone that it is useless. There is not such a difference between one and another thing, but never mind.

I'm a foreigner and I certainly feel I NEED to learn hindi to really get into indian mind and culture (and no, I don't like Bollywood movies). If I were a businessman interested in close contracts with indian companies, then ok, I would certainly not need hindi, but that is not my purpose at the moment. Also, I'm highly interested in bengali, for the culture also.

There is plenty information being produced in hindi language, if you search for it, although much less than it could be.

I'm aware that Afrikaans was not linguistically constructed by academics, but it is artificial. A dutch-based language spoken in a bantu environment due to aggressive colonization is somewhat culturally artificial. In the same way that indian people (and now I'm talking specifically about India residents) trying to speak English (and hinglish) all the time because they think it's cool, no matter how badly they speak it, sounds even more artificial.

I don't know what you refer as a significant amount of time in the company of afrikaaners, but the afrikaaners I already met all still have apartheid minds. Of course they are humans and I don't find them personally repulsive, but many of them are still frequently outspoken in a way that is repulsive to anyone who respects african native people.

You are free to like afrikaaner, and perhaps you are even right about their virtues (I personally would prefer to learn dutch, but I find German much richer between continental Germanic languages), but the main point is that it's a pretty bad analogy in regard to the hindi situation, and I DO believe (call it a personal opinion if you want it) that the indian culture, be it hindi, urdu, bengali, tamil, gujarati, punjabi or whatever one, is incomparably richer than the zulu culture AND the afrikaanner (kleurlinge people included).

Finally, labelling a language as beautiful or ugly is so subjective. I personally find German a very beautiful language. When Mozart was to compose the first successful opera in German (discarding Italian), he was heavily criticized. Nowadays, his operas are considered the best of the best, and they all use German language from beginning to end.

Talking about the script, I think (and I'm not alone) devanagari is a gorgeous script, besides of being very logical. I'm not an urdu expert and I admire the arabic/persian script, but I believe it cannot be considered superior to devanagari by any standards.

About the blame on indians about the poor quality of indian-made hindi materials, I fully agree with you. But since I'm still working slowly with materials like Living Language and a grammar outline, I don't know if I will ever need more than that.

I think we agree more than disagree, except that it seems that I like hindi more than you do.
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stephen_g
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Message 23 of 39

26 January 2011 at 6:38pm | IP Logged

I had earlier typed up a long response to an earlier post, but abandoned it midway when
I realised I'd lost a bit of direction. I'd like to make some quick "drive-by
commentary" on specific points, though!

1) Anothername, you'll find the love for Urdu is a common attitude in India, as well.
Most Indians identify it as a "sweet" language. It does indeed sound nice to the ear,
though you're right, aesthetics can be quite subjective! I love the feel of Urdu just
as much as Shuddh Hindi, though for different reasons!

2) The utility of Hindi depends on your goals. Noyb is right that Hindi's utility
appears to be lacking if viewed through the prism of most of the world's language
students. Not so for us Indophiles, however!

3) As a student of Punjabi currently living and studying in Punjab, I have to say that
the attitudes amongst Punjabis towards their language is much more reassuring than the
attitude amongst Hindi speakers. The long post I was typing up previously mainly
revolved around this point, but I'll summarise by saying that Punjabis have a mentality
and the structures in place to ensure that study of the language can flourish, if given
pushes in the right direction. What's needed right now is a massive increase in quality
of teaching methods and materials available, as well as the diaspora's support for
chairs at various North American and European universities. I'll be working on both
points upon returning to Toronto.

4) All you need to learn Hindi is easily available. I'll list it in my next post for
ease of reading and easy reference, if anyone wishes to save what I put together.
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noyb2008
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Studies: German, Russian, Punjabi

Message 24 of 39

26 January 2011 at 7:19pm | IP Logged

Move along folks, nothing to see here.

Edited by noyb2008 on 28 January 2011 at 3:52pm

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