Can India Progress Without Adapting English Language?

@thebigk • Oct 26, 2024

Oct 26, 2024

1.5K

I was exploring Japan's official <a href="https://www.jaxa.jp/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">JAXA｜宇宙航空研究開発機構</a> website and was surprised to see that they've their official website in Japanese and not English. That led me to finding out what are the most widely spoken languages in the world and here's the list from <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_languages_by_number_of_native_speakers" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">List Of Languages By Number Of Native Speakers</a>:

Mandarin: 955 million (14.4% of world population)
Spanish: 405 million 6.15% (6.15% of world population)
English: 360 million (5.43% of world population)
Hindi / Urdu : 310 million (4.7% of world population)

...followed by Arabic, Portuguese, Bengali, Russian, Japanese, Punjabi, followed by several Indian languages.

I was wondering; can India make a progress in Technology, Science, Engineering, Medicine, Agriculture, Arts - without adapting English?

Why this topic: Because I firmly believe that the language influences your thinking - and unless people give up on the basic thought that what the English speaking countries do is progress there won't be any real progress!

Looking forward to your thoughts. No mud slinging if we do not agree with each other's thoughts. Be respectful.

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Satya Swaroop Dash

@satya-swaroop-YDeBJM • Jun 13, 2015

In a nutshell, no, India cannot make progress without English. Here’s why.

India as a country embraced English quickly thanks to the British Raj. Learning English was much easy for Indians as well as people everywhere because all it has is 26 letters, a few punctuation marks, little grammar rules and that’s it. India easily became the centre stage of the IT revolution because English was the language that was being taught as a subject in schools (both English and local language medium subjects). In the early 2000s India was the heartland of call centres because as compared to any other country we had a relatively larger number of people who were interested in working for minimum wages.

The IT boom and the whole brain drain era started in India because we knew English. The primary language of all software development kits is English since many Indians were rehearsed in this language they could quickly learn programming languages. Consider this, we all know that China is epicentre of the electronics manufacturing because they work for peanuts. If the Chinese had ditched Mandarin and opted for English they would have become the IT hub of the world thanks to their cheap labour.

English helps us be favourites of countries like UK and the US. We attract business from these countries. All the IT companies like TCS, Infosys and Wipro serve to American and British firms seamlessly as we have no language barriers with them.
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Anoop Kumar

@anoop-kumar-GDGRCn • Jun 13, 2015

Painfully No.
In order to progress, business and consumers has to communicate in common language, otherwise how they going to sell and consume. (Obvious example CE)
I don't see by any reason a Hindi speaking person like to learn Tamil or vice versa.
There is already a discussion on CE about National Language and we can see there, We are ready to adapt English but feel INFERIOR to learn other language.
Anyway, Even if we are given the option, we are in situation to learn extra language then why not English. English helps to communicate to other part of country and also to other (I would say majority of) International country where people can do business and work with them.
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rrritchie

@rrritchie-fOYoge • Jun 20, 2015

From an English speaking American from the U.S.:
Although English is currently the IT language of the world, I contend that this is a temporary condition and nothing to cause worry or pain. I agree that language does influence thought and values-- it is probably the biggest factor. But can you imagine a world where everyone speaks and thinks in only one language? Yuck! While English is very useful as a technical language and pretty good as a poetic one, is it the BEST for both? Or either? I hope that the temporary importance of English language technology quickly breaks down language barriers around the globe. Very soon, maybe we will all have real-time, on-the-fly translators built into our smart-phones. For now, though, my family will continue to broaden our minds by learning other languages. This world needs Hindustani and all of the values, thoughts and priorities that come with it. My daughter and I were trying to decide, this very evening, whether to begin learning Mandarin or Hindi next. More people in the world speak Mandarin, although most of them will never leave China. I think India is a place I would like my family to visit. How to decide?

"Be the change you want to see in the world."
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rahul69

@rahul69-97fAOs • Jun 21, 2015

I would say any country can progress without adapting a particular language.
The only requirement is hard-work and innovation.
If you are able to produce something unique which the whole world wants, it will not matter whether you speak the language of the world, the world will learn your language as the world needs your product.
And why to worry, leave the rest of the job to translators 😉
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Ankita Katdare

@abrakadabra • Jun 21, 2015

rrritchie
Very soon, maybe we will all have real-time, on-the-fly translators built into our smart-phones.
I agree. I am a learner of foreign language myself. My mother tongue is Marathi and I am learning Japanese for more than 4 years now.

Since I am in a field where you get to hear about the latest innovations in gadgets & technological research, I always dread the day when machines would put translators & interpreters out of job. I don't think the current systems are even half-capable of achieving word to word correct translations. Tried Skype Translator and Google Translate both and each failed remarkably to translate a semi-complex English/Hindi/Marathi sentence to Japanese.

Even though modern day algorithms are fast becoming super efficient (and I already see a day when technical documents no more need human translators), I think it will be our essays and stories and poems that will keep needing the human touch. (Till emotional intelligence in robots kicks in?)

Coming back to the topic:
I think it is a shift of mindset is what needed in a country like India for it to believe that it can survive without English. We try to be over-accommodating and want to welcome everything new and thanks to years of external countries ruling us, we thought English was the way ahead.

I am not against the idea of having one uniform language of communication when it comes to a workplace. (Even CrazyEngineers would not exist if we weren't bound by one common language).

Whether we think of it as a necessity to progress is where I put a question mark.
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rrritchie

@rrritchie-fOYoge • Jul 5, 2015

A "common language" is nothing more or less than a useful tool, just like a computer language. Can you imagine a world in which all PCs spoke only one language? Yuck. 😉 My unsolicited (and probably unwanted) advice is for software engineers to slowly start adding Hindi language into the mix. Perhaps we could find some Engineer forum where we could get together and make it happen. 👍
Peace!

kyA Ap angrayzee boltee hein?
nahin?!
kyA Ap thoDa dheeray-dheeray bol saktee hein?

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