It's amazing how most Indians believe that Hindi is the national language of India, when there's no such as a national language in India.
There are two official languages for union government communication - Hindi and English.
I've also noticed that a lot of non Indians find it funny that most Indians here in bay area companies communicate among themselves in heavily accented English instead of The Indian language.
Concluding that English is the national language of the US is totally reasonable. Most government documents are in English. The Constitution is in English. English is the language overwhelmingly taught in schools, used in the workplace, and is the most spoken language in the country by far. Saying that English isn't the official language in the US is really just highlighting the fact that the Federal government hasn't bothered to designate an official language. In fact, 32 states have designated English as an official language. For all practical purposes the official language of the US is English.
This is much different from the India where only ~40% of the population are native Hindi speakers. More than 2/3rds of the US population only speaks English, and under 10% of the population have English proficiently categorized as "less than proficient" (but often this is still enough to get by).
English is clearly dominant, but official linguistic pluralism does exist in the US in some ways. For example:
* Large parts of the US provide ballots and other voting materials in Spanish (or Vietnamese, or Chinese, or various Native American languages, ...).
* Courts in the US will go to pretty extreme lengths to find interpreters for criminal defendants who can't understand English, even if their native language is somewhat obscure.
* There were public schools teaching primarily in Spanish until at least the early 2000s in Arizona; not sure if they still exist in other places. There are definitely still private schools teaching in non-English languages in some parts of the country, particularly Yiddish.
Anyway, making explicit any link between citizenship on the one hand and language or culture on the other is considered a somewhat solidly right-wing belief in the US (and I would expect in other countries that began their history as settler colonies, like Canada or Australia), whereas it would seem like much more of a centrist consensus in even some overall more progressive-leaning societies (from Article 2 of the French Constitution: "The language of the Republic is French". I would be shocked if France lets you vote in Arabic or teach public school classes in Lingala).
Because it's perceived as solidly right wing, and the other side of the political spectrum will fight it tooth and nail, it's hard for me to imagine the US declaring English as a federal official language in the foreseeable future.
> Large parts of the US provide ballots and other voting materials in Spanish (or Vietnamese, or Chinese, or various Native American languages, ...).
Sure, in locations where other languages have a significant presence. But these languages always exist alongside English. There are no areas that I know of that do not produce said documents in English. English is universal.
> Courts in the US will go to pretty extreme lengths to find interpreters for criminal defendants who can't understand English, even if their native language is somewhat obscure.
And what do those interpreters translate said languages into? English.
> There were public schools teaching primarily in Spanish until at least the early 2000s in Arizona; not sure if they still exist in other places. There are definitely still private schools teaching in non-English languages in some parts of the country, particularly Yiddish.
Language immersion schools exist in plenty of countries with official languages. English is not an official language in Spain, I went to an English language immersion school when I lived in Spain.
> Because it's perceived as solidly right wing, and the other side of the political spectrum will fight it tooth and nail, it's hard for me to imagine the US declaring English as a federal official language in the foreseeable future.
Not really, there are plenty of practical reasons why designating official languages would be useful. One of my friends worked in a hospital, and talked about how much of a nightmare it was to treat non-English speaking patients (or more specifically patients that didn't speak English, Spanish, Mandarin, or the couple other languages that staff members spoke). Ostensibly they're required to find interpreters for any and all languages that patients may speak. This of course is a mess. Designating certain languages as supported and not supported would be a big efficiency gain and result in better care. There are also concerns of people only producing advertisements for housing in specific languages (e.g. a Chinese landlord only producing ads in Mandarin or Cantonese), and some see it as de-facto racial discrimination in housing. What happens when a juror can't speak English? One could argue that dismissing non English-speaking jurors is a form of jury discrimination, but it'd be a bureaucratic nightmare to provide interpreters for every language a juror might speak. There are plenty of good reasons to designate English as an official language.
Regardless, whether or not English is designated an official language is pretty much moot. Over 80% of the population speaks English at home and over 90% are fluent in English. The next closest competitor is Spanish at roughly 1/6th the population. English will be the de-facto official language for the foreseeable future.
If I interpret you correctly, I think we mostly agree, on (at least) the following points:
* English is clearly dominant in the US and enjoys a special status both in law and in practice.
* However, linguistic pluralism is accommodated to a significant degree in the US, to a greater extent than it is in some other countries.
* Whether to designate an official language is more of a cultural/political wedge issue than something that would have a meaningful practical effect on life in the US.
The first two yes, but I disagree that the last one is so much of a political wedge. The fact that English is the de-facto official language, but not actually an official language is the source of much headache. Actually designating several languages as officially supported (English for sure, probably Spanish as well. Maybe others like Mandarin & Cantonese but that would make more sense to delegate to the State level) would be beneficial. It would have practical and meaningful effect. Perhaps not to an individual's daily life, but definitely for institutions that need to interact with large segments of the population. I also fail to see why you think this is a right-wing opinion. Liberal states including California, Colorado, Hawaii, Illinois, Massachusetts, and New Hampshire, have made English an official language.
I am of the firm belief that it is government's job to reach out to the people it represents and not the other way around. Designating an official language or set of official languages renders a section of people as disadvantaged outcasts. It is not a crime to not know a language.
Even if we are not talking about impact to an individual from a liberal point of view, this official favoring of languages leads to extinction of smaller languages by means of them not being as useful to future generations as some other mainstream language.
> I am of the firm belief that it is government's job to reach out to the people it represents and not the other way around. Designating an official language or set of official languages renders a section of people as disadvantaged outcasts. It is not a crime to not know a language.
What and Earth makes you think that designating an official language makes it a crime for people not to know that language? Designating official languages is just being transparent about what languages will be used to render services.
> Even if we are not talking about impact to an individual from a liberal point of view, this official favoring of languages leads to extinction of smaller languages by means of them not being as useful to future generations as some other mainstream language.
Language extinction happens as populations become more interconnected, regardless of official languages. They're not going to be as useful regardless. And in fact, official language designation is sometimes employed to keep dying languages alive. North and South Dakota designated some indigenous languages as official languages.
The original plan was, of course, to phase out English as a national language. This never happened, I suppose partially because while 'Hindustani' (as was) made sense as a symbol of unity during the time leading up to Independence, afterwards, especially as 'Hindi', it was seen more as a regional language (even if the region involved is large) and so not necessarily more deserving of official nation-level status than Bengali or Tamil. English ends up being more neutral in many ways (though, of course, not without its own (post-colonial) baggage).
> I've also noticed that a lot of non Indians find it funny that most Indians here in bay area companies communicate among themselves in heavily accented English instead of The Indian language.
Besides the fact that in states like Kerala, for example, where you have nearly 92 percent literacy, declaring Hindi as official language will result in nearly 0 percent literacy. I think just like Charkha, and village-based self-sufficient economies, the idea of Hindi as a national language should be discarded as an idea whose time has gone.
I always thought India would have functioned better if it had confederated under a Swiss style cantonment system (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cantons_of_Switzerland). They maybe could have even avoided partition this way too. And whatever paroxysms of violence from internal migration might have been mitigated against if it was all being overseen by a single government and army instead of the three-way clusterfuck of the actual partition.
There would have needed to be some system for maintaining a rough level of parity/equality of representation of various minority groups at the high level. Scheduled castes and tribes would probably not have been as well protected under such a system, for example, but it's probably something than could have been worked out with effort.
> I always thought India would have functioned better if it had confederated under a Swiss style cantonment system (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cantons_of_Switzerland). They maybe could have even avoided partition this way too.
In what way? Having even more autonomy than they have as states?
At one point, English could be seen as a foreign language 'imposed' upon India. A language of invaders, etc.
At this point in time, however, English has been present in India for several centuries, and prominently present for at least a century and a half, and has become indigenised (Indian English has its own structure) so it's not really a 'foreign' language anymore.
That said, there are always socio-political dimensions to speaking a particular language variety (think also about dialects, accents etc.). Nothing is ever just a language people speak.
Not sure if you are being serious, or what point you're trying to make. English is the language spoken by the people who ruled India as a colony for 200 years (the East India Company for the first hundred; the British state directly for the next).
The East India Company was granted a Royal Charter by Elizabeth I on 31 December 1600, so John Company was in India for even longer than that: originally not as 'rulers' as such, but traders with trading posts (called 'factories' at the time). But traders with warehouses holding precious goods ended up needing security, which turned into private armies, and so on.
The word "baggage" has negative connotations (to burdens and impediments); so my question really is by speaking English, as an Indian-born national, what burden or impediment does the speaker experience?
--
Responding inline due to lame moderation caps.
> I interpreted the OP's use of the word "baggage" not to mean a burden or impediment
But that's exactly what the word means! :-P
bag·gage
/ˈbaɡij/
past experiences or long-held ideas regarded as burdens and impediments.
"the emotional baggage I'm hauling around"
> but instead a cultural and political reason why some Indians might hesitate to consider English their national language.
And why would they hesitate if not due to feeling the burdens and impediments of their country's history?
I interpreted the OP's use of the word "baggage" not to mean a burden or impediment for individual speakers, but instead a cultural and political reason why some Indians might hesitate to consider English their national language.
> It's amazing how most Indians believe that Hindi is the national language of India
I am not Indian, so please correct my outsider's perspective if it is wrong, but from what I have seen, this is mainly believed by North Indians, and often deeply resented by South Indians, who are more likely to view English as a common, neutral, pan-Indian lingua franca, and Hindi as too North-centric to be appropriate for that role.
Your perspective is correct. Hindi has been imposed only recently after Independence and there have been protests/movements pre-Independence too. For eg: None of my uncles/aunts or my grand parents generation know Hindi. I learnt it (or had to learn it) only because of school policy , not personal choice.
Yeah totally, from the moment when they realize I am from India, they say they watch bollywood in Netflix to which I say "I do not speak much Hindi and I seldom watch bollywood movies"
> I've also noticed that a lot of non Indians find it funny that most Indians here in bay area companies communicate among themselves in heavily accented English instead of The Indian language.
I don't live in the Bay area but when I meet another Indian abroad, I still initiate conversation with them in English because it's not fair to assume that they'd speak the languages that I speak.
> heavily accented English instead of The Indian language.
Over the years I have grown to think of English as an honorary Indian language, kind of like the Mother Theresa of Indian languages. Not a mother-tongue perhaps, but definitely, a beloved aunty-tongue at the very least.
That's amusing. It does however take some time to get used another person's accent. I sure had difficulty in the beginning with the English accent of my Scottish coworker (not to mention American/Canadian accent itself when I was a new immigrant).
Thats because the Class 1 CBSE books said that Hindi is our national language, Peacock is the national bird, Tiger the national animal and Hockey the national sport. :D
That's not entirely correct. Hindi is the official language of Republic of India. That is why 14 September is celebrated as Hindi Divas: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hindi_Divas
That is not entirely correct either. Hindi and English are official languages of the Republic of India. If you watched the swearing-in ceremony of the recent Modi government some cabinet members chose to be sworn-in in English.
There are two official languages for union government communication - Hindi and English.
I've also noticed that a lot of non Indians find it funny that most Indians here in bay area companies communicate among themselves in heavily accented English instead of The Indian language.