Page 5 - India Destination Guide - Alluring Asia

LANGUAGE Common Phrases There is no 'Indian' language, which is part of the English Hindi reason why English is still widely spoken over 40 years after the British left India, and it's still the official Hello Helo / namaste language of the judiciary. There are a great number of How are you? Ap kaise/kaisi hai local languages, and in many cases the state boundaries have been drawn on linguistic lines. In all, Thank you Thainkyu there are 18 languages officially recognized by the constitution, and these fall into two major groups: You're welcome Apka svagat hai Indic, or Indo-Aryan, and Dravidian. Goodbye Namaskar Additionally, there are over 1600 minor languages and Please Krp-ya dialects listed in the 1991 census. The scope for misunderstanding can be easily appreciated! I'm sorry/Pardon me Maaf kijiye The Indic languages are a branch of the Indo-European What is your name? Apka nam kya hai? group of languages (of which English is also a My name is _________ Mera nam __________ hai. member), and were the language of the central Asian Yes Haa peoples who invaded what is now India. The Dravidian languages are native to south India, No Nahi although they have been influenced by Sanskrit and Hindi. Where is the toilet? Tayalet kaha hai? How do I get to ________? ________ tak kaise jaoON? Most of the languages have their own scripts, and these are used along with English. In some states, such Water Pani, jal as Gujarat, you'll hardly see a word of English, How much is this? Iska kitna hoga? whereas in Himachal Pradesh virtually everything is in English. BanGkok Major efforts have been made to promote Hindi as the national language of India and to gradually phase out English. A stumbling block to this plan is that while Hindi is the predominant language in the north, it bears little relation to the Dravidian languages of the south; and in the south very few people speak Hindi. It is from the south, particularly the state of Tamil Nadu, that the most vocal opposition to the adoption of Hindi comes, along with the strongest support for the retention of English. For many educated Indians, English is virtually their first language, and for the large number of Indians who speak more than one language, English is often their second tongue. Thus it is very easy to get around India with English - after all, many Indians have to speak English to each other if they wish to communicate.