India’s importance, local languages and Oregon

While China often is the topic of this blog because of its population size, its economic growth, and its growing military power, the same could be said for India. The race for the most important country at the end of the 21^st century is probably between the two of them. For Oregon, this strategically means we should cultivate relations with both. Our economic future may depend upon selling our goods and services in their markets. For China, this means more of our students should learn Mandarin and study abroad in China. For India, I have been uncertain whether our students should learn local Indian languages other than English. I think the answer is yes.

 

Two recent NY Times articles are relevant. One reminds us of India’s importance. The other speaks to the relevance of Indian languages other than English.

 

Speaking to the importance of India, and its differences from China, is an op-ed (1/2/09) titled “The Next World Order” by Gurcharan Das (here):

 

China and India are in a struggle for a top rung on the ladder of world power, but their approaches to the state and to power could not be more different.

…Both the Chinese and the Indians are convinced that their prosperity will only increase in the 21st century. In China it will be induced by the state; in India’s case, it may well happen despite the state. Indians expect to continue their relentless march toward a modern, democratic, market-based future. In this, terrorist attacks are a noisy, tragic, but ultimately futile sideshow.

However, Indians are painfully aware that they must reform their government bureaucracy, police and judiciary — institutions, paradoxically, they were so proud of a generation ago. When that happens, India may become formidable, a thought that undoubtedly worries China’s leaders.

The importance of India’s non-English languages appears in article Daniel Sorid’s “Writing the Web’s Future in Many Languages” (here):

The next chapter of the World Wide Web will not be written in English alone. Asia already has twice as many Internet users as North America, and by 2012 it will have three times as many. Already, more than half of the search queries on Google come from outside the United States.

The globalization of the Web has inspired entrepreneurs like Ram Prakash Hanumanthappa, an engineer from outside Bangalore, India. Mr. Ram Prakash learned English as a teenager, but he still prefers to express himself to friends and family members in his native Kannada. But using Kannada on the Web involves computer keyboard maps that even Mr. Ram Prakash finds challenging to learn.

So in 2006 he developed Quillpad, an online service for typing in 10 South Asian languages….

… Mr. Ram Prakash said Western technology companies have misunderstood the linguistic landscape of India, where English is spoken proficiently by only about a tenth of the population and even many college-educated Indians prefer the contours of their native tongues for everyday speech. “You’ve got to give them an opportunity to express themselves correctly, rather than make a fool out of themselves and forcing them to use English,” he said….

… “Gone are the days in which you can launch a Web site in English and assume that readers from around the globe are going to look to you simply because of the content you’re providing,” said Zia Daniell Wigder, a senior analyst at JupiterResearch, an online research company based in New York.

Nowhere are the obstacles, or the potential rewards, more apparent than in India, whose online population Jupiter says is poised to become the third-largest in the world after China and the United States by 2012. Indians may speak one language to their boss, another to their spouse and a third to a parent. In casual speech, words can be drawn from a grab bag of tongues….

… English simply will not suffice for connecting with India’s growing online market, a lesson already learned by Western television producers and consumer products makers, said Rama Bijapurkar, a marketing consultant and the author of “Winning in the Indian Market: Understanding the Transformation of Consumer India.”

“If you want to reach a billion people, or even half a billion people, and you want to bond with them, then you have no choice but to do multiple languages,” she said.

Even among the largely English-speaking base of around 50 million Web users in India today, nearly three-quarters prefer to read in a local language, according to a survey by JuxtConsult, an Indian market research company. Many cannot find the content they are seeking. “There is a huge shortage of local language content,” said Sanjay Tiwari, the chief executive of JuxtConsult…

India has 22 official languages and 29 languages spoken by one million or more native speakers. See Wikipedia here.

So, Oregon let’s gear up our high school and university study abroad programs to send our students to India. Let some of then learn these local Indian languages.

Comments

[software development in london]

This is really interesting and has information that is not regularlyreported,

Thanks for bringing this up