{"id":967,"date":"2010-12-13T14:51:04","date_gmt":"2010-12-13T14:51:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.language-museum.com\/blog\/?p=967"},"modified":"2010-12-14T22:58:53","modified_gmt":"2010-12-14T22:58:53","slug":"should-indians-learn-english","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.language-museum.com\/blog\/2010\/12\/13\/should-indians-learn-english\/","title":{"rendered":"Should Indians learn English?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>English is sometimes described as the world\u2019s first global lingua franca, spoken by an estimated 370 million people as their native language and many more as a second language.<\/p>\n<p>But in a country which has 22 constitutionally recognised <a href=\"http:\/\/languages.iloveindia.com\/\">languages<\/a>, how important is it for the population to learn English? That is the question debated by schools across India. <\/p>\n<blockquote><p>..the debaters portray English as either the smouldering dog-end of colonialism or the passport to economic growth, as evidenced by the IT and service industry explosion. <\/p>\n<p>But there are unexpected angles. <\/p>\n<p>One team highlights the need for English to liberate Dalits &#8211; the Indian underclasses, formerly &#8220;untouchables&#8221; who can use English to vault over the social barriers of the officially banned caste system. <\/p>\n<p>The pressure on rural teachers not equipped to teach English to a sufficient standard is highlighted. <\/p>\n<p>The disastrous attempt to enforce Hindi as the national language of India in 1965 is cited as a reason why English could be the language of Indian unity. (Source: <a href=\"http:\/\/news.bbc.co.uk\/1\/hi\/programmes\/from_our_own_correspondent\/9271414.stm \">BBC)<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>There are many angles to this debate, and we could see it repeated around the globe as English continues to spread. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>English is sometimes described as the world\u2019s first global lingua franca, spoken by an estimated 370 million people as their native language and many more as a second language. But in a country which has 22 constitutionally recognised languages, how important is it for the population to learn English? That is the question debated by [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[100,3,40],"tags":[3,922,923,924],"class_list":["post-967","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture","category-english","category-language-acquisition","tag-english","tag-global-lingua-franca","tag-indian-english","tag-learning-english"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.language-museum.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/967","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.language-museum.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.language-museum.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.language-museum.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.language-museum.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=967"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/www.language-museum.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/967\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":972,"href":"http:\/\/www.language-museum.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/967\/revisions\/972"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.language-museum.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=967"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.language-museum.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=967"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.language-museum.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=967"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}