Have you ever experienced hatred from others for speaking English ?

OinkBoink said:
Yes, I agree with you. I (being a north Indian Hindi speaker myself) have seen this arrogance several times on the part of *some* Hindi speakers. They keep telling South Indians that Hindi is the national language and that they should know it. That's just ridiculous.
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This arrogance happens with all the languages, not just Hindi

North Indians are often despised in states like Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu just for speaking Hindi and not knowing the local tongue.

A far more tolerant state is West Bengal where people are both linguistically and intellectually broad minded.

When I was in Chennai for some time, I could not understand why people are so rude.
Later on, I realized it's the Hindi.
 
^^ Of course. As for Chennai, I've never personally experienced anti-Hindi sentiments but people in my family have. They tell me about it.

How exactly were people rude to you in Madras ?
 
OinkBoink said:
^^ Of course. As for Chennai, I've never personally experienced anti-Hindi sentiments but people in my family have. They tell me about it.

How exactly were people rude to you in Madras ?
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Actually, there were a bunch of guys along with me at that time and there were multiple incidents with people having many different strange stories to tell.

I remember one incident which happened in a bus.
I was going somewhere with my friends and I took tickets for everyone (I guess we were going to YMCA) and casually asked the conductor, in Hindi, that how long does it take usually.
He completely ignored me and it wasn't like he was busy or something.
So I just sat down with my friends.
We didn't know when to get off so I asked the conductor to tell us when we reach there.
I don't know what struck him but he suddenly started shouting something in Tamil, later on he waved his hands (in a way people ask something not expecting an answer) and finally moved away making a shrug.
One old man sitting near by also said something in an inquiring tone and then started blabbering something to himself.
People around us gave us strange looks and some sort of chat/discussion started which we presumed might be about us (but that could obviously be psychological).
One of our guys who was much younger was actually shivering and I don't blame him since the whole incident was sudden and completely unexpected.

Likewise, there were many more such incidents with others in public places, restaurants, etc.
One of my friends had a big altercation with a group of elderly men and women who had asked him that why couldn't he speak Tamil when he was standing in Tamil Nadu.
He asked them in response that why couldn't they speak Hindi when standing in India and literally told them to STFU.
 
all people, everyone, grow old with age, but a riper age shouldn't be or can't be the parameter to estimate or measure one's maturity or wisdom. many young people are far more wise than the so-called 'wise old men'. if one has had the experience(s) to take along with him in his later years or learn from them, well-and-good, otherwise he has just rotted away his mind & body on this plane of mortal existence.

i once met an old sailor aboard a train in a journey. being co-professionals, we struck a chord & chatted for quite some time. he was a tamil. he told me how the linguistic-divide and continual raking up of those issues is so stupid. he said when he was a young chap, those were the days of anti-hindi movement in tamil nadu. he too had participated with great fervour in that movement, and ransacked a post-office & what-not at that time. later on in life, when he went to the sea, where there's one official language for communication for the seamen of each country, he was left stupefied! the official language was english - he didn't know; and mostly the crew would talk to each other in hindi, from whatever part of india they were - he didn't know! he told me that he found himself at an utter loss! said he had to struggle a lot to come to terms with reality. took some time, but he arrived to his better senses for good finally!

THAT is what is wisdom, which i see clearly lacking in the old gentry kestrel wrote about above & in many more 'old' people, perhaps because they didn't encounter any such experiences in their life where they would've been forced to reflect & think hard back upon their rigidity.

as i read somewhere - 'knowledge is knowing that tomato is a fruit. wisdom is knowing not to put it in a fruit salad.' to add to that - 'and you could come to realise that only if you've eaten both - a tomato, and a fruit salad! otherwise you'll be always stuck in perpetual confusion or ignorance!'

P.S. - this works the other way round as well with regards to the above discussion. miyamoto musashi wrote - 'know the way of every profession'. similarly, it can be said, to prevent being taken aback by surprise, try to gel in with the environment as well as possible, as far as possible (through nothing else, but plain-old-simple-rewarding practice). one of the ways of the code of conduct and way of life of a warrior, that can be applied to benefit immensely by anyone in the daily life.
 
I have two friends, who had some Tamilians as classmates in college. Whenever they're on Google, they immediately change the language to Tamil. And they were B.Tech students. As for Hatred towards speaking English, I hate the ones who murder the language.
 
Its the same kind of feeling i get when i see others using an Apple phone or an S3...Its insecurity..Jealousy....leading to hatred..

PS: I use an used and abused Nokia 6030..:)
 
OinkBoink said:
^^ If only that were practically viable.
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why not , am from tamilnadu ,know tamil , learnt hindi and can practically pass off as a northie from UP , am now in hyderabad know a wee bit to converse in telugu , can understand malayalam... of course i know english , was in bombay for a year , marathi was a bit hard though ... my wife can speak gujarati and bengali , i think we got most of languages covered ..lol
 
You can use three languages properly (the same as me). That's hardly learning all languages. Well,if you meant learning enough languages to be comfortable in most places then I get that.
 
rad0 said:
I haven't been in such situation but personally i don't like the fake accent guys .They are irritating as hell.
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Same here. Worse is when they pronounce Indian names with that accent. For example saying AVATAR in that fake and improper American accent even though the word is Sanskrit.
 
^^ Yes, but sometimes people's natural accents are interpreted as 'fake' by others too because they don't fit the norm. I've seen many people being wrongly accused of faking their accents. Sometimes people also modulate their accent when talking to people with different accents than their own (like foreigners or even domestic people sometimes) in order to be better understood.

But I do agree that there are those who fake their accents to sound 'hip' (or whatever they perceive as being cool in their heads).
 
OinkBoink said:
^^ Yes, but sometimes people's natural accents are interpreted as 'fake' by others too because they don't fit the norm. I've seen many people being wrongly accused of faking their accents. Sometimes people also modulate their accent when talking to people with different accents than their own (like foreigners or even domestic people sometimes) in order to be better understood.

But I do agree that there are those who fake their accents to sound 'hip' (or whatever they perceive as being cool in their heads).
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I have no problem with these guys. I've worked in a call centre for a company in Dubai and had to change accent according to customer (British,Russians,Africans etc). The problem is when people speak in that accent to other Indians (which slips sometimes which means it isn't their natural accent and just putting it on for showing off).
One of my friend, who was from English medium spoke like that. He pronounced 'America' with Apple's A and Canada's ca (I hope I'm making sense here. :) )
 
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