Dear Naren Its sad that our mother tongue does feel like cinderella...The only airlines which make announcements in tamil are British airways and srilankan airlines(not entirely sure of the later)
Indian airlines and AirIndia only make it in hindi and english....that can be changed and encouraged.....
I totally agree that forms in tamil nadu should be bilingual(with tamil or trilingual)
It would be nice to have passports with tamil and english but imagine the realistic ventures in a land with '''seppumozhi pathinettudaiyaal'''
I agree that tamil should find a place everywhere in the US you find signs in English and Spanish..... In UK in certain Punjabi and Hindi populated areas hospitals have signs in English and punjabi and hindi
So I dont see why your dreams cant come true....lets first have an id card for every indian and then see about the passports....
Why do u think English education was most sought after when English ruled and now parents want their kids to be educated in Hindi..??
Well english is learnt because thats the passport to the world lets face it....2 decades ago the keralites were very fluent in hindi so went to the far and wide ends of india...
the tamilians were the only ones who struggled without hindi knowledge...
but our time came when the west opened its doors.. and now there is a tamil engineer or doctor in every major western city...thanks to english learning.
As far as signs being in Hindi in the UK etc, that is possibly because a majority of the Indian population there is from the north. In Singapore, the only Indian language in which there are signs is in Tamizh (and which irks a lot of the northies here ; )) So I don't think too much should be read into that.
> > Indian airlines and AirIndia only make it in hindi and english....that can be changed and encouraged.....
Yes exactly my point.. In flights to Madras, the language shud be tamil, figlths to Blore it shud be Kannada.. etc..
The basic underlying fact is that we're like what European Union wants to be in the future, single currency, single defence force with diverse thriving people/ languages/ culture /subcultures..
If you take a flight to Spain the announcements will be in Spanish, and if you take a flight to Germany it will be in german..
> > I totally agree that forms in tamil nadu should be bilingual(with tamil or trilingual)
> > It would be nice to have passports with tamil and english but imagine the realistic ventures in a land with '''seppumozhi pathinettudaiyaal''' >
You're right, Ideally we would like to have the passports in our mother tongue and the agreed upon link language that is English..
> I agree that tamil should find a place everywhere in the US you find signs in English and Spanish.....
If this is supposed to be sarcastic I'm missing the point..
> In UK in certain Punjabi and Hindi populated areas hospitals have signs in English and punjabi and hindi >
> So I dont see why your dreams cant come true....lets first have an id card for every indian and then see about the passports....
See I used passport example because everyone can relate to it.. The general concern is that we need to have all the languages made official even for the federal government and not just for the state governments with a copy to be provided in English..like the parliament debates / court documents etc.. With the advent in technology and translation everything is possible.. How do u think the UN works??.
> > Why do u think English education was most sought after when English ruled and now parents want their kids to be educated in Hindi..?? > > Well english is learnt because thats the passport to the world lets face it....2 decades ago the keralites were very fluent in hindi so went to the far and wide ends of india... > > the tamilians were the only ones who struggled without hindi knowledge...
Well that's an incorrect argument. We din't struggle for the lack of Hindi knowledge. Refer to the latest "states development report" from India today. In all the different areas in which the states are judged TN is in the top 4 ranks..
I think it's dumb to argue that we need Hindi to develop (English knowledge is essential as it serves as the link language between the different states and different countries in the world...I agree with that..)
When did I say Tamil should replace English..?? I'm perfectly happy with the 2 - language policy that we're following now..
But I'm NOT happy with ppl who think somehow learning Tamil in schools is not good for their kids and take Hindi/French/?? as a substitute.. I feel sorry for those kids. I meet a lot of folks here who have their mother tongue as tamil, but could not read / write tamil and mind you they're born and brought up in TN.. They're really losing out on something..
European Union wants to be in the future, single currency, single defence force with diverse thriving people/ languages/ culture /subcultures.. I agree thats exactly the example I give my colleagues in UK if they ask me to speak to a punjabi or gujarathi patient and say but Yiure from iNdia....
My question to them is can you speak Greek or German...India is verymuch like the EU but one nation But the moment yiu start talking about linguistic passports it ll be seen as secession than anything and all that ll happen is politicians using it for their gains...
I agree that tamil should find a place everywhere in the US you find signs in English and Spanish..... No sarcasm meant its reality because spanish is the second largest language spoken in US
> Why do u think English education was most sought after when English ruled and now parents want their kids to be educated in Hindi..??
People wanted English because that was the remnants of a heritage and that was their link to the rest of India
The present day culture of Reading Hindi and French is just for convenience.
Do you think the kids having french and german as their second language are laerning to go to france and germany no they choose that because they can then devote all their time on Maths and science to score big scores and aggregates....Tamil standard is high and they do not want to waste time on language...In caomparison to Tamil even the higher sec english is light....thats the main reason...
We should make laerning tamil a delightful experience may be we should just have a pass mark in languages...maybe kids with tamil as second language should get a few marks added to aggregate...
> > Well english is learnt because thats the passport to the world lets face it....2 decades ago the keralites were very fluent in hindi so went to the far and wide ends of india... > > the tamilians were the only ones who struggled without hindi knowledge...
I still stand by this statement 2 decades ago the only ones who laernt hindi were communities with links to hindi or sanskrit.Most of the rest learnt only tamil due to various reasons...Ego my language is second to none...so one and so forth...
Most other southindian states had hindi as their third language so if you cross the krishna we struggled...I had the experience of a CRPF jawan asking me and my freind 'ap hindi nahin janthe?ap bharat me kya kare?'both of us knew enough hindi knowledge to understand what he meant....
But with the west opening the english we learnt helped us propell outside and thereby improve the status of our homestate ...Now the world knows us as Tamils......thanks to our ealam brothers woes and migration you find a tamil in every corner of the world. I think it's dumb to argue that we need Hindi to develop (English knowledge is essential as it serves as the link language between the different states and different countries in the world...I agree with that..)
I never said we need hindi to develope did I.Learning another language always has its utility...But not at the compromise of mothertongue is my stand.
''The germans learn english,the greeks learn english,the germans leran english..Indians learn english.do the english learn anything else no....
The result the germans and greeks have the world open to them(including UK) whereas the brits are restricted to the english speaking world (which in europe is just the isles)'' I am quoting one of my British boss who said this
We should have better DJs and VJs and not Thanglish...
Dear SPS If they start boycotting Thamizh kolai by Udit Narayan And Lucky Ali..the composers and producers will learn their lesson
The same manirathnam who names movies in Chaste tamil like Kannathil muthamittaaal,Ayithaezhuthu,Alai payurthe,Idayakoil etc lets Lucky ali murder tamizh in Nenjamellam.....song....
Is this fair???Myself included we all bought cds of AE. The producers and composers use the same singers for bilingual versions but what is loosing out is tamil....
Maybe the govt should give a 0.5% taxfree for movies with tamil singers
FYI: Singapore Airlines also makes announcements in Thamizh, that are bound to Chennai / starting from Chennai. There are name boards in Thamizh in Singapore Airport.
Dear Naren Its sad that our mother tongue does feel like cinderella...The only airlines which make announcements in tamil are British airways and srilankan airlines(not entirely sure of the later)
Indian airlines and AirIndia only make it in hindi and english....that can be changed and encouraged.....