????Cash Cows for Hindi teachers?????

[Richard.Barz at anu.edu.au]

>Reply to Richard Barz' reply to Zydenbos' reply to Wujastyk:
>
>>It's fashionable in some circles, for ideological and other reasons, to
>>indulge in Hindi-bashing.  But, sorry, it just isn't true that "the
>>>percentage of the Indian population with whom one can have an intelligent
>>>conversation in Hindi is very limited indeed".  In fact, if one ignores
>>>the artificial divisions between Hindi, filmi Hindi, Hindustani and Urdu
>>>and just calls it all Hindi, then Hindi is the only South Asian language
>>>in which one can have any kind of conversation, intelligent or not, any
>>>where in India, Pakistan or Nepal.  In fact, since English really is the
>>>language of a tiny elite, Hindi is the only language in which one can have
>>>any chance of having a conversation anywhere in India.  Naturally, Tamil,
>>>Gujarati, Bengali and so on are fine languages every bit the equal of
>>>Hindi but none of them have any where near the geographical and cultural
>>>spread of Hindi.
>>
>>Richard Barz
>>Richard.Barz at anu.edu.au
>
>--I am a teacher of Urdu (and to a certain extent of Hindi) by profession,
>but contest Richard Barz' statement. I will restrict myself to a subject on
>which I can speak from experience: Nepali. Hindi is not the cultural
>language of Nepal, Nepali is, and it has the vocabulary and grammatical
>flexibility to handle all the topics I could think of discussing during a
>two year stay (doing lexicographic research). The more abstract vocabulary
>comes mostly from Sanskrit, but so does that of Hindi.
>
>With best wishes,
>
>Ruth Schmidt

Reply to Ruth Schmidt,

I apologise for my phrasing.  My intention was to not to claim that Nepali
isn't the primary language of Nepal, but to state that it is possible to
find far more speakers of Hindi in Nepal than of any other language not
belonging to that country.

Richard Barz