Sorry about some errors in expressing myself earlier: On 4 April 2011 02:31, Frederick Noronha <[email protected]> wrote: > (iii) If we block grants to English on the grounds that it is a > foreign language, what do we target next? "Foreign" clothes? "Foreign" > religions? Food of "foreign" origin like the tomato, cashew, potato, > pineapple, and so many others?
I meant to say on the grounds of its "foreign origins". I don't subscribe to the view that English is a "foreign" language in today's India, which is the second-largest English-speaking country in the world. It may have been foreign at one time; not any more. Just as many of our fruits, our clothes, our loan-words in many "local" languages, part of our religions (including Hinduism), and our DNA too! [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_English-speaking_population] > Many of the children or grandchildren of the "local language" > protagonists have gone to plush English-language schools. Out of > logistical convenience, my daughter went to a Konkani medium school, > and I rue the fact that her reading skills got badly confused and > delayed. (Where is the question of education in the "mother tongue", > when we speak a form English at home, as do so many of you reading > this?) In contrast, my son is going to one of the more reasonably > priced English-medium schools, and he loves reading with the confusion > of language, script and dialect. In the second-last line above, I meant to say *without the confusion*... FN Frederick Noronha :: +91-9822122436 :: +91-832-2409490
