Actually, Charles .. a lot of the dialect has cultural overtones as well
Hyderabadi hindi for example, if you ever get the chance to speak it, is
more or less like cockney English (there's just as much cultural reference
as there's a change in accent)
I'd speak it with my friends on a college campus, or in an irani hotel (kind
of like the Imperial in Bangalore). I probably wouldn't speak it to someone
from Delhi or UP who speaks pure hindi.
Same thing with "indian English" constructs (quite a lot of them translated
from a local language like hindi or telugu on the fly, so that the grammar,
the allusions etc are entirely different)
Read Kipling's books - especially Kim, to get a whole lot of sense about
where this argument is heading. With india, bilingual, bidialect etc IS
bicultural.
suresh
> -----Original Message-----
> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf
> Of Charles Haynes
> Sent: Monday, June 30, 2008 5:41 PM
> To: [email protected]
> Subject: Re: [silk] Are you a different person when you speak a
> different language?
>
> If you read the article, you see that it is making a distinction
> between bi-lingual and bi-cultural. They are seeing a difference
> between people who speak two languages but only identify with a single
> culture, versus people who speak two languages and identify with two
> cultures.
>
> None of the comments so far have made this same distinction. I think
> bi-culturalism is much rarer than bi-lingualism.
>
> It's not just about language.
>
> -- Charles
