The official language of India is Hindi and English, as the second official language. Both Hindi and English are used as the working language in multi-lingual regions. An estimate of 40% of the India’s population spoke Hindi as one of their main language. Besides, the Indian legislation also recognizes other 18 state languages as state language. It includes Urdu, Tamil, Telugu, Konkani, Sindhi, Malayalam, Meithei (Manipun), Marathi, Nepali, Oriya, Punjabi, Sanskrit, Assamese, Bengali, Gujarati, Kannada (Kanarese) and Kashmiri.
In Delhi where the majority of the population is Hindus, Hindi is the official language despite their dialect differs from the other region in India. It depends solely on the society perception whether regional differences is treated as Hindi or a dialect. It is believed that the further away between regions, the more difficult it is for the speakers to understand despite they speak the same language- Hindi. The variation of the way Hindi is spoken is somehow related to Latin-derived languages like French, Portuguese and Spanish.
English is also spoken in Delhi, especially the younger generation and those who are involved in the tourism industry. In addition, Punjabi was conversed by the Sikhs and Punjabis that made up a high percentage of the entire population in Delhi. Delhi is divided into two cities- New Delhi and Old Delhi. Urdu is used in Old Delhi as majority of its community were Muslims, however speakers of Urdu and Hindi are able to understand each other easily. This is because Urdu and Hindi are the same, except Hindi are derived from Devanagari script while Urdu from Perso-Arabic script.
No comments:
Post a Comment