Why it’s Important to Learn Hindi : Professor Ram Lakhan Meena

Why it’s Important to Learn Hindi

Professor Ram Lakhan Meena

The present day nomenclature/term of Hindi language includes more than 250 mother tongues, creating a statistical majority. It is amazing to see how the statistical majority of Hindi speaker is achieved. Different mother tongues are combined to make a linguistic majority. If this kind of clustering is not done, the linguistic demography of Hindi will be different. It is spoken of the population of 62.22% of mother tongues clustered under it as a language. It is used as a second language by 21.60% and as a third language by 14%, totaling to 97.98% of the entire population of India. Hindi crosses the magic figure of the definition of majority, a language with more than 95% of the population of India, in the 2011 Census. Hindi is mainly a rural language with 78.61% of its speakers residing in the rural areas, and only 21.39% of Hindi speakers are urbanites.

In the history of Indian languages, Hindi is one of the language which was not an official language, or language of administration of any dynasty, unlike other languages such as Kannada, Tamil, Telugu, Marathi, etc. The officially identified Hindi of today as we already saw is an umbrella term/form to cover a composite speech form, formed out of different but possibly mutually intelligible mother tongues. It is a super-ordinate term, subsuming a bunch of subordinate mother tongues/dialects. Thus, the present Hindi is the result of the planned development of independent India. The common core of linguistic features that exist between different mother tongues grouped under the language.

Hindi and the areal features seem to be helping smooth communication and unhindered interaction among the speakers of these mother tongues. Hindi as a form of language started to knit India - a multilingual nation, for the last one hundred years, as part of the process of struggle for independence, and it has assumed this role more forcefully in the last fifty years of language planning. First it integrated submerging different mother tongue/dialect/language identities as an umbrella language; then it penetrated into the sphere of other Indo-Aryan language speaking areas due to linguistic affinity and geographic contiguity and thirdly into the territories of the speakers of other language families due to acquisition planning. It is integrating Indians communicatively and, may, in due course of time, socially and economically too.

Modern Hindi is this form of language which has evolved into an almost wholly acceptable form in India after her independence and is in use in different domains. Three distinct forms of Hindi have evolved and they perform three different kinds of functions. The first one is used in formal contexts as standard Hindi, both in spoken and written forms; the second one is the official or administrative Hindi, which is used in a limited but important domain of administration, and the third form is lingua-franca Hindi, which is used in non-formal contexts across the country in spoken form only, overlaid by the shadow of the regional languages wherever it is used. This form is more akin to Mahatma Gandhi's notion of Hindustani, also now popularly known as bazaar Hindi. This kind of Hindi is used across different language speakers for intra-group communication in the country.

Though, in one way, it could be considered as a part of official or administrative Hindi, the Hindi used in the defense services is the best example of development of Hindi as a very successful tool for communication among the speakers belonging to various mother tongue groups and different official hierarchies. This Hindi of armed forces, which could be named as 'fouji Hindi,' exhibits the strength of official Hindi and lingua franca Hindi. English has remained as a language of elites due to the process of adopting it only for administration and higher education and not for popular communication. Now, due to the process of globalization, people aspire to learn it, whereas due to mobility, communication network, and expansion and availability of modern technologies, Modern Hindi has become the language of masses to a large extent.

Language instructors at the university level in the whole world are often in one of three situations:

• They are language instructors with experience teaching in their countries of origin, but little or no training in the teaching approaches commonly used in the United States
• They are professionals in other fields who are native speakers of the language, but are not trained as teachers
• They are graduate students who have extensive knowledge of language, literature, and culture, but are not trained as language teachers

These instructors often must begin their work in the classroom with little or no guidance to help them appreciate which methods work, how, and why. In response, they may fall back on an outdated model for understanding language teaching and language learning.

Nature, scope and aims, language, its meaning and functions, general principles of language learning with special reference to Hindi, development of Hindi language in India, special features of Hindi language and its universal significance-cultural, practical, literary and linguistic, aims and objectives of teaching Hindi language in Indian society, lesson planning and methods of teaching, meaning and importance of lesson-planning steps of the lesson plan, skills of teaching: core skills and planning micro­-lessons for their development, translation method for teaching Hindi, its advantages and limitations, direct method for teaching Hindi,  its main principles and techniques, teaching of prose – story, drama, essay and novel, major steps in the planning of a prose lesson, teaching of poetry – objectives of poetry lessons, importance for recitation, major steps in a poetry plan, teaching of grammar: place of grammar in the teaching of Hindi, inductive and deductive methods and their relative merits.

Teaching of reading: attributes of good reading; types of reading- scanning, skimming, intensive reading, extensive reading, silent reading, reading loud; various methods of reading- the phonic method, alphabetical method, word method and sentence method. Teaching of vocabulary- its ways and means, oral work, drilling, vocabulary building, making sentence. Teaching of writing and composition: letter writing, essay writing and précis writing. Language laboratory and its importance in the teaching of Hindi Language and salient features of a good text-book in Hindi, Hindi library and the class-room. Evaluation techniques, concept and types of evaluation, characteristics of a good test, construction of achievement test in Hindi with essay type, short answer type and objective type items, ways of testing reading, writing, speaking, grammar and vocabulary, qualities of a Hindi-teacher-an evaluative approach, sessional test, assignment, construction of achievement test and preparation of unit plan etc.

The findings are:

1)     There was significant difference in the three methods of teaching Sanskrit grammar, the programmed instruction being the most effective.

2)     The performance of the high achieving group was higher than that of the standards belonging to average and low levels of achievement in the three methods of teaching.

3)     The attainment of students in the high achievement group was higher when taught by programmed instruction than when taught by the lecture and tradition methods.

4)     The attainment of high achievers under the programmed instruction was higher than that of low achievers when taught by the same method.

5)     Average achievers taught through the programmed instruction performed significantly higher than the average achievers taught by the lecturer method.

6)     High achievers taught through the lecturer method performed significantly higher than low achievers taught through the programmed instruction.

Teaching Hindi as Second / Foreign Language

Almost 15 years ago I made a transition from teaching Hindi as a foreign language to foreigner student at Central Institute of Hindi, Agra. Teaching Hindi to young children, brought up with one of the mother tongues, I realized quickly, was not unlike teaching them what was largely a ‘foreign’ language. Two questions preoccupied me from the outset:

1)     What would be the difference in the teaching approach if one were to teach a new language to young children of say 5-6 years of age as opposed to adults?

2)     What would be the basic differences between teaching a new language as opposed to the mother tongue to first or second graders?

In exploring these questions I found myself gradually developing an approach to second language teaching that attempts to address the peculiar situation of a child just beginning to grapple with a new tongue. In this article I will share both an outline of the learning programme that emerged, and the process by which it took shape. I do this in the hope that my current experience in language teaching will have more general relevance to the teaching and learning of Indian languages in our schools where children often end up learning a second language other than their own mother tongue.

In response to the first question, one of the things which struck me was that in most cases the adult chooses to learn the new language out of either interest in the culture, better job prospects or because he or she is planning to travel to that particular linguistic area. He or she is usually pressed for time and needs to achieve this goal in a relatively short span of time. A young child, on the other hand, is usually in the unenviable position of having little choice in the matter. The new language that she is going to learn would probably not be of immediate and urgent use to her. But if she learnt it well, it would, I believe, deepen her sources of cultural contact and nourishment and also eventually serve practical communication needs with fellow Indians.

However, though the child often does not have much choice regarding the second language. He/she is going to learn, one thing that he/she does have in plenty is ‘time’ to learn this language. Having established this much, I began to question the relevance of beginning to teach any new language; whether it be Hindi or Telugu or Tamil, to children through either a functional or a communicative approach (methods of language teaching that were most familiar to me as a teacher of French to adults). Could there not be another entry-point into a new language for a young child?

Today Hindi is one of the major official languages in India which is widely spoken by over 1025 million people around the world. Majority of Hindi speakers reside in many of the northern states of India. Hindi is an official language in Indian states of Uttar Pradesh, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Uttarakhand, Himachal Pradesh, Rajasthan, Haryana, and Delhi. It is also widely spoken and understood in different parts of other Indian states such as - Punjab, Andhra Pradesh, West Bengal, and Maharashtra. People who move from other states to North India are learning Hindi. We have seen a lot of interest from outside India from spouses or friends of Hindi community as well as those who are adopting kids from states in North India. But there are plenty of other reasons to learn Hindi.

Why it’s Important to Learn Hindi

1)     Popularity of Bollywood Films: Characterized by their highly entertaining musical numbers and elaborate sets. Bollywood’s films are a growing phenomenon among foreign audience over the globe in places like the United States, United Kingdom, and other parts of Asia and Africa. Knowing Hindi allows you to understand and appreciate these films more without having to rely on subtitles. One of the biggest Cinema Industry in world is Bollywood. Ever growing popularity of Hindi Cinema inspires movie lovers to learn Hindi. Around the globe Hindi cinema entertains people of different nations, languages, culture and ethnicity. You may be one of them and you want to learn Hindi so you can enhance your favorite Hindi movie watching experience even more.

2)     Watch Hindi Television: What goes for Bollywood movies, same is true for Hindi Television. It's popularity is increasing as well as its reach. More non Hindi speakers watch Hindi Channels for news, soap operas and sitcoms. Enjoy more TV programming by learning Hindi.

3)     My customer is Hindi: As India and Hindi are growing in the importance in world with more content on the web, e-commerce and growing consumer market; use of Hindi is inevitable for international trade. Learn Hindi to reach largest market in the world.

4)     Befriend Your Neighbors: You will find Hindi speaking community all over India as well in the world. Your Hindi speaking neighbor is bound to love you more if you could communicate with them in Hindi.

5)     Traveling to India: As it is true for most of India, frankly you would do fine in big cities in India even if you know English alone. But it won't be as much fun as it would be to learn little bit of Hindi. If you learn and speak Hindi while traveling in India it will give you more opportunities to enjoy your travel and may allow you to do or see things other visitors may not.

6)     It's Mother Tongue of Indian Diasporas: Yes, your parents speak Hindi but you grew up in non-Hindi schools and environment. May be outside of India or parts of India where Hindi is not that commonly used. Now you think you should learn language of your ancestors. Never a best day to start on that but today!

7)     Learning Other Language : If you learn Hindi, you will have head start in other Sanskrit based Indian languages like Marathi, Gujarati, Bengali etc. You might even want to learn Sanskrit! When you are learning Hindi, you are already learning some Urdu! colloquial Urdu and Hindi considered as same language in basic form with two different scripts.

8)  Cultural Understanding : Learn the language and you will know their culture better. That's true for any language and culture around the world. Learning Hindi will help you fully embrace the culture of Hindi with exotic Indian poetry, literature, wisdom, belief system, and philosophy. Hindi is based on Sanskrit which share common ancestry with many other languages around the world.

9)     It's most scientific language of the world and easy to learn: If you already know other Indian language like Marathi, Gujrati, Bengali or Urdu learning Hindi is easy. Most of these languages share similar structure and vocabulary originated from Sanskrit. The grammar of Hindi is similar to English with few exceptions. For those of you who do not know Indian language, mastering grammar may look little challenging but if you use this site, you will find basic grammar easy to follow!

10)Growth of India’s Economy is Unstoppable and Jobs: India is becoming one of the world’s biggest exporters of commerce, business, digital media, and other information based technologies. And this trend doesn’t seem like it will be stopping anytime soon. Many technology jobs are currently being outsourced over to India. Even if you don’t personally have any plans to move to India, you might find yourself dealing with native Hindi-speakers more and more often. If you are in India, you will find opportunities expanding once you learn Hindi. Learning Hindi is also helpful for thousands of government officials who are not native Hindi speaker. Hindi is one of the official language of communication in central government of India. Also, Hindi is the official language of many northern states of India.

Learning Hindi will take you long ways. India is growing in every other aspect such as science, commerce, business, and other information systems/digital media. India’s growth seems unstoppable and shows no sign of slowing down. Companies that eye operational and sales expansion in the South Asia region are mostly recruiting people who are familiar about Indian culture and who could articulately and fluently speak and write Hindi. The importance of Hindi-speaking population as a important global market segment. Making it a very viable and important target for most global-minded businesses through Hindi.

11)India is one of the Most Exotic Tourist Locations: India is one of the most exotic tourist locations in the world. Picturing India one can imagine the wonders they can behold the fabulous white-domed Taj Mahal, cups of steaming chai tea, spicy cuisine, women’s vibrant colored saris, intricate temples, sacred cows, elephant rides, rickshaws and bustling streets will inevitably come to mind. Visitors come to see Delhi’s landmarks, enjoy Goa’s sandy beaches, marvel at Karnataka’s monumental architecture, experience Mumbai’s cosmopolitan nightlife and admire the palaces of Rajasthan. For some, learning a language is adventure and fun. They enjoy challenges of learning, speaking and reading new language. Learning language itself takes effort but it pays off when you can use it immediately. India is one of the most exotic, fascinating and exciting places in the world. Its rich history and culture have significantly influenced the civilization in the East. India’s wonderful heritage is manifested in its intricate temples, elaborate architecture and other awe-inspiring landmarks.

12)Academic Reasons to Learn Hindi: Because of the higher demand for people speaking Hindi, many of the world’s governments and agencies have been offering scholarships and other opportunities for individuals who are interested in Hindi studies and learning Hindi. People who can fluently speak and write Hindi are actively recruited for South Asia companies as well as companies internationally. It would truly be to your advantage if you would be able to speak and write Hindi. Whether you plan to migrate to India or not, in the end, you will surely find your decision to learning the importance of the Hindi language as very beneficial one.