Re: Spell Catcher [was spelling checker]

Woody <usenet@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Rowland McDonnell <real-address-in-sig@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Woody <usenet@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Rowland McDonnell <real-address-in-sig@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Woody <usenet@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Rowland McDonnell <real-address-in-sig@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Peter Ceresole <peter@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Tim Streater <timstreater@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
[snip]

[1] US population 303,824,640, literacy 99% of which 82% is english
speaking primarily, so a minimum of 246k (although from experience in
the states, it is more likely that the 1% non literate are from a non
english speaking group). Indian population 1,147,995,904 with literacy
rate of 61%, so 700k, but english isn't actually an official language,

You're looking at an India in a parallel universe

I am not looking at an india in any parallel universe, I am just going
by what is written.

English is an official language in India according to what I've always
been told and what I've seen written in the here&now - so if the India
you're looking at doesn't meet that spec, it must be in a parallel
universe.

Well, ok, I just hadn't seen any reference to that. I don't know what
India speaks, I have never been there, or studied their use of language.

<shrug> I've just paid attention to what's what. I thought `everyone'
knew that English was an official language in India. I'm amazed that
you could think that it's not. How did you get to your age... Look,
I'm not meaning this to be any sort of insult, but how the hell did you
manage to get to your age this ignorant? It's just one of those things
that `everyone' knows - admittedly, many such things turn out not to be
true, so it's as well to look things up and check, but still........

The only reference I saw said:

Hindi 41%, Bengali 8.1%, Telugu 7.2%, Marathi 7%, Tamil 5.9%, Urdu 5%,
Gujarati 4.5%, Kannada 3.7%, Malayalam 3.2%, Oriya 3.2%, Punjabi 2.8%,
Assamese 1.3%, Maithili 1.2%, other 5.9%

Not so good - a lot of Indians are bilingual (or more) - and `the other
language' is very often English. That's just a list of `first
language'.

And that list doesn't include Hindustani at all, which is a ***
cross between Hindi and Urdu that's very widely used.

Hindustani's the sort of lingo that I reckon would be replacing English
in India as an intercommunal language, if English weren't so important
globally - as it is, India won't be dropping English any time soon.

note: English enjoys associate status but is the most important language
for national, political, and commercial communication; Hindi is the
national language and primary tongue of 41% of the people; there are 14
other official languages: Bengali, Telugu, Marathi, Tamil, Urdu,
Gujarati, Malayalam, Kannada, Oriya, Punjabi, Assamese, Kashmiri,
Sindhi, and Sanskrit; Hindustani is a popular variant of Hindi/Urdu
spoken widely throughout northern India but is not an official language
(2001 census)

At least Hindustani gets a mention down here...

<https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/print/in.ht
ml>

Whereas I don't necessarily believe the CIA on all points that they have
come out with, they are in a position to know this better than me, and I
would assume better than you.

<puzzled> The CIA is famously inaccurate. I've no idea what `English
enjoys associate status' might mean.

I don't know about your parallel universes, but if you have some
reference I am happy to see it.

<http://www.languageinindia.com/april2002/officiallanguagesact.html>

Any good? <shrug> Maybe the CIA doesn't know about Indian law. They
don't know about much. I got that link - hah! via Google directly, as
it happens. Search term: "india english". The second link is what got
me the law (I assumed you'd not trust Wikipedia on this one).

But if you were to, it says this:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_English>

"Indian English comprises several dialects or varieties of English
spoken primarily in India, and by first-generation members of the Indian
diaspora. This dialect evolved during and after the British colonial
rule of India. English is the co-official language of India, with about
90 million speakers, but with fewer than quarter of a million calling it
a first language [1] With the exception of some families which
communicate primarily in English as well as members of the relatively
small Anglo-Indian community (numbering less than half a million),
speakers of Indian English have it as a second language, with an
indigenous language such as Hindi as their native tongue.[2]"

<http://www.languageinindia.com/junjul2002/baldridgeindianenglish.html>

Has this point:

"Only about three percent of India's population speak English, [...]"

but continues:

"but they are the individuals who lead India's economic, industrial,
professional, political, and social life. Even though English is
primarily a second language for these persons, it is the medium in which
a great number of the interactions in the above domains are carried out.
Having such important information moving in English conduits is often
not appreciated by Indians who do not speak it, but they are relatively
powerless to change that. Its inertia is such that it cannot be easily
given up. This is particularly true in South India, where English serves
as a universal language in the way that Hindi does in the North. Despite
being a three percent minority, the English speaking population in India
is quite large. With India's massive population, that three percent puts
India among the top four countries in the world with the highest number
of English speakers. English confers many advantages to the influential
people who speak it -- which has allowed it to retain its prominence
despite the strong opposition to English which rises periodically."

But also:

<http://adaniel.tripod.com/Languages3.htm>

"Officially English has a status of assistant language, but in fact it
is the most important language of India. After Hindi it is the most
commonly spoken language in India and probably the most read and written
language in India."

I'd say it's not going to be easy to track down the figures on this
particular subject because it looks like *everyone* has some sort of axe
to grind.

<http://yaleglobal.yale.edu/display.article?id=5675>

<http://www.languageinindia.com/aug2004/dlamallikarjun1.html>

See?

Ah, if they had any sense at all, they'd be *clinging* to English,
because it's a language that can help them escape from the curse of
communalism.

And don't say it doesn't belong in India - English is Indo-European like
the `native' languages most spoken in India (Urdu's semitic, IIRC -
related to Arabic rather than Latin).

[snip]

but if 41% of people
speak hindi and there are 14 other languages used, I find it hard to
imagine that a large percentage write that many languages including
english, so I unless 1 in 3 people can write english, america is more
likely to be writing english.
[2] using the cia factbook for figures.

I talked about speaking English, not writing English.

I know you did. And I spoke about both.

Aye, but I was concerned only with the numbers speaking the lingo.

I know you were, but you had not provided (and I couldn't find) any
reference for what those numbers were, so I was going for the only
references I could find.

I'd not trust the CIA. The CIA is, let's face it, famous for getting
things really, really badly wrong. The CIA's figures about countries
seem to be at odds with the figures about those countries produced by
the countries themselves - and I can't help feeling that (for example),
the Icelandic government's statistics people have a better idea of how
many people live in Iceland than does the CIA.

Not that the CIA's information on nations is totally out to lunch in all
cases - I'm sure it's a useful approximate guide, but no more
trustworthy than Wikipedia in my book (less so in some respects).

I also have reason to believe that everyone's published population
figures for Russia are based on Russian figures only - which were (I
have reason to believe) severely inflated during the Cold War and don't
seem to have been made realistic since. I don't know if anyone's got a
good idea how many people live in Russia. But I do wonder if the
current talk about Russian women not having babies is part of a plan to
reduce the published population figures to more realistic levels (over
the next few decades?) using lies that people will accept without
questioning too closly.

Rowland.


--
Remove the animal for email address: rowland.mcdonnell@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Sorry - the spam got to me
http://www.mag-uk.org http://www.bmf.co.uk
UK biker? Join MAG and the BMF and stop the Eurocrats banning biking
.

Loading