Population explosions in Asia and the Indian sub-continent are adding to the demise of English as the number one spoken language in the world, according to linguistic researchers.



Read this story here: http://www.dw-world.de/english/0,3367,1441_A_1126154_1_A,00.html

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A Proud Indian Canadian

Its a good news for at least for us asians. At least our children might not have to learn German or french... It would be really a relief and advantage

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Manjeet Singh

But for many of the South Asians settled in North America, their children will definitely have to specially learn Hindi - as somehow or the other, I find Indians after coming to North America (except perhaps Gujratis and Bengalis - from MY personal experience) make extra effort to forget mother tongue/Hindi and embrace English as the first language!

Sad, but a fact!

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Chandresh

Advice is free – lessons I charge for!!

if you had considered how much time do immgrants have at home and with kids while struggling in the new environment compare to kids spend their time mostly in school or daycare...i am not speaking of those who have their parents to help out...i believe it is very difficult to balance this till you have a settled job and life...and..they never make extra effort to forget anything what they carry from back home!

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kathiawadi

Almost all school boards have international languages classes free of charge. You just have to drop-off and pick-up your child once a week.

Do you think that people don't have even time for this? How much you want to run after dollars?

We must teach our kids our mother tougue. I am going to teach both Gujarati and Hindi to my kids.

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A Proud Indian Canadian

I have a very tough time with teaching my kids my mother tongue. The thing is my wifes m.tongue is konkani(which has no written script now...its sadly been lost). My M.tongue is Malayalam. The common language of conversation between me and my wife is English (catholics from India and all that jazz). Now my daughter has to learn French at school and is doing very well with that. She has picked up English from us already. My struggle is firstly to teach her malayalam or konkani. Then if possible Hindi. Hopefully she will manage. Got some books and CD's for teaching material but not got around to doing it yet(find one excuse or the other...including cdesi)
to see how a language is almost lost

http://www.kamat.com/kalranga/konkani/konkani.htm

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Jake, I can understand your case.....you would have faced the same problem even if you were staying in a Hindi speaking state in India. Your kids might have not been able to learn either Malyalam or Konkani.

I have been fortunate enough that my children though born outside India, and NEVER have lived in India, are fluent (reletively) in Hindi both because we as parents insisted on speaking and learning Hindi (I still ask my daughter to read one or two news items of Hindi newspaper), and they got a chance to learn Hindi in a Hindi teaching school run by a UPite.

However, besides language, there are many things that parents can do to nurture the original culture in their children. One of the things I did recently was to take my children to India for attending two weddings, though the whole family had to take leave from school and work, and financially it was a big strain for we recently employed couple. However, in those 10 days, I made them attend each function and get a feel of the culture and made extra effort to understand those 'reeti - rivaj' which I myself never understood. They thoroughly enjoyed it and liked the way Indian wedding are held. I can't guarantee that they will go for similar weddings when they grow up, but I am trying my best to inculcate the feeling in them.

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Chandresh

Advice is free – lessons I charge for!!