Re:Arabic, a great language, has a low profile
by dorfsmay on Thursday October 25, 2018 @09:47PM
(#18306142)
> it's considered less pretentious to use the English equivalent than to use the ten-dollar Hindi word.
Why is that?
Reverse snobism towards the upper or more educated classes?
As an outsider who knows very little about Indian culture, it feels wrong and sad.
Re:Arabic, a great language, has a low profile
by kranner on Friday October 26, 2018 @01:23AM
(#18306963)
No it's not anti-intellectualism of any kind. If anything, Indians have a high regard for education. It just comes across as artificial because usage of those words is now mostly limited to literary contexts.
These days using a difficult Hindi word (especially one derived from Sanskrit, or one that sounds Sanskrit-ish) in place of a common English term also signals that the speaker supports the political right wing.
This is exactly the situation with Hindi (and I'd venture to say all Indian languages). The colloquial (or at least urban) vocabulary seems so much smaller than English that it's just faster to code-mix in English words and phrases in a lot of situations. And insisting on speaking in Hindi would require a lot more metaphors and indirect expression than seemingly how the same thing would be said in English.
Even if a Hindi word exists for a very specific concept, and the speaker knows the listener probably knows it, it's considered less pretentious to use the English equivalent than to use the ten-dollar Hindi word.