PatnaDaily.Com - Readers Write

I had recently tried to explore the possibility of writing in Hindi using the Roman script. From Readers' reaction it appears that this has been a failed experiment. While one reader from Kyoto, Japan was supportive, others pointed out to the limitations of using such a method. Some of them had very valid points:

a) A spell checker can't be used - some Hindi words can be spelled in many different ways in the Roman Script.

c) The script of a Language is a part of the Language itself. - This again is very true. How I wish some good Hindi Fonts were available. Unfortunately, you can find (as one reader pointed out) Kannada and Telugu fonts, but Hindi fonts till today are difficult to use. I have experimented with several of them. One reader, though erudite and eloquent have mistakenly looked at the idea of writing Hindi in Roman Script as a cultural tussle between English and Hindi.

Even when an experiment fails, researchers do publish a paper saying, in essence, that - "it didn't work." My conclusion on this is that even though this effort was a "Noah's ark" measure to keep Hindi alive in the absence of Hindi fonts, many other practical difficulties were seen by the readers. The one that appealed most to me was that, if "Noah's Ark" measures are taken, they tend to become permanent. Just because of the greed of a few who want to keep Hindi fonts away from the Public domain, we should not risk losing the script of Hindi.

I have seen many NRI children from Hindi speaking families. Most do not speak any Hindi. I do not blame the poor kids. Gujarati, Telugu, Tamil, Bengali families are far better in preserving their language. I do not know why this is so and would really love to hear thoughts from other readers regarding this unusual phenomenon of children (of Hindi speaking families) losing their mother tongue. Some NRI kids who do speak Hindi, can't read the script. All Hindi material available on the internet is too 'terse' for them - so unless the parent is unusually devoted, the knowledge of the script is gone. Ultimately those kids will carry Hindi in a Noah's Ark of their own. It will be their battle as they try to find their cultural identity and ethnic roots. I see the descendents of Biharis who were deported (kala pani) to British Guyana, Surinam, Fiji, Mauritius etc. They have retained some of their culture but have lost most of their language.

Thus to sum up the failed experiment, I guess I will go on with English - though reluctantly. I speak English to earn my living; I speak Hindi / Hindustani for my poetry and songs. English comes from my brain. Hindi comes both from my brain and my heart.

Comments:

Writing/Reading Hindi has become very easy now. Windows XP supports Unicode and you can use any good Hindi font to see that. There is a list of Hindi fonts here:

http://www.geocities.com/ashish342/

They are commercial fonts developed by those news sites. But probably a user can use them to view other Unicode documents too. So, as long as you have a unicode document in Hindi you can view it just as beautifully as any other language.

I use Surekh Unicode Font myself and it's rendering is perfect. My typing speed in Hindi is also improving with time. I think people should just start writing in hindi. All people need is windows XP and a couple of good fonts.

You can also do Google searches on Hindi documents. And windows Notepad can be used to edit any Hindi document. - Ashish Kumar 1/24/05

I have certain ideas as well as some questions on this topic and I do not know how the readers would react to them but I wish to seek your kind support or at least some of your time so that something very simple could be said and understood.

It is a very good idea to take the usage of Roman Script in communicating with people who cannot read Devnagri, by this I do not mean that it should be used as a tool to make a toddler / child learn Hindi.

It could be like this say for instance, a person living down south and knows and speaks Hindi but cannot read it. He can very well understand Roman Script and can also apprehend what a writer intends to.

Similarly, people who have spoken Hindi but have never written or read can take use of this idea.

I think that the number of people who fall in the above bracket are many and this will also bridge the gap of understanding between two zonal brethren as language should be a facilitator and not a hurdle in bridging cultural and social gaps.

I wish to give some examples where extended use of letters could be made for making the meaning more understandable.

For instance when we write "Kya Kar Rahe Ho"? we can write this as:

"Kyaa Karr Rahey Ho" if your read both the sentences aloud or by its diction you will feel the difference.

Like there are surnames in Maharashtra :

More, Hate, Latke, etc.

They could be well written as Morey, Hatey, Latkey.

In Gujarati we have a name of a boy Called "VIRAL" ANY Gujarati speaking family can understand this and pronounce as per above but for non-Gujaratis if the same same name is written as "Veeral" everyone in India can understand and non-Hindi speaking or reading public will not mistake it for Viral Fever.

I hope that I have carried home my point and many would agree on what I have typed. - Sanjay Gupta 1/24/05

Discussion on this topic is now closed.

A Failed Experiment