Hacker Cinema
English Vinglish
इंग्लिश विंग्लिश
2012 · Film · 134 min
Directed by Gauri Shinde
In the United States for the first time, an Indian housewife with a limited command of English turns Manhattan into her personal language school.
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2 comments on Hacker News
>regardless of social or economic status
Absolute nonsense. Only 11% of Indians spoke English according to 2011 census. The ability to speak fluent English is the biggest marker of social and economic status after caste in India.
This is not really some deep insight. Everybody in India knows this, especially the 89% who don't speak English. There are even bollywood movies even based on the concept (see Hindi Medium, English Vinglish).
>Every child gets to learn 3 languages
The quality of teaching of English in government schools especially state boards is abysmal.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D_KVFZPofQU [Govt school teachers fail to identify nouns in a sentence]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=42xxu5HdJzc [Govt school teacher fails to read a primary school textbook]
I also technically got to "learn" Sanskrit as my 3rd language in school. How many sentences of Sanskrit do you think I can utter now?
Fun fact: People who actually don't speak fluent English are more often than not ridiculed, looked down upon and judged immediately. For some reason, the country treats knowing english as a litmus test - You either know english or you're not really that knowledgable (You've to work doubly hard to prove your knowledge).
I might be generalizing a bit but it's truly a widespread thing, I'm sure other Indian HN users can attest to this.
- You try to strike a conversation with a girl in Hindi in a bar, you will get laughed at or ignored. But you speak fluent english and you have a much higher chance of having a conversation.
- Every parent wants to send their child to an english medium school and it's only the poor ones who don't have many options around who settle for their children to be in a local language school (The quality of teachers would also vary accordingly).
- A sportsperson (usually a cricketer), goes up to the post-match presentation to take an award and speaks in broken english, millions of people watching it would start cracking jokes on him.
There are countless other examples. Yes, knowing english is good to compete in a global economy but the obsession with the language that the middle/upper class shows is ridiculous. There are several reasons for this trend but it's definitely a direct impact of the British rule.
There is a brilliant Bollywood family movie on this topic - English Vinglish (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2181931/) I would really recommend you to watch it if you're into good foreign cinema.