Bangalore. She, a Bengali speaker from a family hailing from India’s east, heads marketing for a social networking start-up. He, fluent in the native Kannada tongue of Bangalore, runs a subsidiary of a multinational telecommunications company. Between them, they speak and understand half a dozen Indian languages.
Quite ironic then that their daughter, Ahana, six-and-a-half, growing up in a country with a profusion of tongues, speaks only one language: impeccable English. And English is the common tongue that binds the Nagarajs as a family.
In Bangalore and elsewhere in Big City India, factors like great mobility, a demanding school system and mixed marriages are churning up a startling consequence: a generation of urban children is growing up largely monolingual — speaking, thinking and dreaming only in English.
This is a country with 20 official languages including English, some three dozen languages spoken by over a million native speakers each, and a few hundred “live” languages.
India’s New ‘English Only’ Generation
Wednesday, November 6, 2013 - Last Update: 1:19 PM ET (18:19 GMT)