
Does India need its own vernacular internet? - amitsy
https://www.techinasia.com/talk/india-vernacular-internet
======
product50
I am not sure if I subscribe to the findings of this article completely.
Popular English language words have made their way into almost all Indian
languages. When you are accessing the internet, unless you are reading long
articles or online books, all you need is passing reading ability of some
English words to get through. To say that Instagram doesn't have a Hindi
equivalent of "filter" is simply missing the point - "filter" itself is called
"फिल्टर" in Hindi which has the same English pronunciation and many people
will get that. Also, many of my friends communicate with me in Hindi by
literally using English alphabets but writing Hindi sounding words - another
thing which the author fails to mention in his article.

~~~
amitsy
I agree to the first point you mentioned. In certain utility apps like
payments etc this would hold true. In an internet without words i.e. images
and video that would be true as well. But currently a large part of internet
we use is text. Case in point, this article itself and this discussion. With
the current technologies we have, for most part of Hindi speaking users, it is
easy to speak in Hindi but very difficult to type in it.

As per using hindi words in english alpbhabets, my argument is - majority of
India can't even read or speak english, how will they type in English? A lot
of your friends do that because Hindi input is very hard and we need better
tools.

~~~
geon
> majority of India can't even read or speak english, how will they type in
> English?

They won't. They type in Hindi, using the roman alphabet. Big difference. If
anything, the roman alphabet is simpler than the syllable based Devanagari.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Devanagari](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Devanagari)

Apparently SMS is big in India:

> SMS is hugely popular in India, where youngsters often exchange lots of text
> messages, and companies provide alerts, infotainment, news, cricket scores
> updates, railway/airline booking, mobile billing, and banking services on
> SMS.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Text_messaging](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Text_messaging)

I assume it has largely been done with cheap dumbphones even after 2007, which
would mean no access to Devanagari characters, so there has been a long time,
and a huge incentive to learn transliteration.

~~~
vinay427
> If anything, the roman alphabet is simpler than the syllable based
> Devanagari.

Sure, until you need to figure out which of the four phonemes a letter
corresponds to which is very difficult for foreign language learners of Hindi,
as it can be for English. I am a native English speaker but I picked up
Devanagari in a day or so because it's actually relatively consistent due to
the phonetic syllabic nature.

~~~
davidivadavid
But that problem is entirely due to English, not the roman alphabet. Same in
French. No such problem in German or Italian.

~~~
vinay427
You would need quite a few diacritics to map to all of the Hindi phonemes,
especially including loanword phonemes (/z/, etc.) I'm not saying this is bad,
but it's not the easy solution that it was made out to be. Meanwhile,
Devanagari handles consonant and vowel phonemes quite consistently as others
have pointed out.

------
OJFord
Fantastic article. I'm not Indian, so I apologise for my ignorance - but I
would have liked to have read a bit more under the 'education' heading.

I would (this is where I fear I may be ignorant of the truth) assume that
there is perhaps a rather strong correlation between money/education and
English-fluency?

With that premise, it would seem that those with the power to effect change
(educated engineers and entrepreneurs) are less incentivised to do anything
about it - since they're presumably able and content to use "the English-
language internet".

I suppose money can be the motivator though, if there's ~0.9*1.2B people
clamouring for more internet in their native tongue.

I am trying to learn Hindi, so having read this I think it'd be interesting to
toy around with pan-alphabet internationalisation when I've got a bit of a
grip on it.

~~~
amitsy
Thanks OJFord. Under education, I tried to highlight a few short term
opportunities for indian startups to focus on. From K 12 education to college
education, all technology solutions have been built only for English speaking
users.

There is no mobile based learning app for students to learn Math in Hindi
language. No test prep platform in Hindi/Bengali or any other language (there
are tons of test prep apps in English) No employee training or certification
providers provide their online platform in any regional language. Not even an
LMS exits (to be fair not many regional language medium institutions would be
willing to pay for one) There is no Khan Academy in Hindi language.

As per the second point, yes I believe that should be true. Its not
necessarily true that these non-english speakers don't have propensity to pay.

------
mido22
Am I the only Indian who thinks this is not such a bad thing, prefer one
language to unite us all (isn't that the common base for most far-future
novels?), don't care which, I can converse in three Indian languages, and know
bit of french. In Sweden, all that knowledge is useless, all the main sites
are in Swedish, now I am learning å,ö,ä, guess how much fun I am having?

~~~
akashakya
> prefer one language to unite us all

Its not a bad thing if that happens properly. But instead currently we have
small number of 'elite' people who always prefer English over native language
and we have large number of people we don't know how to read & write English.
Since the output(business/knowledge/tech) of this 'elite' group almost always
in English and by definition they are in control its not easy for person who
don't know English to break loop. Its very easy for the person who know
English to get the job compared to who don't. One might say, just learn
English and become the 'elite'! Well, learning English is not at all easy for
a kid from rural background. This initial barrier dividing among ourselves and
now we now have invisible class system based on language. this is apparent if
you visit any restaurants/supermarket in cities or just visit city outskirts.
My point is process of implementation of single language for all is very
difficult.

~~~
saint_fiasco
Why would they want to break the loop?

If one language to unite us all is a good thing, then either kids from rural
backgrounds have to be taught English, or everyone has to learn the native
language of that kid. This will be impossible for a kid from a different rural
background. Worse than English, even, since most other languages don't have
the same amount of cheap available learning materials.

------
partycoder
English is one of the official languages in India for historic reasons. The
number of English speakers in India surpasses the population of the United
Kingdom.

Now, the field of automated translation is making enormous progress lately. I
think eventually whatever the gaps in understanding are, will eventually be
solved.

~~~
neutralid
Google search across languages would be amazing, e.g., accessing old scholarly
research written in a native tongue. Wonder what the underlying structure of
the neural network is for translations between all languages:

[http://www.kurzweilai.net/googles-new-multilingual-neural-
ma...](http://www.kurzweilai.net/googles-new-multilingual-neural-machine-
translation-system-can-translate-between-language-pairs-even-though-it-has-
never-been-taught-to-do-so)

------
asitdhal
In India, the state is simply lazy.

All most all English words should have an equivalent in all native languages.
But, unfortunately no one forms any new words.

If apps can be fully translated to the local languages, it will help everyone.

~~~
amitsy
I don't think its the responsibility of the state. It is of the startups to
move out of their english speaking bubble and realise the potential of non-
english speaking india.

~~~
avemuri
Buying power is largely concentrated with the English speaking though, even if
it isn't their first language. Most people who do not speak English are also
lower on the income scale. As in less than $500 per month in income

~~~
saint_fiasco
The people who have the most purchasing power and speak English, are they
bilingual or do they only speak English?

If not, could language be used as a tool for market segmentation? Give price-
sensitive people lower prices to increase the size of the market without
hurting the profits extracted from the wealthier people.

------
saint_fiasco
The article says "88 percent of Indians can’t speak English (let alone read
it)"

I'm not a native English speaker, but that sentence implies that reading
English is more difficult than speaking it. But in my experience, most people
who learn English as a second language learn to read first, especially if they
specifically learn it to use the Internet.

For native English speakers: Is my interpretation of that phrase correct?

For non-native English speakers: Did you learn to read English first or did
you start by learning to speak it? Does it vary on first language, literacy
level, motivation?

~~~
akashakya
> reading English is more difficult than speaking it

I'm a non-native English speaker. I agree, reading English is easier than
speaking. In rural places basic grammar is not taught properly. Even if they
do learn to read somehow with the help of dictionary or internet, Speaking
English is far out of their reach. For using App reading ability is enough.
But for overall, English as medium of communication this is very problematic.
This is more frustrating when you are among elite (for academics or career
purpose) who speak English fluently.

Most important thing is they can't express their idea. For using App this
isn't big problem, but as overall expressing idea this is a barrier.

------
gnipgnip
(Vernacular - "Language of the slave").

It's far more complicated that "need its own vernacular internet". The
internet is an emergent thing, and what one sees are just the symptoms. This
is also the reason India's literacy is so low (even compared to Africa/Middle
East).

If India wasn't a linguistic apartheid regime, we'd already have seen a native
ecosystem which is lacking quite badly. This needs fixing at the state and
political levels, which I have exactly zero hope of ever happening. This
despite having some nauseously xenophobic organizations like ShivSena (in
Maharashtra), the DMKs (in TN), the KaRaVes (in KA). This is in addition to
the "nationalistic" organizations like RSS and BJP at the central level.

These orgs are essentially vehicles which instrumentalize the widespread
disaffection from the apartheid state, in order to put themselves in power
(Advani's use of Ayodhya is a nice study). If you study their policies
carefully however, you realize they plan to do precisely nothing that is the
cause for the inequity.

This is not different from the independence movement, where a bunch of Brown
folk wanted to run the colony.

Digital India, be in no doubt, is meant for the 200 million Brown sahibs, who
do know English. The rest are peasants who have been at the losing side of the
inflationary system today, and of the cruel taxation system of the British,
kept at bay via endless subsidies (a dog hardly bites a master ?) and mutual
bickering.

There is zero empathy from the former class, and these pretentious people are
the source of endless pain for the red-pilled; it is very disappointing to
live in communities where the kids start speaking English before anything
native, and worse when the state hold such clones in such high regard.

May kek not have mercy on the clones (apologies for the 4ch lingo).

Technical:

I think Sailfish has better localization than Android. Keyboard is a disaster
everywhere, since no one in India uses native language keyboard/input. They
are very rare, if at all available, and next to no one knows they exist - it's
in fact easier to find such resources in the US than within in India.
Swarachakra is too crowded and very very information inefficient (unlike the
5-vowel Japanese system its based on), which leads me to believe even their
creators don't use it actively.

The lack of feedback means that the ITRANS layout is very very bad, and
unusable (xkeyboard moth-balled most layouts due to disuse).

Again, the roots of the problem lie with the education & state policies that
are reinforced via state violence. China gets this right because India is a
colony & it isn't.

(Downvote all you want clone people; सत्यमेवजयेत् !)

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12237411](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12237411)

~~~
witty_username
What do you mean by "linguistic apartheid regime"?

~~~
gnipgnip
See,

[http://www.forbes.com/sites/realspin/2014/11/06/the-
problem-...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/realspin/2014/11/06/the-problem-with-
the-english-language-in-india/)

The "socialist" state runs a systematic unwritten discrimination regime where
every thing from higher education to state services are restricted only to
English speaking class; yet, it is the remainder that get the boot due to the
inflationary forces of the currency. It is by every meaning of the word, an
apartheid; this state mandated scheme of slavery is kept in check by various
schemes of cultural propaganda and distractions by the Anglical state. Of
course, without education, feudalism becomes only too normalized.

This system is widespread all over former colonies in Africa and Asia.

------
known
Cash transactions provide Privacy/Security; Govt must give Gun-Licenses to
Common man if it really wants a Cashless society;
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estimated_number_of_guns_per_c...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estimated_number_of_guns_per_capita_by_country)

