India and English

[sashas]

I think many people have huge misconceptions about english and India.

I come from India myself (though now I'm in the US).

India was ruled by the British for close to 250 years.

That means that english has become as much a part of India as Irish is a part of Boston.
English is the second official language of the country.
Most kids from lower-middle class onwards go to schools where they are taught english right from the 1st grade.
And believe me, even the ones who can't string together a coherent sentence in english use the internet in english only.

India has a population of 1 billion.

Out of these, the 120 million middle class ALL know how to speak/read/write english.
The 30 million upper-class know english damn well too.

So basically, the number of people who are comfortable with english is close to 200 million. A lot of these might not be able to speak it fluently, but they do know how to communicate in it, and frequently use the internet IN ENGLISH (the cyber cafe is HUGE in India).

 

[Dale Hubbard]

Well, I for one don't do Sanskrit IDNs. I understand you have appx. 23 dialects in India. So regging Indian domains in English is the way to go IMHO. But is that why you're posting the above?

 

[sashas]

nah
believe me, the only domains you want to get with .in are the ones in hindi, and english.
I would prefer english because english is used throughout india, while hindi is just in the north.
and sanskrit, I dont know about them. I wouldnt wanna reg them, because pure sanskrit words are hardly used in India.

This post was just in response to another post (that is somehow locked now) on this forum about english not being that prevalent in India.

 

[BELLC1]

A lot of these might not be able to speak it fluently, but they do know how to communicate in it, and frequently use the internet IN ENGLISH (the cyber cafe is HUGE in India).

Unfortunately, these are the folks normally assigned to voice-driven customer support tasks in call centers. If it were not a problem, no one would be complaining about tech support from India. They would then complain just about the company by name and not the communication gap between customer and employee.

 

[wrdekle]

Well, I for one don't do Sanskrit IDNs. I understand you have appx. 23 dialects in India. So regging Indian domains in English is the way to go IMHO. But is that why you're posting the above?

200M people is certainly a nice market. But I think you have to really think forward about the real prize - 800M other people who don't speak English. The English only crowd is fooling themselves if they think that English is going to remain the language of the internet in India.

Sanskrit domains? I hope that no one is doing Sanskrit domains just like no one should be doing Aramaic or Ancient Greek. Sanskrit is no longer a spoken language.

Hindi and related languages are the future of the internet in India. English is a good bet too of course while the only people online are relatively highly educated.

 

[sashas]

BellC1
Yeah, man I know. I've actually seen the kind that work in call centers in India. I don't know where these companies hire them from. Their english is pathetic mostly.

And yes, the 800 million strong native language speaker market should be big, but my guess is that it wont. Unlike China, english is around Indians all the time. Even the least educated Indians know the common english words (they might not know 'provocation', but they do know 'bet, gamble, sex' etc.) Heck, I consider english my first language, and there are tons of others like me.

And the Indian government is making efforts to expand english education even more. The people who do get online (even within the next 5 years) will certainly surf in english.

And one more thing: there is this idea that hindi is not 'hip'. That communicating in english is 'cool' and hindi is not. This is especially prevalent among the people you wanna target (15-40 yr olds). So widespread use of hindi or other native languages, I don't see that happening. Hindi will be used a lot, but hindi that is written in the english script ('khana' (food) written in the english alphabet will be more popular than 'khana' written in the hindi alphabet....thats how we Indians send text messages or chat even. We use the english alphabet to write hindi words.)

Lotsa companies introduced hindi language software in India. I'm yet to know of a single user.

That's my 2 cents, and I would like to believe that I'm right. I've seen things first hand, and know the Indian psyche.

 

[wrdekle]

BellC1

That's my 2 cents, and I would like to believe that I'm right. I've seen things first hand, and know the Indian psyche.

Thanks for your insight, it is helpful. Bear in mind however that for every one of you has stated the same thing about English in India, there has been another well educated Indian like you who has stated the exact opposite. So your impressions alone aren't enough to sway me one way or the other. It's just a focus group of one.

Luckily I am only modestly invested in hindi domains, so I don't have a lot at stake there. Mostly I am in Japanese domains. Now that is a market where it would be foolish to believe that English will predominate.

 

[sashas]

As far as I know, there aren't that many people on this forum who are actually Indians.
And I'm just 20, so I hang around the actual next generation of Indians. And trust me, this next gen. is huge on english.