what is the native language of India?

[Wesley1982]

what is the native language of India? . .

[Bhusuku]

That's a question where Wiki can help

[kirtu]

what is the native language in India? . .

Wesley - there are hundreds of surviving native languages in India. There is no one native language. English is technically used as a lingua franca. The Wiki article cited probably lists the major languages in terms of percentage of the population that speaks a particular language.

Kirt

[Wesley1982]

hundreds? wow.

[Wesley1982]

what is the native language in India? . .

Wesley - there are hundreds of surviving native languages in India. There is no one native language. English is technically used as a lingua franca. The Wiki article cited probably lists the major languages in terms of percentage of the population that speaks a particular language.

Kirt

If we first learn a foreign language do we begin to memorize the symbols/letters that make up the meaning of the word? . .

[kirtu]

The previous link gives an excellent ovreview of Indian languages by family. This one goes into languages by percentage and numbers of speakers.

So English is a lingua franca. Hindi is the main majority language. Urdu is up there (in some texts going back awhile Hindi and Urdu are combined since Urdu is a form of Hindi in this view with an Arabic influenced vocabulary and writing system). But one of my Indian friends is from Kerala and speaks Malayalam and doesn't speak good Hindi and this caused a problem for him at an Indian airport when the customs official was trying to force him to converse in Hindi. My point here is that you don't have to look far to find Indians who don't speak Hindi.

Kirt

[kirtu]

what is the native language in India? . .

Wesley - there are hundreds of surviving native languages in India. There is no one native language. English is technically used as a lingua franca. The Wiki article cited probably lists the major languages in terms of percentage of the population that speaks a particular language.

Kirt

If we first learn a foreign language do we memorize the symbols/letters that make up the meaning of the word? . .

No, you *can* learn language X separate from it's writing system. This is however not advised (and really not done anymore). In the Berlitz system you do get started just speaking but shortly thereafter you are introduced to the words in writing.

You don't really memorize the symbols/letters of a writing system since most writing systems are more or less phonetic (Chinese being a major possible exception). You learn the mapping from phonemes to letters/syllables represented in the writing system (again there are exceptions - I'm not sure if Chinese is such an exception exactly but there are writing systems that are not or were not phonetic).

Devanagari and other writing systems for Hindi is taught phonetically. The northern Indian languages are mostly derived from or influenced by Sanskrit.

Kirt

[Wesley1982]

Its a good idea to have a translator/speaker with you.

[kirtu]

Having a translator/speaker with you is good idea.

Immersion is a better idea as long as you have the time. I used to teach German to government personnel who were shortly to be stationed in a German speaking area. The problem is that they didn't have the time (and I am not a great teacher - I was partially trained by a great Spanish teacher and she could really do this) and we had to drop into English more than I liked. When learning to speak and do things immersion is really the best. This is why these Tibetan and Sanskrit immersion courses/homestays have so much potential at rocketing people forward into real understanding and usage in a short period.

People who become fluent do so eventually through some form of immersion anyway. It's easy to learn language X. Go to where only language X is spoken and you will quickly pick it up.

Kirt

[Spirituality]

First find out where you want to go in India. I went to South India a few years back and Hindi would have been no use to me: they spoke Tamil there.