I interact with teachers quite often. I find that their training does not include anything on the contemporary understanding of a language that is spoken at home, the structure of English, Hindi and Urdu, the systematisation of dialects, challenges faced by beginners, and the sociology and politics of language prejudices (“Stories they tell about languages,” May 25). All these issues are of immediate concern to linguists but continue to remain at a margin at all levels of education.
S. Imtiaz Hasnain,
Aligarh
What the writer refers to as standard Hindi is only another dialect of Hindi, namely Khari Boli . It was adopted for prose-writing with the advent of ‘ Gadya Kal ’ in the language. A language consists of many dialects and the standard form is the one that is adopted for day-to-day official work. Hindi is no exception. The article seems to be just another attempt at denigrating the great language.
O.P. Agrawal,
Rohtak
