<p>It's the fourth most spoken language in the world (more widely spoken than German, Portuguese, and Italian combined, and most colleges offer courses in these languages), and it originates from one of the fastest growing economies in the world. I don't see why it doesn't get taught more, since Mandarin is growing in popularity (presumably because of the role China will play in the future). Wouldn't you expect to see Hindi to receive the same bump?</p>
<p>I have yet to see a college that offers Hindi as a major. Are there any well-known ones in the US that have it?</p>
<p>I think Duke has a minor, but not sure about major</p>
<p>I dunno why it’s not taught more considering it has so many speakers, but I think it’s definitely less influential than some less widely-spoken languages such as French or even German. I mean, English is one of India’s official languages. There’s nothing wrong with learning it, of course, but because of India’s status as an English-speaking country with a huge brain drain to the US, I don’t think it’s an up-and-coming language in the same sense as, say, Chinese.</p>
<p>Edit: Oh, and my university does offer it as a major. I have a friend majoring in it.</p>
<p>Many of the people you’d interact with that speak Hindi probably also speak English. Also, India has a huge diversity of languages, so even among Indians, English may be the most convenient language to communicate.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Could you also say that for Mandarin speakers?</p>
<p>Well Chinese has been around for centuries yet it’s really only spoken in China. Nobody wants to learn all those characters. I think English is here to stay, at least while I’m alive…</p>
<p>^^ Maybe, but not NEARLY on as wide of a scale. Many Indians literally speak English as a first language alongside Hindi (or Gujarati, Tamil, Punjab, etc)</p>
<p>It’s not just a matter of the raw number of people who speak it. In the case of Hindi, the speakers are pretty much all in one place! Other languages, by spoken by a lower number overall, are much more versatile–spoken in more than one country, to put it that way.</p>
<p>If America remains stronger than China, you won’t have to learn Mandarin. The expansion of the teaching of Mandarin is premature and insulting to America–it’s a (not yet true/false) admission that China will become stronger than us. Come on, why give in so soon?</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Can’t tell if serious.</p>
<p>I think it’s because of the HUGE number of dialects… probably hasn’t gained popularity yet either.</p>
<p>There’s a Hindi program at UVA.</p>
<p>UT Austin has a Hindi program.</p>
<p>Very few high schools offer Hindi across the nation while hundreds of them offer Chinese. The Chinese govt funds Chinese teachers in a lot of school districts across the nation. So there is demand for Chinese departments once some of these students get to college. A similar supply and demand relationship does nt exist for Hindi since there are no feeder high schools.</p>
<p>people are learning chinese not because it’s the biggest economy necessarily. it just increases american’s ability to communicate with the chinese especially since they ARE a big economic player in the world. same thing with germany.</p>
<p>The Germans know English as well…</p>
<p>German is also declining in popularity. Also, another thing I think is that Hindi isn’t as well known as like Chinese, Spanish, French, etc. I’m Indian, and a lot of people still ask me if I speak Indian.</p>
<p>Nervus got it right. To be quite frank, most Americans just don’t do a lot of business with India like we do with China, Germany, and people from Spanish speaking countries. And it’s a western bias thing. We place Romance languages over other languages because the majority of Americans are still of European background. </p>
<p>I think a better question would be why is French so widely taught? It’s kind of useless compared to other languages imo. Doesn’t mean I don’t think people should study it, I just don’t understand why that’s the generally the third language (along with Spanish and German) offered in schools- over Arabic, Mandarin, Japanese, etc.</p>
<p>Because English is a very prominent language in India and is pretty much taught as a first language in schools there. There’s no urgent need to learn Hindi like there is for Chinese/Mandarin. </p>
<p>India was anglicized long before its independence. China, on the other hand, has been a cantonese/mandarin speaking nation for millenia now. Only recently has there been an “English-boom” there and lots of the natives are scurrying to learn the language like never before (not easy given its population, which is why other nations are learning their language in order to communicate better).
Communicating with India, on the other hand, isn’t so difficult.</p>
<p>Plus, learning Hindi doesn’t guarantee you successful communication with people in every part of India. There’s tons of regional languages and dialects spoken exclusively in a state/region of India, and about ~40% of the states enforce their own regional language over the national language.
That, and Sanskrit-style script is extremely difficult to learn if you start at college…
I don’t think I’ve ever encountered a language where the barrier between the speaking-literate and the reading/writing-literate is so wide other than Hindi (pretty easy to catch on if you’ve been listening to people talk Hindi all your life, but hard to learn how to read/write).</p>
<p>how do you even say f4d3d in hindi?/?!</p>
<p>romanigypsyeyes, i think it’s because french is an important diplomatic language and (correct me if i’m wrong) there’s more countries where french is the predominant language than any other language</p>