ConnectTheDots wrote:
Marcab wrote:
commdiver wrote:
I was born in Germany, but my father was a member of the US military, so I learned both English and German as a child, but am curious how those of you who grew up learning a language that is not English learned English.
I can't say about other non-natives, but in India English has always been treated as just second to mother tongue. We, in schools, start to learn our mother tongue at the age of 7 whereas English at the age of two. More importantly, here English is being touted as the language which can help us to grow our career. Unless its compulsory to speak Hindi, people prefer to be English speaking.
One more thing, some school boards such as ISC teach the toughest English if compared to what others are being taught in schools at that grade. So, for students from these boards, English starts to run in their thoughts.
This is what I can tell you about India's English speaking people.
Regards.
Marcab did a little generalization.
I am from India. I studied in State Government school and English was introduced at the age of 10 or in Grade 5. Every other paper was in regional language till Grade 10 or till I reached 15. So real English started at 15, no doubt this is case for most of folks who were born before 90s and were not living in cities.
But then worldwide exposure of Indian economy paved the way of social uplifting and English was the only way to the top. And gradually English flooded the countries of India and I was one of the beneficiaries.
100% agree with you. Just would like to add something
Students were basically divided in two broad categories, Urban India and Rural India. In urban areas most of the student were used to go in CBSE or ICSE schools where English was the primary medium of learning. Surrounding culture was also giving these students great exposure to the English. The same scenario was in south India. Because of certain political issues, southern states refused to accept Hindi as second language and that place was filled up by english.
But, this was not the case in rest of the country. i remember, we first introduced with English in the 5th standard (in the age of 10th) and there too english was third language preceded by Mother-tongue(Marathi in my case) and Hindi. Even at the time of completion of our graduate degree we could only speak few english sentences.
The situation changed slowly after 1990 when Govt adopted a new liberal Economic policy and dramatically after 2000 with the IT revolution.
As our UID chief Sir Nandan Nilekani said in one of his speeches that now the English has become language of Aspiration and growth.
Now our state board (Maharashtra Board) as well made English as compulsory subject right from the 1st standard and this is happening across the whole country.
Narenn