Not good for .Indian IDN?

IT.com
Thanks wot! A very thoughtful article.

I doubt that English will kill off any of the major languages in India, but certainly agree with the opening paragraphs:

English is one of the advantages India has which are said to be propelling it to economic superpower status.


There are all those Indians who speak excellent English. It's the mother tongue of the elite and effectively the official language of the central government. Then there is the growing number of parents who now aspire to give their children an education through the medium of that language.
 
India definitely has an English advantage, but it is not the mother tongue of any "elite" section of society. Native English speakers are only about 200,000 Anglo-Indians out of over 1.2 billion Indians.

India's education system has a typical 3-language formula whereby school students study 3 languages - various combinations exist based on locality, medium of education and school management.

The Indian education system has 12 years of schooling, each year termed as a class -
Primary school: classes 1 to 5;
Middle school: classes 6 to 8;
High school: classes 9, 10;
Senior school: classes 11, 12 (also called PUC / Inter / Junior College).

The 3rd language is taught in the middle school. All other classes have 2 languages in the curriculum.

English medium schools:
1st language - English
2nd language - usually mother tongue or Hindi or Sanskrit
3rd language - usually Hindi (in non-Hindi areas) or Sanskrit (in Hindi areas) or any other scheduled language (if teachers are available).

Local language medium schools:
1st language - Local language (usually mother tongue)
2nd language - usually English
3rd language - usually Hindi (in non-Hindi areas) or Sanskrit (in Hindi areas) or any other scheduled language (if teachers are available).

Almost all privately funded/managed schools use English medium while the government run schools use local language medium.

At college level, the curriculum has only one language, which is usually English in the technical, professional and science streams and the local language in the arts, commerce, social science streams.

The language used in official communication by Central (federal) Government is Hindi (mandated as national language, being mother tongue of about 35% of Indians) and English (treated as a "link" language) version is included for the convenience of the people in non-Hindi areas.

So, you can see how India has an English advantage.
 
I think siri-natural-language-interfaces will make Hindi speakers truly in control of there own destiny. English is too elitist and constrains commercial growth for the masses. Natural-language-interfaces will break the educational barriers down : ) and this is from an Englishman.
 
BBC kind of got this one right, but Major local languages as they exist today are not going to die in my or your lifetime.

In short IDN's are not going to be a lucrative thing to do from a domainer perspective. From a developer perspective you can do anything and succeed. There are many use cases that can be applied to IDN development. From a domainer perspective English language .in and .co.in domains have the best chance if you are planning to invest.

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Elaborated version below mostly off topic but you need to know why? and how? when you want to understand this. Putting down what I feel regarding this, just one more opinion to the mix.

I am an Indian born and my first language is English(Spoke mother tongue first as a kid but wrote in English first). I went to English medium school. All the curriculum in English and my native language as second language and Hindi as 3rd language. If you are from north India, Hindi will be 2nd language and some other local language or Sanskrit might be 3rd. We are talking school curriculum here up to 10th std. This is common for families that are doing kind of alright. Some kids go to government school and their medium of instruction will be in their local language. But after 10th grade, they normally mix with other kids who went to convents(A common word used to describe English medium schools in India) and become fluent in English as they grow up. This is my story and story of many others like me that I know of.

ITssri said the same thing above I guess.

Progress of India is linked with English language tech or non tech doesn't matter.

India is a big country with 16 official local languages and there is no way every Indian will learn 1 or many languages to do everyday business and other social activities, instead they learn English, it is the most sensible bridge, it is the missing link, it is the connector and everything else. Indian adapting English is more natural than most outsiders think. Our English is like any other and means the same, accent is of course different :)

We talk our mother tongue at home, majority of our entertainment is in Hindi or 'Hinglish' or a local language or Localish :D, I made up localish but hinglish is created by some other adept Indian may be. Our people come up with many words like these. So our local languages are not going anywhere but based on the times we live in usage will go down. But getting killed is stretching it too much. What is happening now with English is the way, it is supposed to be for things to work in India's or Indian's favor.

That said numerous local languages are getting lost in time due to fewer and fewer people using them and Lack of means and effort to save them. Many people talk but don't walk the talk, that's the way it is. We just have to think what we can do to effectively prevent this not just give lectures. Last time I checked India used to have 179 recognized languages and some 3000 odd ethnic languages and or dialects that have no alphabet. These are the one mainly in state of emergency. But there will be someone somewhere trying to preserve the language as an audio recording? and store it in a library for future generations? it is technically possible but one should take time and put effort into making this possible, may be this will be beneficial.

PS: I am an almost 40 Canadian with Indian roots and I love India as much as I love Canada. India is my motherland and Canada is my country both are very near and dear to me. My thanks to Jeff for managing this forum and making it a very useful resource for domainers. 3 years ago I joined this forum because I had a good feeling about this and today I feel I was right, thanks Jeff.
 
nametrader@ I find it difficult to debates I am English and therefore feel who am I to pontificate on the future of the Indian spoken word. However I cannot believe that English is "the sensible bridge or missing link". It seems to me that was English is one of the advantages in India re superpower, but that was as a buffer for the superpowers by the superpowers.
Today- Now Siri / natural language interfaces. I can see how Hindi as the first language will be a leap forward in accessing education and ultimately commerce in India The natural language interfaces will offer soooo much to sooooo many.
if you cannot read or write English and your mother tongue is Hindi then natural language interfaces will be a god-send to the educational systems and harness the power of the masses for development / commerce in Hindi then English, the whealthy elitist Indian will soon embrace this for financial reasons and the cat will be out of the bag. that is in terms of all advertising / commercial text.

As for the cc domains, they are the best branded & trusted names outside the internaional .com brand, The reason I choose the com in Hindi is because the Indian government unjustly handed over a number of generic indian cc domains from the original registrants in the past. ICAN run the world registry for the International .com and corruption is not an issue. Every fortune 500 company the world over uses the dot com brand, regional offices also use the country code but given the choice of com or cc domain brand the cc is a good second choice.
 
@Wanda quoting myself below, what ever I said was just an opinion on this matter.

Elaborated version below mostly off topic but you need to know why? and how? when you want to understand this. Putting down what I feel regarding this, just one more opinion to the mix.

When I said that I had lots on my mind, I couldn't fit it all in my last post. Language is one of my core interests. Any language not English alone specifically. After all I own alphabet dot in(Which is going to be developed in future). Man buying domains is easy! developing them takes lot of effort but it is my interest and one can do only so many things at a time. We are not super humans at least I am not. My main intention was to preserve the alphabets of a endangered language(to begin with) and preserve it's literature so that in future an interested person can pick that up learn the language and teach to others interested. Everything is hypothetical :) but I am honestly putting in an effort to make this possible. I will at least link to similar efforts if any so that alphabet dot in will at least be a resource.

I honestly think that English is not native language to my father or someone of his age(in 60's), but it is for me. I don't see it as a foreign language, it is native to me. Not because I am a Canadian, I felt so since I was a kid growing up in India. You see it as Foreign to us, not us. We see it as just another local language we all prefer to converse in communicate in. It is just like Hindi. It doesn't matter how well we use it, we JUST use it in our everyday activities. We are just comfortable in using it and is more natural to us than real native English speakers like you think. We mix English words in our conversations and this is also natural.

How many ever SIRI or other technologies popin they will not fill the GAP. They will only enhance the experience in local language but does not address the problem of intercommunication. If you wish SIRI or something like that to solve this issue, you have to add a layer of translation to SIRI which understands English that it hears and spits out Hindi translation which a native speaker can understand but this is too complex and is not a natural way we don't need this other than to deal with accessibility issues. The natural way is like how it is playing out now in real time in real India. Inter communication between people of India whose local language is unique for each of them is only possible with a universal language like English which will act as a common medium of communication(Verbal or Written). SO basically SIRI or something else is not a replacement for how usage of languages is naturally played out. Currently people across India are migrating all over internally and abroad because of employment trends or whatever English has a vital role to play more than ever. SIRI is not a wonder and not the only thing that does speech recognition, speech recognition technology is there for ages now. SIRI is an excellent implementation of the technology, I have to give it to Apple for that.

The way English is written by Indians(who are raised in India) has its own style and sub styles. These styles depend on individual person and their intellect. If you look at this post some of you might feel like 'this guy is taking us for a ride'. I can't be concise :|. Even native English speakers have their own writing style based on their intellect and choice but there is a basic writing style which looks same. We all use English for what it is - a universal language.

That said our major local languages will flourish for ages to come and developing technology will make this happen.


IDN investment as I see it is like..

If we look at stock investing there are good stocks and bad stocks. You invest in bad stocks you lose no argument here. IDN's are like bad stocks they are not investment grade. While I say that I also know people who did amazingly well and still going strong. IDN's are a niche investment if at all one wishes to invest.

Another analogy is if we buy mutual funds especially segregated funds(Canadian version of "Separate Account" of the US) You will never lose money why? it is because segregated funds are like below,

"A segregated fund is an investment fund that combines the growth potential of a mutual fund with the security of a life insurance policy. Segregated funds are often referred to as "mutual funds with an insurance policy wrapper"." - from Wikipedia.

So what I am trying to say here is you buy all the keyword domains which you think are widely used in Hindi and you will lose investment on the majority of them because not enough people will be typing in the url(will not try to think of using them, on most names you will see almost zero direct navigation traffic). This makes investors run away. Where as the English .in's and co.in's will see little natural traffic for popular keywords and other popular 2 or 3 word combos. These are like mutual funds you will make money here and there definitely and this is percieved as normal if you invest in real good names.

There will always be IDN's that get natural traffic and are en route to success. There are also the ones that are registered to develop and get developed they'll do well too. There will always the ones that are like wonders. This is not enough to put all the IDN's into investment pool and empty your pockets. That said I think domainers interested can still invest in a few of them and not put all their eggs in IDN basket.
 
nametrader@ Agreed we are all "an opinion on this matter." : )
4 me speech recognition technology is about education. The education of the masses, tomorrows customer. There is only the IDN basket all else was taken by the indian elite or the english language registrars. Why deny your own powerful birthright 800.000,000 million Hindi speakers waiting to become customers.

Of course there little natural traffic for popular Hindi keywords the masses cannot purchase because they are uneducated !!!!!
 
Why deny your own powerful birthright 800.000,000 million Hindi speakers waiting to become customers.

Waiting to become customers of what? Domains?

The utility of domains is really only for small businesses and self-employed people, who makeup a very negligible portion of the total Indian population. The vast majority just want to become an employee of some establishment, preferably government.

BTW, India's latest population is around 1200 million of which only about 35% are Hindi speakers.
 
We have to agree that English is the language for existence and survival in the globalised economy.. Any person or country which does not know English would be unfit to work for a job offering MNC's and its subsidiary companies... Its the high pay from there, is the motivational factor..

Yes its true that it is diminishing the value of the regional languages..but its not killing regional languages...
 
the difference b/w India and Others lies in it's strong values, culture and hsitory of heritage which can only be extended to other countries.

India has more then 1000 gods and there are a total of 114 languages and 216 mother tongues, 18 scheduled languages and 96 not specified as per 1991 census.

I have mentioned 1991 because the figures have not changed in totality but structuring and movement of languages from minority changed.

Do also refer for updated stats: Languages with official status in India - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

I assume this as just an amateur thought :)...
 
Waiting to become customers of what? Domains?

The utility of domains is really only for small businesses and self-employed people, who makeup a very negligible portion of the total Indian population. The vast majority just want to become an employee of some establishment, preferably government.

BTW, India's latest population is around 1200 million of which only about 35% are Hindi speakers.

My comment related to education which relates to future commerce, which relates to the largest portion of the Indian population. "35% are Hindi speakers" ? Your % makes every statistical report I have read to be wrong.
Domains are about commerce.
 
My comment related to education which relates to future commerce, which relates to the largest portion of the Indian population. "35% are Hindi speakers" ? Your % makes every statistical report I have read to be wrong.
Domains are about commerce.

"The future is English" ? The future engine is education. The largest commercial markets will be China, India, the pacific rim. Education, Education, Education, of course English, but it will have to be as the second language.
 

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