Professor Mark J. Perry's Blog for Economics and Finance
MUMBAI--Hindi is the new Mandarin. Just as Mandarin is being learned by youngsters all over the world to give them a strategic advantage with the emerging China, Hindi too is being sought after as the language of the other Asian tiger. Some schools in the U.S. have decided to introduce Hindi as a foreign language with staples like French, Spanish and German.
Dr. Mark J. Perry is a professor of economics and finance in the School of Management at the Flint campus of the University of Michigan. Perry holds two graduate degrees in economics (M.A. and Ph.D.) from George Mason University near Washington, D.C. In addition, he holds an MBA degree in finance from the Curtis L. Carlson School of Management at the University of Minnesota. In addition to a faculty appointment at the University of Michigan-Flint, Perry is also a visiting scholar at The American Enterprise Institute in Washington, D.C.
3 Comments:
I have doubts on this, Mandarin is becoming popular as China is a great potential market but then english isn't spoken widely, only Mandarin, making it a necessity to interact.
With India story is different. Had been ruled for 200yrs by British, English is spoken widely and infact is spoken more consistently than Hindi itself over length and breadth of country.
It's totally silly and whoever introduced still has some imaginary notion of India.
Hindi is but one of the major languages in India and is not even spoken by a majority of Indians. There are at least 4-5 other languages that are of prominence. For example, states whee the technology hubs are speak Kannada, Telugu, and Urdu.
A typical Indian kid learns to speak 3-4 Indian languages and communicates/writes/learns in English as well.
If there is anything American administrators should learn is that these emerging giants (yes, including China!) are not monolithic cultures in any sense...
Just to give you a sense, it's like saying, "American kids are learning Italian because Europe is the new emerging giant"...
Agree with you that China & India are not monolithic cultures.
Orienting young Americans towards other cultures however, is an important step which should not be underestimated. Few parents 20 years ago would have thought that their child should learn more than english, an internationally recognized language.
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