Last spring when I was in India, I was amazed at how many billboards and signs I saw that were in English but written in the Hindi script... sort of an opposite of what our friend blogger.com does. Transliteration feature, it tells me here, can change what I write in roman English into Hindi script. So if I write "Namaste" in English and press the handy-dandy button up here, it will look like this नमस्ते।... अवेसोमे!...I mean Awesome!( By the way the transliteration did not work for Awesome- it reads Aa-vey-som-may!!- Lost in transliteration.)

For once my procrastination paid off. I always wanted but never dared to learn how to use a complicated Hindi keyboard... and actually never needed to. Now it seems I don't have to.
So as I was saying earlier, in India, upwardly mobile businesses that want to woo their upwardly mobile clientèle (English being the language of the elite etc. etc.) spell out English words in Hindi. So. "Refreshing Cola" will be "रेफ्रेशिंग कोला".


So what will happen fifty years from now (or sooner)? Indian Bloggers will be writing in the roman script to be able to read in Hindi, then when tired will go out to get that रेफ्रेशिंग कोला from the neighborhood Coke stand (Yup Coke will still be here). Will this Hindi-Roman-Hindi thing finally break class barriers and let people use the languages inter-changeably? Yes, No, Maybe, Who knows? I doubt it. I know people who grew up in North India, whose parents were native Hindi speaker but who when "in company" would feign ignorance of the language. A book called "Rapid X English Speaking Course" was all the rage in the eighties. Now, boards for "British Language School" have given way to "Call Center Training Schools" where everyones "gonna try to getcha!". Interesting.
This Hindi (or any of the other eighteen Indian regional languages) meeting English half-way in everyday life is a very interesting melt. I have to admit though, the thought there is that iota of a chance that Hindi script will vanish ( as a friend had argued with me once) is saddening, that it may also be gone forever is sadder still. For now Viva Hing-Lish!

Photo-courtesy: Supernova's Photostream on Flickr.