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I think I speak Hindi


Critical Design
Master’s Final ProjectThe project talks about the emerging language shift and decay, created by the steady increase and influence of Anglicised Indian languages, where even Major Languages are suffering language loss. A large number of Indians are indifferent to the state of their Mother Tongues and simply learn, speak and shift to English. 



Iron rusts with disuse,
Water, unstirred, turns foul,
Flame, unbridled, burns to ash.


Most Indians are Bilinguals. 
Of the two languages, one is always socially dominant on the other. For Hindi speakers, this language is English. As Hindi speakers, we have been borrowing forms and constructions of English 
within Hindi at such a rate 
that it soon might not be 
an easy task to identify Hindi from English.

As per surveys and datasets available online, there is a massive population that speaks Hindi. But is that really so? Do we really speak Hindi? or is it just, Hinglish?





A bigger question is, do we desire to speak Hindi? It’s not being opted in education, its literature sits in dark and dust, and it has little to no value in the scientific world. 

You are considered uneducated if you are a monolingual Hindi speaker. It’s script forgotten, the moment kids leave school. Most people cannot even recite the Hindi Varnamala in the correct order.

A language that stops growing and developing, ultimately decays.





Hindi Sahitya: Publication Design



While we change and progress, there are things we prefer to remain rooted in their origins. However, that is an unrealistic expectation. What we speak and write will sooner or later be reflected in what we read and teach. Hindi Sahitya, or Hindi literature, will undergo transformation. For the better or the worse.The book “Hindi Sahitya” is a play on traditional Hindi literature school book, with a cover that attracts the English influenced audience, and chaotic & experimental inside pages of the book makes you question what the subject and theme of the project more introspectively.





Manifesto

Let us;
  • Celebrate our linguistic diversity as we continue to speak multiple languages.
  • Make room for the development and growth of our mother tongues.
  • Resist imposition of one language over another.
  • Resist imposition of one language over a society’s entire identity.