Resumen de South Asian languages in Britain: Criteria for description and definition
In the last 100 years linguists and philologists have attempted to come to terms with the linguistic diversity among the South Asian people. With the growing interest in the teaching and maintenance of South Asian languages in Britain, description and definition of the South Asian languages has become a prerequisite to any recommendation or policy decision. However, this exercise cannot be conducted simply through genetic, historic or contrastive analyses in the tradition of the ‘linguacrats’ of the British Empire or the ‘unitarianists’ of the first half of this century in South Asia. Recent developments in the field of linguistics, particularly in South Asia, have to be seriously considered. The questions of culture, choice of scripts, language loyalties, identity of the speakers, and language needs as perceived by the speakers have to be included in language definitions. These considerations are of particular relevance to Hindi and Urdu, especially if by mother tongue teaching, it is meant that all forms of a language, including the written form, will be taught in schools. Ethnolinguistic diversity is being increasingly recognised as a worldwide societal asset which should be valued and encouraged through language and education policies in all multilingual societies.
