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Ep 232: Understanding India Through Its Languages

The Seen and the Unseen - hosted by Amit Varma

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The Role of Language in Perpetuating Class

In our postcolonial times english has become a marker of class and it's almost become a signaling device for people to show the sophistication by speaking in fancy English. A lot of the language that we use contains you know these old archaic british impostities which the british themselves have discarded but we will still kind of use them. i was shocked once to discover on youtube that there are actually these really popular videos supposedly teaching better languages to indians. They're really saying don't you simple words always use a more complex word so instead of say use the word articulate which is exactly the opposite of the advice i'd give where the language becomes a signaling device or marker of social

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