Dear Friend,
I would like to invite you to sign a petition hosted at
TakingITGlobal.org, a global community for young leaders.
To: Kofi Annan, Secretary General of the United Nations
Sir,
Currently, there are following are the 6 official UN languages
Chinese- 874 million
English- 341 million
Spanish- 322 million
Russian- 167 million
French- 72 million
Arabic- 42 million
* Source- The World 2004, Wikipedia
It is astonishing and unfortunate that with 366 million speakers, Hindi
is no where in this list. Let me put forward the case for the most
widely spoken language in the world's largest democracy, India.
1. Absolute Number of Speakers
Since we are increasingly living in a global society, the sheer number
of speakers for Hindi definitely bolsters its bid. Many languages
spoken through out the Indian Sub-Continent closely resemble Hindi and it
has a wide audience, both core and peripheral. Moreover, Hindi is the
second language or the language of wider communication (LWC) for most
parts of India.
2. Global Reach
Although it could be questioned whether this criteria is being met
currently by Arabic, Russian and Chinese on the UN list, our purpose simply
is to put forward a case for Hindi and not torpedo that of other
languages.
3. Reach and effectiveness of UN
Hindi with more then with 366 million speakers, must be included, If we
are making serious effort for an effective United Nation. The other 5,
except chinese, have fewer speaker then Hindi, then why Not Hindi.
Through out the world 11 countries* (including the United States and
the United Kingdom) in the world have over 1 million Indians, and as many
as 22 countries have Indians numbering over 100,000. Hindi is naturally
either the native language for them, or used as the LWC for
communicating with other Indians. Apart from the sub-continent, Hindi has
considerable speakers in South East Asia, Africa, Western Europe, Australasia
and North America.
* Source- The World 2004, Wikipedia
We hope that you would seriously give a thought to the injustice being
handed to Hindi by excluding it from the official UN languages list.
The UN would do the world a much greater service were it to hold out its
hand and reach out more effectively to the Hindi speakers of the world.
Sincerely,
Undersinged
Go to:
http://petitions.takingitglobal.org/hindi to sign!
Thanks!
Amit Kumar
P.S. Petitions are created by TakingITGlobal Members, and may not
represent the views of TakingITGlobal as an organization!