# The "higher" status language does not always win: The fall of English in India and the rise of Hindi

**Authors:** Kushani De Silva, Rana D. Parshad, Aladeen Basheer, Kwadwo Antwi-Fordjour, Matthew A. Beauregard, Vineeta Chand  
**arXiv:** [2002.05787](https://arxiv.org/abs/2002.05787)  
**Date:** 2020-02-10  
**Summary page:** https://www.summarizepaper.com/fr/paper/2002.05787v1/

## Abstract

Classical language dynamics explains language shift as a process in which speakers adopt a higher status language in lieu of a lower status language. This is well documented with English having out-competed languages such as Scottish Gaelic, Welsh and Mandarin. The 1961-1991 Indian censuses report a sharp increase in Hindi/English Bilinguals, suggesting that English is on the rise in India - and is out-competing Hindi. However, the 1991 - 2011 data shows that Bilingual numbers have saturated, while Monolingual Hindi speakers continue to rise exponentially. To capture this counter-intuitive dynamic, we propose a novel language dynamics model of interaction between Monolingual Hindi speakers and Hindi/English Bilinguals, which captures the Indian census data of the last 50 years with near perfect accuracy, outperforming the best known language dynamics models from the literature. We thus provide a first example of a lower status language having out competed a higher status language.