A huge number of kids in India learn English as their first and only language. Especially kids born in cities, whose parents' linguistic backgrounds differ.
> it'll never sound as natural
It already sounds perfectly natural to everyone here.
> It's not the language of the street or the discourse.
Wrong. India is not homogeneous like that. In Bangalore, an Indian walking into a shoe shop on Brigade Road will get addressed by the shopkeeper in English. Or an Indian visiting a pub in Koramangala, also gets addressed by the waiter in English. The consumption numbers of English news channels, English newspapers, etc. should give you an idea of the prevalence of English here.
"The 2011 Census showed English is the primary language—mother tongue—of 256,000 people, the second language of 83 million people, and the third language of another 46 million people, making it the second-most widely spoken language after Hindi"
https://www.livemint.com/news/india/in-india-who-speaks-in-e...
256K is not a huge amount. Even if that's up to 1.256 million in the last 10 years, that's nothing compared to the size of India.
>It already sounds perfectly natural to everyone here
It doesn't to anyone outside of the subcontinent. This could also possibly be explained by the complete lack of English language Indian media outside of India, in the US particularly. We get UK, Canadian, and sometimes even Australian and NZ programming in the US. Why no Indian?
>Wrong. India is not homogeneous like that. In Bangalore, an Indian walking into a shoe shop on Brigade Road will get addressed by the shopkeeper in English. Or an Indian visiting a pub in Koramangala, also gets addressed by the waiter in English.
I'm well aware. However, when a bunch of Kannada speakers are hanging out at a cafe, would they be speaking English? Of course not. English is a lingua franca, not the preferred option if there's a shared mother tongue.
That's no different than the US.
> It doesn't to anyone outside of the subcontinent.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯ My point was: who decides, and on what basis? There was a time when Australians did not consider their accent acceptable on their own news channels. They adopted RP [2]. Would you consider John Bishop's scouse accent [3] unnatural? How about all the other accents of UK, like Irish, Welsh, Scottish, etc.?
> Why no Indian?
No idea. The vagaries of business decisions and culture. Most Indian programs are terrible, IMO. Many of my female cousins watch Korean soap operas. Among my younger cousins, anime is the norm. All with subtitles.
> when a bunch of Kannada speakers are hanging out at a cafe, would they be speaking English? Of course not.
To the contrary, it would depend on the locality of the cafe, the topic of the conversation, their interpersonal dynamics, and so on. My school required us to speak just English on the premises, and would scold us if we used Kannada. Fining kids [4] is pretty common too. It eventually leads to school kids using English with each other after school too. In a city like Raichur or Kolar, the odds of Kannada being the default language are good. In Bangalore, while I think I can predict the language, my prediction would depend on a lot of local factors.
[1] https://www.censusindia.gov.in/Census_Data_2001/Census_Data_...
[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TnP_C6RSdJU
I and a lot of my Indian peers consider English to be our 1st language.
