1. Indians do not speak Indian. Sort of like how Chinese is not an actual language (shocker right?). There are many languages in India, with Hindi being the most popular.
2. Saying the word ‘desi’. Desi usually refers to Southern India but overtime it has grown to refer to India as a whole. It is easier than saying Indian because then people get confused with Native Americans. Desi is also associated with countries that share the same cultural values as India, like Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Pakistan, etc.
3. Not everyone in India lives in poverty. Yes there is poverty in India, but there are also some filthy rich people.
4. Bindi’s are not tattoos. The amount of people who have come up to me and asked me if they are tattoos is somewhat insane. Why would you get a red dot tattooed on your forehead? They are actually sort of like a sticker that you put on your forehead. Also bindi’s are not only red dots, they come in a multitude of shapes and sizes.
5. Curry in general. What most western people think is curry is actually what is known as sabzi (sub-gee). Sabzi is a mixture of vegetables. It is usually known as curry when there is meat involved. ex. Chicken Curry, Fish Curry. The actual curry is the sort of gravy portion of the dish.
Also Hindi isn’t even the most popular language. It’s an inflated statistic. When you exclude “Hindi-like” languages (Punjabi, Gujarati) from the stats, the number of Hindi speaking people is actually only 30% of the population.
And even WITH the inflated stat 40% of Indians do not speak hindi, which is a lot of people.
Literally the ONLY reason why hindi is the national language is because the government is in a hindi speaking state.
So if I wanted to visit India (I’ve no plans as of right now but am curious) what language DO I learn to try and get by?
Depends on the state you’re going to, but most people know English.
Look up the language of that state and learn those basic words.
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