a Hindi and an Urdu speaker can understand each others language as well as an Englishman can understand American English.
Know why? Because they're pretty much the same damn language with different scripts (Urdu has a few more Persian words and Hindi has a few more Sanskrit words, but both have a HUGE common vocabulary).
Not that it reduces the impact of the statement, but the speech was made at the Indian Institute of INFORMATION Technology (IIIT) in Pune. And not at one of Indian Institutes of Technology (IIT). While the IITs can be considered equivalent of MIT, IIIT is focused on IT.
Just to be clear on this...
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a Hindi and an Urdu speaker can understand each others language as well as an Englishman can understand American English. Know why? Because they're pretty much the same damn language with different scripts (Urdu has a few more Persian words and Hindi has a few more Sanskrit words, but both have a HUGE common vocabulary).
Not that it reduces the impact of the statement, but the speech was made at the Indian Institute of INFORMATION Technology (IIIT) in Pune. And not at one of Indian Institutes of Technology (IIT). While the IITs can be considered equivalent of MIT, IIIT is focused on IT. Just to be clear on this...