VIJAYAWADA, SURINAM, March 7, 2003: The main agenda of the World Hindi Conference to be held in Surinam in June, 2003, is to get the United Nation to accord official language status for Hindi, the second most spoken language in the world, Kendriya Hindi Samithi member Y. Lakshmiprasad said. Mr. Lakshmiprasad said at present Hindi is being used by people in 76 countries. The samithi, headed by Prime Minister Vajpayee, who made the first-ever address to the UN in Hindi, wanted the people of these countries to persuade their respective governments to confer this status for the language and accordingly pass resolutions. Stating that English had attained the status of an international language only due to its sheer capacity to adopt words from other languages, he called upon Indian linguists to adopt foreign language words and compile a new dictionary on the lines of the Oxford University Press. “It will be easier for people to pronounce words like subway instead of the Hindi word Bhumigatha Paithal Paripath,” he said.
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