On a slightly related topic, India has a vast and rich set of languages and millions of people that speak/read/write these languages. With daily newspapers, tabloids, literature etc, I presume there is a (potential) huge corpus of rich data for each language too. And, I just read yesterday that India just surpassed US to become the second biggest mobile phone market.
Then why is there not more of NLP work/products on Indian languages? There's a market for it, a huge market, isn't it?
A man who 'discovered' 780 Indian languages
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Re: A man who 'discovered' 780 Indian languages
#32On a slightly related topic, India has a vast and rich set of languages and millions of people that speak/read/write these languages. With daily newspapers, tabloids, literature etc, I presume there is a (potential) huge corpus of rich data for each language too. And, I just read yesterday that India just surpassed US to become the second biggest mobile phone market. Then why is there not more of NLP work/products on…
Because as you said.. thee's a vast set of languages instead of a single one of 300 million people.
Re: A man who 'discovered' 780 Indian languages
#33One of the main reason behind the 'developing' state of India even after 70 years of independence is its differences which Indians still have in their mind. The language barrier is the only barrier which is proving to be resistance let alone culture prevention and all that. Languages are just a form of communication between people and people should accept it. People should learn languages like English(Which have vast…
> China is one more country which is preserving its culture by speaking chinese
There's so many different languages spoken in China, many of which are dying or endangered. Moreover, China is by no means a mono culture. The government of China actively promotes a singular language and culture at the cost of those on the margins.
Re: A man who 'discovered' 780 Indian languages
#34On a slightly related topic, India has a vast and rich set of languages and millions of people that speak/read/write these languages. With daily newspapers, tabloids, literature etc, I presume there is a (potential) huge corpus of rich data for each language too. And, I just read yesterday that India just surpassed US to become the second biggest mobile phone market. Then why is there not more of NLP work/products on…
> Then why is there not more of NLP work/products on Indian languages? There's a market for it, a huge market, isn't it?
The market effects of linguistic diversity work both ways: having more languages increases the potential demand for translation tools, but the sheer number of long-tail languages also makes it hard to justify compiling a corpus and making a considerable effort to study each of these languages enough to build tools for them. Some language communities may almost completely lack the kind of highly literate people who would make this task surmountable, and those who could help, may already be working another more stable or higher paying job.
Re: A man who 'discovered' 780 Indian languages
#35Earlier quoted context omitted.
Please don't take HN threads in flamewar directions. You managed to damage this one considerably, and it breaks the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html .
I was objecting to a mischaracterization in the article. I took a literal quote from the article and objected to it; I did not make it up, or change topics.
Sure, but none of that changes the point about not taking HN into flamewars.
Re: A man who 'discovered' 780 Indian languages
#36Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's probably a hijacked account too, that account has legitimate comments but was dormant until today.
I doubt that, it's quality content apart from the link :) probably just a never updated, but originally legit wordpress site.
I find this ironical that the technology(in this particular case their site) which is considered as a savior for these languages and dialects, by archiving them, indexing them, can get itself rendered as something to stay away from instead of making this resource accessible.
Re: A man who 'discovered' 780 Indian languages
#37One of the main reason behind the 'developing' state of India even after 70 years of independence is its differences which Indians still have in their mind. The language barrier is the only barrier which is proving to be resistance let alone culture prevention and all that. Languages are just a form of communication between people and people should accept it. People should learn languages like English(Which have vast…
Promoting a language because the Prime minister finds himself more proficient orator in the language? I find that hard to believe. Do you have sources on this?
It's not just that. Ever since he has got his position he is trying to promote India's ethnic values and culture and he's not saying "Bhaiyo aur beheno bas hindi bolo" ( brothers and sisters just speak hindi) and nobody is imposing the language hindi on anyone. But if you're living in a country and serving people(working in government sector) where almost majority of the people speak hindi don't you think you should have some sort of understanding to treat the people in their own language? I live in india and i have seen situations where people find it easy to grasp hindi than any other languages. Out of all those 1600+ language majority of them resembles and sounds like hindi ( just few accent differences are there) rajasthani, marwadi, mewadi, Bhojpuri,urdu, Haryanvi all resembles hindi i.e. if you know even a little bit of hindi you can deal with majority of north indian languages.
Re: A man who 'discovered' 780 Indian languages
#38One of the main reason behind the 'developing' state of India even after 70 years of independence is its differences which Indians still have in their mind. The language barrier is the only barrier which is proving to be resistance let alone culture prevention and all that. Languages are just a form of communication between people and people should accept it. People should learn languages like English(Which have vast…
Brazil never had this problem and it is still 'developing' 195 years after its independence. Same language, not that different regional culture (similar to USA I guess). And Europe as a whole was able to become developed despite its language barriers.
Just that it has almost double per capita income(PPP) when compared to India. $1576(76th) vs $7153 (122nd) respectively.
Re: A man who 'discovered' 780 Indian languages
#39This reminded me of a video I saw once, many years ago. It was told by the last speaker of a language - from a tribe in El Salvador, iirc (Central America, for sure). Most of his tribe had been wiped out during civil war. He and his parents were the last living speakers of their language. When his parents died, he was the last. The video was a long, tearful poem, telling the story of his people and their destruction.…
There are many stories similar to this one; wikipedia's list of last speakers of languages[1] is a good starting point for those interested in dying languages and the attempts at their preservation.
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_last_known_speakers_...
Re: A man who 'discovered' 780 Indian languages
#40On a slightly related topic, India has a vast and rich set of languages and millions of people that speak/read/write these languages. With daily newspapers, tabloids, literature etc, I presume there is a (potential) huge corpus of rich data for each language too. And, I just read yesterday that India just surpassed US to become the second biggest mobile phone market. Then why is there not more of NLP work/products on…
Here's something that was released fairly recently by my alma mater - IIT Bombay