Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

A man who 'discovered' 780 Indian languages

bbc.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–129 of 129 posts

Re: A man who 'discovered' 780 Indian languages

#121

Post by Cyph0n »

Manishearth wrote: post #118
Cyph0n wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So it's similar to the regional forms of Arabic in the Middle East. People will speak with each other using a dialect, but all official and educational writing is in standard Arabic. When people chat informally (e.g. on WhatsApp), they would typically use Arabic characters to build words that can usually only be understood by speakers familiar with the dialect in question.

The different Chinese languages are not dialects.

Dialects may be the wrong term, but it's the term I use.

Read the first two paragraphs for a better idea of what I'm talking about: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Varieties_of_Arabic

Re: A man who 'discovered' 780 Indian languages

#122

Post by Manishearth »

Cyph0n wrote: post #121
Manishearth wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The different Chinese languages are not dialects.

Dialects may be the wrong term, but it's the term I use. Read the first two paragraphs for a better idea of what I'm talking about: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Varieties_of_Arabic

The differences between Chinese languages are often more than the differences between Romance languages.

But yeah, it's similar to the Arabic situation, but the scale may be different.

Re: A man who 'discovered' 780 Indian languages

#123

Post by Manishearth »

HumanDrivenDev wrote: post #101
Manishearth wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> China is one more country which is preserving its culture by speaking chinese "chinese" isn't one language. It's a set of many languages which share some grammar and a common logographic script (though the script isn't used in exactly the same way for each, e.g. Beijing will write/say 哪儿 instead of 哪里 for "where?" -- there are many other differences but I don't know enough to give a clear idea of its scale). The sp…

"chinese" isn't one language. It's a set of many languages which share some grammar and a common logographic script I don't think that's true for any chinese languages other than mandarin and cantonese. I've been in Taiwan for the past few weeks and dipped my toes into Hokkien/Taiwanese/Souther Min, and the situation there is fascinating. In every day normal situations it's never written, if two native hokkien speake…

Yeah, I misspoke; I should have said "where some share a common logographic script".

But I'm actually unclear about this.

The weird thing is that certain dictionaries give pronunciations of hanzi in multiple Chinese languages (e.g. Wiktionary) including "scriptless" languages.

I've also seen cases in Taiwan where e.g. a restaurant name or place name is written in hanzi and English and the romanization is clearly not using the standard Mandarin pronunciation of the term. An example of this is 淡水 which is romanized "tamsui" in Taiwan but would be "danshui" in pinyin or "tanshui" in Wade-Giles. Syllables ending with "m" are not a thing in Mandarin as far as I know, and 水 is never romanized as "sui" (though I could chalk the 水 one up to an alternate local romanization system like POJ, which I don't know anything about).

Finally, I've also seen text in Taiwan with four-bopomofo ruby. From my understanding of bopomofo; for Mandarin you won't have more than three glyphs plus a tone mark -- the initial consonant, optional medial i/u, and optional final. This also gives me the impression that Min Nan can be written in hanzi. Unless Taiwanese Mandarin differs from Mandarin significantly in pronunciation (which may be the case, I don't know).

All this leads me to believe that other Chinese languages can use hanzi, but do so less often, perhaps? This is something I've always been confused about but never really looked into it.

Re: A man who 'discovered' 780 Indian languages

#124

Post by HumanDrivenDev »

Manishearth wrote: post #123
HumanDrivenDev wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"chinese" isn't one language. It's a set of many languages which share some grammar and a common logographic script I don't think that's true for any chinese languages other than mandarin and cantonese. I've been in Taiwan for the past few weeks and dipped my toes into Hokkien/Taiwanese/Souther Min, and the situation there is fascinating. In every day normal situations it's never written, if two native hokkien speake…

Yeah, I misspoke; I should have said "where some share a common logographic script". But I'm actually unclear about this. The weird thing is that certain dictionaries give pronunciations of hanzi in multiple Chinese languages (e.g. Wiktionary) including "scriptless" languages. I've also seen cases in Taiwan where e.g. a restaurant name or place name is written in hanzi and English and the romanization is clearly not…

You're bang on the money: Tamsui is a romanisation of the hokkien name, not the mandarin one. There's a few other non-mando names floating around, like Taroko (an aboriginal language).

I have a Taiwanese book for school children that includes the governments romanisation, hanzi, and some kind of extended bopomofo. While the native speaker I was learning with could read hokkien-with-characters, he couldn't do it quickly, and often had to puzzle over a certain character. In cases where they had both characters and romanisation I was able to help him on the characters he was stuck on by (badly) pronouncing the romanisation. Still, I haven't met any Taiwanese hokkien speakers at all interested in romanisation. Which is a shame - it covers all the sounds, and the language does seem to be slowly dying (the fact people don't write it probably has a lot to do with it).

Re: A man who 'discovered' 780 Indian languages

#125

Post by eklavya »

Manishearth wrote: post #119
eklavya wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wasn't sure where to comment. So I will comment here. Which north Indian state do you think Hindi is the native language of?

That's a non sequitur. It doesn't have to be a native language for folks to push it; it can be close .

Folks push it because it's Indian and understood by most. Folks resist and protest because it's not their native language and somehow worse than having English everywhere.

Re: A man who 'discovered' 780 Indian languages

#126

Post by Manishearth »

HumanDrivenDev wrote: post #124
Manishearth wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I misspoke; I should have said "where some share a common logographic script". But I'm actually unclear about this. The weird thing is that certain dictionaries give pronunciations of hanzi in multiple Chinese languages (e.g. Wiktionary) including "scriptless" languages. I've also seen cases in Taiwan where e.g. a restaurant name or place name is written in hanzi and English and the romanization is clearly not…

You're bang on the money: Tamsui is a romanisation of the hokkien name, not the mandarin one. There's a few other non-mando names floating around, like Taroko (an aboriginal language). I have a Taiwanese book for school children that includes the governments romanisation, hanzi, and some kind of extended bopomofo. While the native speaker I was learning with could read hokkien-with-characters, he couldn't do it quick…

Ah, so when I see a sign saying "淡水/Tamsui", the first one is in Mandarin and the second one is romanized Hokkien. I assumed they were both from the same language.

Though it seems like hokkien-with-characters is a thing (from what you say, and also from what I've seen with 4-bopomofo ruby and Wiktionary), just less prevalent. Or perhaps one can look at hanzi at the same level as romanization for Hokkien (except romanization is more prevalent), i.e. "someone else's script that kinda works for us so we use it sometimes"

I'm surprised the extended bopomofo (I assume it's https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taiwanese_Phonetic_Symbols which actually till now was the thing I thought was bopomofo) is used more as a writing system for Taiwanese.

Re: A man who 'discovered' 780 Indian languages

#127

Post by Manishearth »

wizardofmysore wrote: post #93
sumedh wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes because most Indians can speak Hindi(Urdu is similar to Hindi). Hindi is the second or third language for many non native Hindi speakers.

Around 100+ million of 1.2 billion don't speak Hindi.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_languages_by_number_of...

No, by the 2001 census it's about 50% of Indians who do not speak Hindi.

I don't see a reason for this fraction to have changed significantly.

Re: A man who 'discovered' 780 Indian languages

#128

Post by Manishearth »

eklavya wrote: post #125
Manishearth wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a non sequitur. It doesn't have to be a native language for folks to push it; it can be close .

Folks push it because it's Indian and understood by most. Folks resist and protest because it's not their native language and somehow worse than having English everywhere.

> Folks push it because it's Indian and understood by most.

I don't ... dispute that? You're continuing with the non sequiturs and it's really hard to tell what point you're trying to make.

("most" is also "bit more than half the population", which isn't that compelling)

> Folks resist and protest because it's not their native language and somehow worse than having English everywhere.

You have not understood the resistance. People don't think it's "somehow worse than having English everywhere". There is no analogous push for English everywhere that people are not opposing.

Re: A man who 'discovered' 780 Indian languages

#129

Post by eklavya »

Manishearth wrote: post #128
eklavya wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Folks push it because it's Indian and understood by most. Folks resist and protest because it's not their native language and somehow worse than having English everywhere.

> Folks push it because it's Indian and understood by most. I don't ... dispute that? You're continuing with the non sequiturs and it's really hard to tell what point you're trying to make. ("most" is also "bit more than half the population", which isn't that compelling) > Folks resist and protest because it's not their native language and somehow worse than having English everywhere. You have not understood the resi…

I am sorry. This is not in response to your particular comment. Was just trying to have a conversation.
Post reply on HN