41–50 of 252 posts
The number of languages is stunning. Does anyone know if the number of languages is just the officially named languages or if it includes creoles? The language I speak is a creole of two languages and doesnt have a name or writing system really, and I'm curious to know how that is counted.
What language do you speak that's a creole?
India's definition of what is and what is not a language is highly politicized and highly idiosyncratic. Hindi and Urdu, by any reasonable linguistic definition are not separate languages. The official standards for both Hindi and Urdu, are both based on the form of the huge dialect continuum that spans North India and Pakistan, as spoken in Delhi. The only difference is that Urdu uses Persian and Arabic as inspirati…
> on the street level, the language is identical Personal anecdote: when I first went to South Asia, I spent time in southern Pakistan and learned some basic Urdu. Then I spent time in north India, among Hindi speakers. The language I'd learned was immediately usable there, but my local friends could also tell where it came from -- and sometimes would tell me "Aha! yes, we know what you mean, but that's an Urdu word…
A video from one of my favourite Youtube channels explains it in detail: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vxSd7p1i_TA
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> on the street level, the language is identical Personal anecdote: when I first went to South Asia, I spent time in southern Pakistan and learned some basic Urdu. Then I spent time in north India, among Hindi speakers. The language I'd learned was immediately usable there, but my local friends could also tell where it came from -- and sometimes would tell me "Aha! yes, we know what you mean, but that's an Urdu word…
Same way like Italian and Romanian and Spanish
If you speak Italian to a Spanish person, they might be able to understand quite a lot but they'll know that you are speaking Italian. This is not always the case with Hindi and Urdu.
It's amazing how most Indians believe that Hindi is the national language of India, when there's no such as a national language in India. There are two official languages for union government communication - Hindi and English. I've also noticed that a lot of non Indians find it funny that most Indians here in bay area companies communicate among themselves in heavily accented English instead of The Indian language.
The original plan was, of course, to phase out English as a national language. This never happened, I suppose partially because while 'Hindustani' (as was) made sense as a symbol of unity during the time leading up to Independence, afterwards, especially as 'Hindi', it was seen more as a regional language (even if the region involved is large) and so not necessarily more deserving of official nation-level status than…
The diversity in general in India is mind boggling which most of Indians take for granted. Be it terrain, climate, language, culture, food, etc., And all the above change noticeably every 200KM or so such that you will find more similarities between Delhi and Lahore (different countries) than Delhi and Bangalore. It's a miracle that India manages to function as one country.
And if you are in a dense enough area, it can change every 2km, when accounting for differences in socially conditioned dialects and customs.
The diversity in general in India is mind boggling which most of Indians take for granted. Be it terrain, climate, language, culture, food, etc., And all the above change noticeably every 200KM or so such that you will find more similarities between Delhi and Lahore (different countries) than Delhi and Bangalore. It's a miracle that India manages to function as one country.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> on the street level, the language is identical Personal anecdote: when I first went to South Asia, I spent time in southern Pakistan and learned some basic Urdu. Then I spent time in north India, among Hindi speakers. The language I'd learned was immediately usable there, but my local friends could also tell where it came from -- and sometimes would tell me "Aha! yes, we know what you mean, but that's an Urdu word…
Same way like Italian and Romanian and Spanish
You can perhaps argue Norwegian, Swedish and Danish are different dialects of the same language, or say the same for Portuguese and Galician but most linguists, Nordic and Iberian people will be offended by such a notion.
India's right wing government under Modi is trying to impose Hindi on Indians who belong to different ethnicity and speak diverse set of languages. A sure shot recipe for balkanization of a young nation.
Also, IMO, balkanization of the India sub-continent might not be the worst thing to happen. I've seen how proud and patriotic Indian hate this idea but IMO it could be actually quite good for the whole region. I'd actually like to a more federated Indian Union that could eventually make way for Bangaladesh, Sri Lanka, Pakistan and Nepal to become member states. Something like the EU perhaps. While I don't think anything like this has any real chance of happening, it would be a sure shot way to bringing peace to the whole sub-continent IMHO.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'd consider "Mumbai Hindi" a creole. It's nominally a dialect of Hindi/Urdu but it has a lot of Marathi mixed in, among other languages.
Standard Hindi itself has some characteristics of a creole; at the very least it has had both grammatical and vocabulary influences from a number of languages, including Punjabi, Persian, Portuguese and English.
Just looked it up in Google Translate, pão is Portuguese for bread:
https://translate.google.com/#view=home&op=translate&sl=auto...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cashew
https://translate.google.com/#view=home&op=translate&sl=auto...
This is also true for Hindi and Urdu, and you can tell esp if you're exposed to both. When you study both the languages theologically and linguistically, the differences become ever more apparent. It is only the mash of Hindi-Urdu called Hindustani [1] (popularized in modern day by Bollywood) that's mutually intelligible to both Hindi and Urdu speakers alike, and only in its spoken form.
I, for sure, know that the Punjabi [2] spoke in Multan (Saraiki) sounds different than anything I've heard in India; but my Indian Punjabi friends tell me its mutually intelligible to them.
Imo, the Hindi-Urdu debate isn't similar to a Croatian-Serbian or even the EasternPunjabi-WesternPunjabi one, where the vocabulary remains the same for the most part and only phonetics remain a predominant source of divergence.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lisan_ud-Dawat
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hindi%E2%80%93Urdu_controversy