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Languages of India

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Re: Languages of India

#101

Post by shripadk »

sridca wrote: post #94
shripadk wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> impose Hindi on all states This is so blatantly false. I am from South and a Kannadiga and I can tell you with conviction that in my lifetime I have never had anyone impose Hindi on me. This frenzy of Hindi imposition exists only in the states of Tamil Nadu and Kerala (and a little in Karnataka but has since died down once people became more aware). I blame the excessive regionalism in part but major part of the bl…

> Indian identity was split right in the middle and was done on religious lines Religion is only one factor. People also derive their group identity along cultural, caste and social lines. This is not specific to India. Although religion is less emphasized in America, other factors (cultural, social, racial, economical, etc.) still continue play its role in forming the identity of its denizens. -- Response to below c…

> People also derive their group identity along cultural, caste and social lines.

You are missing the point I made. I said Indian identity was split on religious lines. When was Indian identity split on cultural, caste or social lines? Last I checked, Tamil Nadu is still a part of India. Karnataka is still a part of India. Kerala is still a part of India. They haven't "split" out of India. Makes sense?

Re: Languages of India

#102

Post by gopalv »

gwbas1c wrote: post #39
Jagat wrote: post #7

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.

> 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. It's amazing how most Americans believe that English is the national language of the US, when where's no such thing as a national language in the US.

> English is the national language of the US, when where's no such thing as a national language in the US

"This is America, Speak English!" does have legal might behind it because of 8 USC 1423[1]

The new DREAM act which went through the house of reps specifically calls out an exemption from that.

[1] - http://uscode.house.gov/view.xhtml?req=(title:8%20section:14...

Re: Languages of India

#103

Post by viewtransform »

shripadk wrote: post #67
viewtransform wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I can tell you with conviction that in my lifetime I have never had anyone impose Hindi on me." This is because several fellow south Indians gave up their lives to ensure that north Indian language bigots would not have their way. Read your history. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Hindi_agitations_of_Tamil...

> This is because several fellow south Indians gave up their lives to ensure that north Indian language bigots would not have their way. I know everything about these agitations. There is a huge difference between what happened in 1940s and what is happening today. You are just extrapolating your fears needlessly. When I talk about "my lifetime" I talk about 30 years of my life. I was not born in the 1940s so there i…

The right solution is to leave it to parents and students to decide what languages they want to study in and what languages they choose to learn.

Hindi is gradually becoming universally understood all over the country precisely because it was not imposed on linguistic minorities. When people don't feel that their culture is threatened they are open to learning Hindi. Bollywood and television has done more to promote Hindi than all the academic language bigots making decisions from Delhi.

Re: Languages of India

#104

Post by jfk13 »

owaislone wrote: post #80
dmix wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there a script you find "better" between the Hindi and Urdu one?

I can't say better but I learned Urdu for 10 years in school as opposed to Hindi which was taught for just a year or so. As a result I find the Urdu (Persian) script easier to read but I don't think one is better than the other. Probably a linguist expert could compare the Arabic/Persian script to the Devanagri one and try to explain pros and cons of both. That would be an interesting read.

The Hindi script is easier for a foreign learner to deal with, because it more accurately maps to the phonemes of the language. So it's possible to "sound out" an unknown Hindi word from the written form, and get it fairly close to correct. With the Urdu script, this is more difficult, as many of the vowels are left unwritten or under-differentiated.

(For a trivial example, is اس the word /ɪs/ "this" or /ʊs/ "that"? In Devanagari, they're clearly different, इस vs उस. Urdu script can distinguish them, by adding a diacritic to the ا, but it's usually omitted, leaving the reader to infer the intended word from context. For a native speaker, that's not usually a problem, but for a learner it can be an added challenge.)

On the other hand, I suspect the Urdu script might be faster for an experienced writer to use, as there's a beautiful simplicity and smoothness to its cursive forms, compared to the relatively complex shapes of many Devanagari letters.

Re: Languages of India

#105

Post by keeganjw »

It still boggles my mind that so many of the languages of India are related to European languages. Hindi and English share a common linguistic ancestor. Yet languages that are much physically closer together like English and Finnish or Hindi and Tamil aren't related at all.

Re: Languages of India

#106

Post by najarvg »

billfruit wrote: post #65

A bit strange that Sinhala is classified as Indo-European rather than as Dravidian, as one might think from geography.

I initially found that strange too given that there is a distinct Sri Lankan Tamil dialect (Jaffna, Batticaloa versions etc) but it looks like Sinhala came in as an original Indo-Eurpoean language and mingled with surrounding languages to borrow some words etc. Here are some opinionated commentaries on that:

http://www.applet-magic.com/sinhaleselan.htm

http://www.island.lk/2003/11/05/featur02.html

Would love to see an authoritative source confirming these.

Re: Languages of India

#107

Post by sterlind »

samsonradu wrote: post #74
manbatman wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same way like Italian and Romanian and Spanish

Not quite. As a Romanian speaker I can’t understand more than very basic Italian. Perhaps Spanish is slightly more understandable but still not to a 90% level for sure. I also doubt they understand any Romanian at all.

Romanian kept its case system unlike the other Romance languages by virtue of ending up in the Slavic sprachbund. I'd wager that there are Slavic loanwords as well?

Re: Languages of India

#108

Post by School-Cotton »

keeganjw wrote: post #105

It still boggles my mind that so many of the languages of India are related to European languages. Hindi and English share a common linguistic ancestor. Yet languages that are much physically closer together like English and Finnish or Hindi and Tamil aren't related at all.

True, it boggles my mind also! But for reasons I'm struggling to explain, it doesn't strike me as weird or surprising that, for example, American English and Navajo are completely unrelated despite being spoken in close physical proximity to each other.

I guess it is because the settlement and colonization of the Southwestern US is in much more recent memory, whereas we sort of think of Hindi and its ancestors like Sanskrit as having been spoken in India since time immemorial.

FWIW, it should be pointed out, to be strictly correct, that we really have no idea whether the various language families are related to each other and descended from some "proto-World" language. So instead of saying "X and Y are completely unrelated", it's probably more accurate to say "there is no known evidence that X and Y are related".

Re: Languages of India

#109

Post by owaislone »

OJFord wrote: post #93
owaislone wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Very true, in most Hindi speaking states people have a hard time pronouncing Z and often pronounce it as J even quite often even in English. Same thing with SH vs S. That said, I've personally seen this as a common occurrence among people who didn't study any other languages other than Hindi or didn't study any at all.

I struggle with this sort of thing a lot, as I'm learning Hindi as a native English speaker. So I suppose I should learn it as za, (sabzi is an example that comes to mind), but just understand that if I hear someone else say it it may be ja? Everyone's going to understand za, even if it's not how they personally say it right?

Yes, pretty sure everyone will understand you perfectly irrespective of whether you say sabzi or sabji.

Re: Languages of India

#110

Post by [deleted] »

School-Cotton wrote: post #86
Jagat wrote: post #7

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.

> It's amazing how most Indians believe that Hindi is the national language of India I am not Indian, so please correct my outsider's perspective if it is wrong, but from what I have seen, this is mainly believed by North Indians, and often deeply resented by South Indians, who are more likely to view English as a common, neutral, pan-Indian lingua franca, and Hindi as too North-centric to be appropriate for that rol…

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