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…
> Hindi and Urdu, by any reasonable linguistic definition are not separate languages.
That is a common misconception. You are confusing colloquial Hindi and colloquial Urdu with the pure Hindi and pure Urdu.
Pick a word, any word and there is Hindi equivalent and there is a Urdu equivalent. Just because the spoken Hindi, primarily in India, uses a mixture doesn't make them same or even similar.
> 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…
Gosh this is getting ridiculous! You do not seem to have a good understanding of what I wrote in the first place. I am talking about splitting Indian identity on religious lines. I never said Indian identity is only based on "religion". How hard is it for you to understand that? Pakistan was created on religious lines. Pakistan did not take language, caste or social issues with it! Those remained in India. Makes sense?
They are almost identical. Standard Urdu taught in schools might be a bit hard to follow for Hindi speakers and vice-versa but on the street level, it really is almost exactly the same. As a native Urdu speaker, when I went to college in western India, people would often ask me if I knew Urdu and wanted to hear what it sounded like. They were always surprised when I revealed that I was speaking it all along as they a…
I've noticed that some words have different pronunciations. For instance, the word for "definitely" is pronounced zaroor in Urdu but in Hindi, it's pronounced jaroor.
Jaroor/zaroor is Urdu word. Hindi is निश्चित (nishchit).
Just because zaroor is commonly used doesn't make it Hindi.
> 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…
I never understood the sensibility of the notion of imposing Hindi to others in the country. It is like say Germany imposing German to be the de facto language all across Europe! And I do appreciate that we have one common language, English, which is tremendously useful in practical sense (not even including politics in here). -- I'm going to post my response here as HN moderators have put a limit on my account (I th…
> It is a bad analogy only in political sense. Not everything has to be seen in political light.
Then don't give such analogies. Analogies are made to shed light on your argument. Not to convolute it further. And analogies have to have some sense to the topic at hand. The analogy you gave doesn't make sense even if you take it non-politically.
> instead of having to learn their languages (or them having to learn Tamil) first.
I don't think you have actually encountered ground reality. In Bangalore's private companies it was a trend for Tamilians to only hire Tamilians. It got to a point where if a Kannadiga spoke to a Tamilian in Kannada the colleague would reply back in Tamil. This led to an agitation against Tamilians in Bangalore in the 90s especially after the Kaveri verdict which was the tipping point. So when you say stuff like this I just can't take it seriously.
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…
> Hindi and Urdu, by any reasonable linguistic definition are not separate languages.
For any non-Indian person reading this, please note that this statement is 100% false. I am an outsider to Hindi speaking and Urdu speaking region. I have no dog in any political fight here but I have studied Hindi all my academic life and can assuredly tell you this statement is utter rubbish.
But this might not be a fault of OP. A lot of people have this feeling because of Bollywood. Both Bollywood and Hindustani music is a cross of both Hindi and Urdu. If you never study Hindi or Urdu but watch a lot of Bollywood movies you will end up learning a bit of both the languages. But that does not mean they are same.
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.
> trying to impose Hindi on Indians That turned out to be a big hoax. This is the second time such a frenzy was created for no apparent reason. There is no such "imposition" done by the Centre. A proposal is in draft which makes third-language compulsory for students. That does not mean Hindi would be imposed. The student can choose whichever language s/he wants to learn. The third language thing is implemented in qu…
>That turned out to be a big hoax. This is the second time such a frenzy was created for no apparent reason. There is no such "imposition" done by the Centre
https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/centre-removes-mandat...
The controversial sentence appeared in Section 4.5.9, titled ‘Flexibility in the choice of languages’. It said: “In keeping with the principle of flexibility,
.... the study of languages by students in the non-Hindi-speaking states would include the regional language, Hindi and English. ”
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…
You are right. The OP's statement is pure falsehood.
A co-worker of mine once said then he heard a greater variety of spoken Indian languages in the Bay Area than he’d ever heard back in India, where he was born and educated. Never thought of a polite way to ask, but I’ve always been curious as to how many Indian co-workers of mine share a language other than English - seems like the number could be lower than expected, given the sheer amount of different languages.
> Large parts of the US provide ballots and other voting materials in Spanish (or Vietnamese, or Chinese, or various Native American languages, ...). Sure, in locations where other languages have a significant presence. But these languages always exist alongside English. There are no areas that I know of that do not produce said documents in English. English is universal. > Courts in the US will go to pretty extreme…
If I interpret you correctly, I think we mostly agree, on (at least) the following points: * English is clearly dominant in the US and enjoys a special status both in law and in practice. * However, linguistic pluralism is accommodated to a significant degree in the US, to a greater extent than it is in some other countries. * Whether to designate an official language is more of a cultural/political wedge issue than…
The first two yes, but I disagree that the last one is so much of a political wedge. The fact that English is the de-facto official language, but not actually an official language is the source of much headache. Actually designating several languages as officially supported (English for sure, probably Spanish as well. Maybe others like Mandarin & Cantonese but that would make more sense to delegate to the State level) would be beneficial. It would have practical and meaningful effect. Perhaps not to an individual's daily life, but definitely for institutions that need to interact with large segments of the population. I also fail to see why you think this is a right-wing opinion. Liberal states including California, Colorado, Hawaii, Illinois, Massachusetts, and New Hampshire, have made English an official language.
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"?…
> Urdu script can distinguish them, by adding a diacritic to the ا, but it's usually omitted
Not in my experience and certainly not as a student. I'm not an expert but at my school اس for something that sounds exactly as /ɪs/ would be considered completely invalid. Only اِس would be considered correct. Actually, I think اِز (more like iz) might be more correct phonetically.