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Languages of India

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Re: Languages of India

#181

Post by manfredo »

xkgt wrote: post #151
manfredo wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I am of the firm belief that it is government's job to reach out to the people it represents and not the other way around. Designating an official language or set of official languages renders a section of people as disadvantaged outcasts. It is not a crime to not know a language. Even if we are not talking about impact to an individual from a liberal point of view, this official favoring of languages leads to extinc…

> I am of the firm belief that it is government's job to reach out to the people it represents and not the other way around. Designating an official language or set of official languages renders a section of people as disadvantaged outcasts. It is not a crime to not know a language.

What and Earth makes you think that designating an official language makes it a crime for people not to know that language? Designating official languages is just being transparent about what languages will be used to render services.

> Even if we are not talking about impact to an individual from a liberal point of view, this official favoring of languages leads to extinction of smaller languages by means of them not being as useful to future generations as some other mainstream language.

Language extinction happens as populations become more interconnected, regardless of official languages. They're not going to be as useful regardless. And in fact, official language designation is sometimes employed to keep dying languages alive. North and South Dakota designated some indigenous languages as official languages.

Re: Languages of India

#182

Post by lagolinguini »

jfk13 wrote: post #104
owaislone wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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"?…

Devanagiri script has one drawback for non-native speakers though, which is identifying the schwa syncope rule. All Devnagiri consonants always carry an implicit schwa unless otherwise modified by a diacritic. However, in Hindustani, this schwa is sometimes dropped, and it is not always obvious where or when it should be dropped to a non-native speaker.

Another issue is the allophony of the schwas surrounding ह (/h/) in words like कहना which is actually pronounced [kɛɦɛnaː] and not [kəɦ(ə)naː]. (note that this is also an instance of the schwa deletion)

Re: Languages of India

#183

Post by jhanschoo »

yumraj wrote: post #121
aatharuv wrote: post #14

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.

> reasonable linguistic definition

For linguists, the colloquial language is the most important aspect of a language, and it's actually very reasonable for that.

First, most languages do not have a written form, and for those that do, most could not communicate in writing until very recently.

Second, until very recently, most people could not communicate in anything but their colloquial form, and even then, most communication is colloquial form.

Finally, linguists are primarily concerned with analyzing what makes a language a language (vs. not a language) rather than what makes a language a language (vs. another language). For this reason it makes sense to consider only the colloquial language, since everyone who participates in a language to communicate and not for ideological reasons participates in the colloquial language, but the same cannot be said for "standard language".

Re: Languages of India

#184

Post by peterburkimsher »

skissane wrote: post #159
karthikvellanki wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your co-worker's observation is actually more obvious than we think it is. Since states in India are essentially divided based on linguistic grounds, he would have been exposed to two Indian languages at best - the regional language in his town and Hindi (if the dominant language in the town is not Hindi already). In the Bay Area you'll find people from various states of India.

> In the Bay Area you'll find people from various states of India. Doesn't the same thing happen within India itself, due to internal interstate migration? Not everyone who works in (for example) Bangalore's IT industry grew up there.

On a related note, does that make people in (e.g.) Bangalore speak Hindi more than Kannada?

In China, the purpose-built electronics city of Shenzhen is full of migrants from other regions, so the local language is Mandarin even though the surrounding Guangdong province speaks Cantonese.

Re: Languages of India

#185

Post by lagolinguini »

yumraj wrote: post #148
random314 wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Noone uses the so called text book Hindi on the street. Text book Hindi was introduced as a way to eliminate Persian words from Hindi about 100 years ago. So far text book Hindi has stayed strictly inside text books and dramas. Zaroor is indeed a Hindi word of Persian origin. Just like zeher, as opposed to Vish - which can only be found in text books.

What's your point? I already said in a separate comment that there is colloquial Hindi, which like many other languages has words from other languages, especially from Urdu. But that does not make those words Hindi. They remain Urdu words. We similarly use several words from Latin, French and other languages in colloquial English, but from pure language standpoint I doubt that they'd be called English words. Edit: A…

Would you say सफ़ेद, गरम, अख़बार, वक़्त, मुज्ररिम, इलज़ाम, ख़त, etc are not Hindi words? Would you rather say श्वेत, ऊष्म, समाचारपत्र, मुजरिम, आरोप, पत्र? Most people use them interchangeably.

Re: Languages of India

#186

Post by sn41 »

peterburkimsher wrote: post #184
skissane wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In the Bay Area you'll find people from various states of India. Doesn't the same thing happen within India itself, due to internal interstate migration? Not everyone who works in (for example) Bangalore's IT industry grew up there.

On a related note, does that make people in (e.g.) Bangalore speak Hindi more than Kannada? In China, the purpose-built electronics city of Shenzhen is full of migrants from other regions, so the local language is Mandarin even though the surrounding Guangdong province speaks Cantonese.

Not really... native Bangaloreans generally make it a point not to speak Hindi. As for people in the IT Sector, "English is the Lingua Franca" (pun intended) :)

Re: Languages of India

#187

Post by kranner »

yumraj wrote: post #123
u801e wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> Just because zaroor is commonly used doesn't make it Hindi.

By this reasoning Urdu is the most widely spoken language of India.

'Nishchit' doesn't even by itself replace 'zaroor'. 'Nishchit' means certain or definite. To replace 'zaroor' (certainly or definitely) you would actually have to say 'nishchit roop se'.

Hindi-speaking people absolutely use 'zaroor' and 'bilkul' instead of 'nishchit roop se' when they're actually speaking Hindi, instead of self-consciously speaking Sanskritised Hindi in a formal register -- and this is always in the context of a specific political alignment.

Re: Languages of India

#188

Post by ppsreejith »

supernova87a wrote: post #64

Too many languages, too many religions to govern a country like this effectively. Unpopular truth, but truth nonetheless.

> Unpopular truth, but truth nonetheless. Why do you think so? The issues we do have with governance don't seem to be because of the diversity of languages or religions.

Re: Languages of India

#189

Post by kranner »

lagolinguini wrote: post #185
yumraj wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's your point? I already said in a separate comment that there is colloquial Hindi, which like many other languages has words from other languages, especially from Urdu. But that does not make those words Hindi. They remain Urdu words. We similarly use several words from Latin, French and other languages in colloquial English, but from pure language standpoint I doubt that they'd be called English words. Edit: A…

Would you say सफ़ेद, गरम, अख़बार, वक़्त, मुज्ररिम, इलज़ाम, ख़त, etc are not Hindi words? Would you rather say श्वेत, ऊष्म, समाचारपत्र, मुजरिम, आरोप, पत्र? Most people use them interchangeably.

Most people just use words in the former category. A lot of people wouldn't even recognise some of the words in the latter category if they heard them being spoken, as opposed to seeing them in writing.

Re: Languages of India

#190

Post by yumraj »

lagolinguini wrote: post #185
yumraj wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's your point? I already said in a separate comment that there is colloquial Hindi, which like many other languages has words from other languages, especially from Urdu. But that does not make those words Hindi. They remain Urdu words. We similarly use several words from Latin, French and other languages in colloquial English, but from pure language standpoint I doubt that they'd be called English words. Edit: A…

Would you say सफ़ेद, गरम, अख़बार, वक़्त, मुज्ररिम, इलज़ाम, ख़त, etc are not Hindi words? Would you rather say श्वेत, ऊष्म, समाचारपत्र, मुजरिम, आरोप, पत्र? Most people use them interchangeably.

Yes, they are Urdu words, not Hindi. Yes, they are more commonly used than the Hindi words you mentioned.

For what it's worth, मुजरिम is also Urdu. Not sure about आरोप, but I have a feeling that it's also Urdu, though I could be wrong.

Edit: read any Hindi newspaper these days, at least the online edition, and in fact you will find a lot of common Hindi/Urdu words being replaced with English words written in Devnagri.

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