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Languages of India

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Re: Languages of India

#201

Post by z3phyr »

neuralzen wrote: post #2

When I visited Himachel Predesh I stayed a few days in a remote Himalayan village named Malana, sometimes referred to as "The Village of Taboos" due to all of the rules they have, largely concerning outsiders. Outsiders are not allowed to touch a Malanan person, touch or enter a building, or even speak the village language even if the outsider know some of it. They also claimed to be the world's oldest continuous dem…

"The descendants of Alexander's armies" is a pretty common trope across Northern India, Pakistan, Afghanistan and parts of Iraq. I doubt all the claims though

Coming back to Malana, the language they speak, Kanashi, is not an Indo-European language in roots but rather a Sion-Tibetian one.

Re: Languages of India

#202

Post by saagarjha »

lagolinguini wrote: post #96
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.

This isn't really a difference in pronunciation between Hindu and Urdu as much as it is a sound change that has occurred in some dialects of the Hindustani language. Both Hindi and Urdu have the consonant /z/. However in parts of India this consonant has shifted from /z/ to /dʒ/. It is considered colloquial or uneducated.

TIL that it's supposed to start with a "z" sound…I've always heard it be pronounced with a "j".

Re: Languages of India

#203

Post by z3phyr »

u801e wrote: post #56
owaislone wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It depends. For what an urdu speaking person will use "Zaroor", a hindi speaking person would use "Avashya".

Re: Languages of India

#204

Post by z3phyr »

kranner wrote: post #187
yumraj wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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'r…

अवश्य - Avashya

It is closer to "Certainly"

Re: Languages of India

#205

Post by _emacsomancer_ »

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.

That's like saying: "Star is a Latin word. English is tungol. Just because English speakers say star all the time doesn't make it English."

Re: Languages of India

#206

Post by _emacsomancer_ »

yumraj wrote: post #190
lagolinguini wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Is चाभी a Hindi word?

Re: Languages of India

#207

Post by avemuri »

danans wrote: post #45
vishnugupta wrote: post #20

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 all the above change noticeably every 200KM And if you are in a dense enough area, it can change every 2km, when accounting for differences in socially conditioned dialects and customs.

You mean a sparse enough area? I've generally found dense areas are more homogeneous while even neighboring villages in sparsely populated areas with bad roads and no telecommunications tend to be very different. Makes intuitive sense since transmission of culture is easier.

Re: Languages of India

#208

Post by kranner »

z3phyr wrote: post #204
kranner wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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'r…

अवश्य - Avashya It is closer to "Certainly"

Yes, but I didn't say there was no word in formal Hindi that didn't mean the same thing as 'zaroor'. I said 'nishchit' isn't that word.

'Avashya' is again a word you wouldn't be able to use in colloquial speech without coming across as eccentric. It means the same thing as 'zaroor' but it's like saying "I am desirous of x" instead of "I want x".

Re: Languages of India

#209

Post by kungito »

ignoramous wrote: post #50

Not just Hindi but Gujarati has a dialect that is heavily influenced by Perso-Arabic vocabulary called Lisan ud-Da'wat [0] As a native speaker of the later, I can fully attest to the fact that the language isn't mutually intelligible with Gujarati as spoken in India. It is even more true for the written form of these languages. There's a day and night difference with Perso-Arabic influence simply overwhelming its Guj…

With Croatian-Serbian it isn't even about the difference in phonetics. The only reason you wouldn't understand each other is the 1-5% of vocabulary but even with that there are bigger differences within the country's regions than there is between official variants of the languages.

Re: Languages of India

#210

Post by User23 »

vbtemp wrote: post #99

Lost among here is Sentinelese https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sentinelese_language The only language where not a single word is known to the outside world!

On some level you have to respect a people whose response to anthropologists is to see how many arrows they can stick in them.
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