I was hoping an AI would analyze every post in the .IN domain.
Many people who speak some rare languages in India do not have the tech skills to put their language online.
Some languages are already dead, except for academic purposes.
How to count every language in India (2018)
11–20 of 128 posts
Re: How to count every language in India (2018)
#12There is a widespread misconception about India's National language as being Hindi. Article 343 of the Constitution prescribes Hindi as written in Devanagari script as the official language of the government along with English. The Constitution, however, did not declare Hindi as the national language or any other language. Hindi does not have any special privilege than any other state languages like Tamil, Telugu, Ma…
> The politics behind promoting Hindi is a religious one. It makes convenient to promote the varna system(modern caste system). This is the reason the religious party and organizations(BJP, RSS) promotes Hindi and forces in to the education of all non-hindi speaking states too. Rest of your comment is factual, except not sure if Tamil is the oldest language or Sanskrit or some other is. But the above quoted part of y…
> Why should the lingua franca of any country be a foreign language, it should be a local language. Hindi fits the bill
My understanding is that this is (or was) contested in the south. While Hindi is (as you say) large and local, it's also specifically northern. (The southern languages are very different, non-indo-european.) The counter-argument for English is that, while foreign, at least it's equally foreign all round.
Re: How to count every language in India (2018)
#13It's a pity there's no (link to the) definition of language they used. With so many, where do you draw the line?
> With so many, where do you draw the line?
The whole issue of language v/s dialect is a complex one; but I have adjusted to the one in this popular article [1]: if you speak a language and can enter into a conversation with a speaker of a variation on that language relatively easily, it qualifies as a dialect.
> A Mandarin-speaker can no more “adjust” to Cantonese than a Swede could “adjust” to German.
Most of the well-known Indian languages actually fail this test. Someone who has grown up speaking Hindi cannot reliably converse with someone in Bangla, Sambalpuri, or Tamil. If anything, the word "dialect" is overused regarding India – Bhojpuri [2] was often mentioned as a dialect of Hindi; but as a fluent Hindi speaker I cannot claim to understand or have a fluid conversation with someone speaking Bhojpuri. I am glad that it is at least sometimes referred to as a language now.
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[1] https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2016/01/di...
Re: How to count every language in India (2018)
#14There is a widespread misconception about India's National language as being Hindi. Article 343 of the Constitution prescribes Hindi as written in Devanagari script as the official language of the government along with English. The Constitution, however, did not declare Hindi as the national language or any other language. Hindi does not have any special privilege than any other state languages like Tamil, Telugu, Ma…
> There is a widespread misconception about India's National language as being Hindi.
The same misconception is present with national sport (believed to be Hockey, actually is no sport)
Re: How to count every language in India (2018)
#15Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The politics behind promoting Hindi is a religious one. It makes convenient to promote the varna system(modern caste system). This is the reason the religious party and organizations(BJP, RSS) promotes Hindi and forces in to the education of all non-hindi speaking states too. Rest of your comment is factual, except not sure if Tamil is the oldest language or Sanskrit or some other is. But the above quoted part of y…
> Why should the lingua franca of any country be a foreign language, it should be a local language. Hindi fits the bill My understanding is that this is (or was) contested in the south. While Hindi is (as you say) large and local, it's also specifically northern. (The southern languages are very different, non-indo-european.) The counter-argument for English is that, while foreign, at least it's equally foreign all r…
Yes I believe that is correct. The opposition is mostly political in nature.
Also, only Tamil has a non-Sanskrit origin and is completely different. Other South Indian languages do have Sanskrit origin/influence.
Which is possibly why Tamil Nadu is the most anti-Hindi state.
Re: How to count every language in India (2018)
#16There is a widespread misconception about India's National language as being Hindi. Article 343 of the Constitution prescribes Hindi as written in Devanagari script as the official language of the government along with English. The Constitution, however, did not declare Hindi as the national language or any other language. Hindi does not have any special privilege than any other state languages like Tamil, Telugu, Ma…
> There is a widespread misconception about India's National language as being Hindi. The same misconception is present with national sport (believed to be Hockey, actually is no sport)
Hockey? Really?
I would surely have guessed Cricket.
Re: How to count every language in India (2018)
#17It's a pity there's no (link to the) definition of language they used. With so many, where do you draw the line?
Unknown attribution, I've read that a language is a dialect with an army and a navy. Not entirely applicable here though, as there are likely geographic and historical separations at play too.
Re: How to count every language in India (2018)
#18Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Why should the lingua franca of any country be a foreign language, it should be a local language. Hindi fits the bill My understanding is that this is (or was) contested in the south. While Hindi is (as you say) large and local, it's also specifically northern. (The southern languages are very different, non-indo-european.) The counter-argument for English is that, while foreign, at least it's equally foreign all r…
Yes I believe that is correct. The opposition is mostly political in nature. Also, only Tamil has a non-Sanskrit origin and is completely different. Other South Indian languages do have Sanskrit origin/influence. Which is possibly why Tamil Nadu is the most anti-Hindi state.
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Re: How to count every language in India (2018)
#19Earlier quoted context omitted.
> There is a widespread misconception about India's National language as being Hindi. The same misconception is present with national sport (believed to be Hockey, actually is no sport)
Hockey? Really? I would surely have guessed Cricket.
Hockey was more popular in India in last century than it is now. It won Olympic medals so people started calling it 'National Sport'. Then cricket's popularity blew up (it was popular, it just increased a lot).
A fun question people ask here in India is 'What is the national sport of India?'. Most people reply cricket, few 'intellectuals' say hockey, but there is no national sport.
Re: How to count every language in India (2018)
#20It's a pity there's no (link to the) definition of language they used. With so many, where do you draw the line?
> With so many, where do you draw the line? The whole issue of language v/s dialect is a complex one; but I have adjusted to the one in this popular article [1]: if you speak a language and can enter into a conversation with a speaker of a variation on that language relatively easily, it qualifies as a dialect. > A Mandarin-speaker can no more “adjust” to Cantonese than a Swede could “adjust” to German. Most of the w…
At least with Hindi and Tamil, you can be sure because they come from different language families.