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How to count every language in India (2018)

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Re: How to count every language in India (2018)

#31

Post by Arnavion »

quadrifoliate wrote: post #13
tgv wrote: post #3

It'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…

That would make Hindi and Urdu dialects of each other. I'm not saying this is necessarily right or wrong; it's a landmine I don't want to touch :)

Re: How to count every language in India (2018)

#32

Post by yorwba »

beeforpork wrote: post #25

The notion of an 'old language' is weird. What does that even mean? Why is Bo one of the oldest languages? Is Greek old? Is English old? Is Lithuanian old? Is Tamil old? Korean? Chinese (which one?)? Any language? If your answer is 'yes', then (a) please explain what you mean, and (b) rest assured that it is not the same language today as when it was 'young' (whatever that means) -- 'young X' is probably a different…

I think what people who talk about "old languages" use to determine a language's age is something like "what's the earliest date an ancestor of this language was used in writing" or "how long has this area been inhabited by populations genetically similar to modern speakers of this language".

Personally, I think most languages are old, except for constructed languages like Toki Pona that have only existed for a short time.

Re: How to count every language in India (2018)

#33

Post by pkd »

john4532452 wrote: post #4

There 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…

Tamil isn't the oldest language either. That would be one of the Austro-asiatic languages of the Andamans.

Re: How to count every language in India (2018)

#34

Post by emteycz »

quadrifoliate wrote: post #13
tgv wrote: post #3

It'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…

That definition does not work with Czech and Slovak.

Re: How to count every language in India (2018)

#35

Post by dilippkumar »

quadrifoliate wrote: post #26
dilippkumar wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Also, only Tamil has a non-Sanskrit origin and is completely different. Other South Indian languages do have Sanskrit origin/influence. Recent scholarship around this paints a very different and complicated picture of interactions between Dravidian and Indo-Iranian languages. Specifically, there is evidence that Indo-Iranian speakers and Dravidian speakers exchanged vocabulary even before Sanskrit and Tamil branche…

Thank you for a high-quality source! I am surprised to learn that phala “fruit” has Proto-Dravidian origins, it is used quite frequently in Sanskrit shlokas in both the literal and figurative (“reward”) senses. Even though the link seems to imply that it's more Elamitic than Dravidian, the case of Brahui [1] is very interesting as an instance of a Dravidian-linked language that's very different in origin from its geo…

You might be interested in David McAlpin’s 2015 paper about Brahui, Elamite and Proto-Dravidian [0].

Some context: Brahui is a language spoken in Pakistan that’s been a bit of a mystery till David McAlpin solved it with the proto-zagrosian hypothesis.

Brahui clearly looks like related to Dravidian, but didn’t fit into proto-dravidian or any reconstructed daughter languages of proto-dravidian. Simultaneously, the ancient language of Elamite looks a lot like Dravidian. (sidenote: there are cuneiform tablets written in elamite! Elam shows up prominently in the fall of Nineveh, the capital city of the super power of that era!)

The problem was chronology- Brahui is clearly older than the later descendants of Proto-Dravidian. Elamite is far older than the descendants of Proto-Dravidian. The question was how these two languages fit into the Dravidian family tree.

McAlpin’s 2015 hypothesis answers this question with a surprising and elegant idea: What if Brahui is related to Elamite instead of Dravidian?

He found that the pieces fit really well when you treat Elamite and Brahui as sibling languages descended from a parent language: Proto-Elamite. Next, he finds that Proto-Elamite and Proto-Dravidian cleanly fit as siblings descended from a mother language that he calls Proto-Zagrosian.

I’m not a linguist and I don’t know how well accepted this idea is among academic circles - but looking at this from outside, it seems to be a fairly well respected idea that’s being seriously considered by some academics.

PS: I did a google search for Proto-Zagrosian and the second result was my own comment on HN from a long time ago. I really wish there was more people writing/blogging about this.

[0]. https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=prot...

Re: How to count every language in India (2018)

#36

Post by RcouF1uZ4gsC »

The article takes as a given that preserving language is a good thing and it is a tragedy when a language dies.

I say that languages divide us and silo us. It is a triumph when a language dies because the people who previously spoke it now think and speak in a different language. Of course we should try to preserve any literature or folk-lore.

I look forward to the day when everyone on earth will be able to speak and communicate in a single language.

Re: How to count every language in India (2018)

#37

Post by tgv »

emteycz wrote: post #34
quadrifoliate wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

That definition does not work with Czech and Slovak.

Why? Aren't they rather close, and more of a language family than two distinct languages?

Re: How to count every language in India (2018)

#38

Post by ponker »

beeforpork wrote: post #25

The notion of an 'old language' is weird. What does that even mean? Why is Bo one of the oldest languages? Is Greek old? Is English old? Is Lithuanian old? Is Tamil old? Korean? Chinese (which one?)? Any language? If your answer is 'yes', then (a) please explain what you mean, and (b) rest assured that it is not the same language today as when it was 'young' (whatever that means) -- 'young X' is probably a different…

Well very old languages like Tamil have a very ancient person with whom a modern speaker could have a mutually intelligible conversation. An English speaker could not speak English with someone from 1000 years ago but a Tamil speaker could.

Re: How to count every language in India (2018)

#39

Post by ponker »

RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote: post #36

The article takes as a given that preserving language is a good thing and it is a tragedy when a language dies. I say that languages divide us and silo us. It is a triumph when a language dies because the people who previously spoke it now think and speak in a different language. Of course we should try to preserve any literature or folk-lore. I look forward to the day when everyone on earth will be able to speak and…

Isn’t Facebook evidence enough that “connecting everyone” isn’t necessarily a good thing?

Re: How to count every language in India (2018)

#40

Post by vram22 »

quadrifoliate wrote: post #24
rusticpenn wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At least with Hindi and Tamil, you can be sure because they come from different language families.

True. This may sound obvious to you, but I am not so sure about its obviousness in general in the West. A lot of western-educated people have asked me “So Hindi is the main language, and there are a lot of different dialects throughout the country, right?” – and I have no idea where to begin explaining that it's nothing like that, so I go with the time-tested “Well, it's slightly different...”

> and I have no idea where to begin explaining that it's nothing like that

(I have studied Sanskrit and Hindi in school for multiple years, and can understand a good amount of Marathi and Tamil.)

You can say this - I think it is true, not quite verified (partly heard from older relatives, partly deduction based on observing similarities in the mentioned languages' vocabularies):

Sanskrit came first - thousands of years ago. It is the language of the Vedas, 4 of India's most ancient scriptures. Many northern (including east and west) Indian languages are similar to Sanskrit and likely are descendants of it. Hindi, Gujarati, Marwari, Punjabi, Bengali, Oriya (not sure, but it sounds some like Bengali), Marathi, are some of these.

Languages of Indian states further east than Bengal, called the North Eastern states, like Assam, Nagaland, Manipur, etc. may not show a lot of Sanskrit influence because they may have Oriental influence instead, such as from SE Asia, China, etc. Except Assamese may have some Sanskrit influence, also not sure of Manipuri.

And of the southern states in the peninsula, Tamil has the least Sanskrit influence and is also said to be very ancient. The other three, Malayalam, Kannada and Telugu, have some Sanskrit influence.

Caveat: I am not a language expert.

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