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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)

#51

Post by srtjstjsj »

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...”

"The situation is a lot more nuanced than that."

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

#52

Post by srtjstjsj »

ffpip wrote: post #11
ape4 wrote: post #6

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.

While it's not close to a complete solution, I'm glad that we have Unicode to help.

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

#53

Post by srtjstjsj »

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…

I don't see how that argument applies to language but not culture.

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

#54

Post by srtjstjsj »

ffpip wrote: post #19
burlesona wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I think that since international cricket is more popular than international hockey, non-Indians know a lot about Indian cricket than hockey.

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

#55

Post by srtjstjsj »

ponker wrote: post #48
srtjstjsj wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is that measured?

Well measuring it exactly is impossible but relatively is easy. For example Tamil has been much more static than Greek which has been much more static than English over the last 1000 years.

Static how? Obviously there is no ancient audio. Is ancient Tamil writing readable by modern Tamil readers?

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

#56

Post by abdullahkhalids »

Arnavion wrote: post #31
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 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 :)

Why is it a landmine? I am an Urdu speaker, and totally fine with realizing that Urdu is the Persianised standard register of the Hindustani language, and Hindi is the standardised and Sanskritised register of the Hindustani language.

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

#57

Post by davehcker »

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…

I say why not have an environment for people to have the opportunity to learn multiple languages so that the inherent beauty of the variety of languages is preserved, and yet, we can communicate and silo. As a matter of fact, then multiple languages could actually come to bond us together.

Goethe said something along the lines- “He who does not know foreign languages does not know anything about his own”. As for the inherent beauty in a language, most would agree that certain thing expressed in language X 'tastes' different than in Y. As for uniting, I am neither German nor Persian, but it is my ability to use German or Persian that unites me to both the cultures (and people) in a much deeper way; of course, you can argue that the fact that I drew the boundaries of German/Persian is in itself a problem, and having had a single language would have been the ideal, but again, I doubt that since language X might be superior in terms of certain expressions over Y (until proven otherwise).

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

#58

Post by saagarjha »

naruvimama wrote: post #49
quadrifoliate wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The politics behind promoting Hindi is a religious one. It makes convenient to promote the varna system(modern caste system). As someone with some knowledge around this subject, this is a simplistic and inflammatory bad-faith reading of a very complex topic – how do you create a common country out of hundreds of splintered cultures, languages, and religions spoken by millions of people? The nearest parallel to how…

No discussion of India is complete without dragging caste into it, just like no discussion of Germany is complete without the holocaust. However, unlike the holocaust "Caste" and the "Caste system" originates in Europe. It is time that the textbooks are updated to reflect reality and not carry on a colonial-evalangical propaganda.

Not every discussion of Germany needs to bring up the Holocaust, just like not every discussion of India needs to mention caste.

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

#59

Post by yumraj »

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…

Bhojpuri, Maithili, Haryanwi, Braj, Bundelkhandi, dialects from Rajasthan, Himachal and so and so forth, and I'll say even Khari boli are all dialects of Hindi. We may not be able to have a fluent conversation, but for most part we'll understand the context and will be able to speak. In fact Hindi dialects change every 100km or so I'll say in the Hindi belt.

Punjabi, Gujrati, Marathi and others (picking from areas neighboring the Hindi belt) are not dialects, they are languages, even though from that list Gujrati and Marathi use Devnagri script (or very close to it).

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

#60

Post by yumraj »

Arnavion wrote: post #31
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 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 :)

Urdu is definitely a dialect of Hindi. Speakers of Hindi, and of Urdu, can understand most of what is said and can have a conversation for most part. They may not understand 100% of the other language, especially when words that are closer to their Sanskrit or Persian origin are used and have not become part of the colloquial other.
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