How to count every language in India (2018) • Hacker News Board

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

#61

Post by iguy » Sun, Nov 01, 2020, 8:48 PM UTC

srtjstjsj wrote: post #50

naruvimama wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is true Urdu is just a colonial imposition, it is synthetically derived from Hindi by insisting that the script be Persian. Tarek Fatah makes a point about why Urdu isn't a distinct language from Hindi.

Yiddish is written in both hebrew letters and latin letters, but is one language. Language speakers don't care too much about the script when evolving their language; they use what they have.

I think Hindi/Urdu is quite a bit like Serbian/Croatian. The preferred script followed the religious divide, but (if I understand right) both sort-of standardised quite similar dialects out of a range of possibilities. And then later they were politically divided, and there were some efforts to move the official vocabulary away from each other's.

IIRC Sanskrit has also been written in dozens of scripts, there's a perfect one-to-one transliteration into most (maybe all) the north-indian scripts, although they have extra characters for their own sounds.

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

#62

Post by kevinpet » Sun, Nov 01, 2020, 8:49 PM UTC

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...”

"it's slightly different" confuses the issue.

It seems easy to say, "actually, no, India has multiple unrelated language groups as different from each other as English is from Hindi, and I don't just mean in isolated villages"

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

#63

Post by ponker » Sun, Nov 01, 2020, 9:12 PM UTC

srtjstjsj wrote: post #55

ponker wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Yes

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

#64

Post by guruparan18 » Sun, Nov 01, 2020, 9:30 PM UTC

srtjstjsj wrote: post #55

ponker wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Written scripts have used to change all over time. It is not possible to read at the get go, but after some practice, yes, any one can read old Tamil. Given that about ~55% [1] of written inscription are from Tamil, it is one of the proficient.

How do you measure the language change [2]? There are several approaches, the one I remember reading about is, you fetch the most basic kernel of a language, like very simple key words (like relations, food, feelings and so on) for about 100 words and then see how many of those words have changed since say last 10 years, last 50 years and 100 years and so on. You try going back as long as you can and you loose few words from 100 words you started, that's you delta.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_Indian_epigraphy 2. https://www.ling.upenn.edu/courses/Fall_2003/ling001/languag...

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

#65

Post by marc_abonce » Sun, Nov 01, 2020, 9:45 PM UTC

naruvimama wrote: post #42

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…

As the article says pre-neolithic, if you are not aware Andaman is also home to the sentinelese, a known isolated and uncontacted tribe who have preserved their way of life for 60,000 years of isolation. Oldest language could be a distinct language that has preserved its uniqueness. Due to the ice age, European languages can not be the oldest. The isolation of these tribes and the long human habitation in these regio…

> the sentinelese, a known isolated and uncontacted tribe who have preserved their way of life for 60,000 years of isolation.

I don't think they have actually been isolated for 60,000 years though. If I understand correctly, they chose to isolate in the 1800's because the British were kidnapping people. Before that they had contact with other Andaman islanders at least. For example, apparently the Sentinelese may speak a language of the Ongan family[1], which would mean that their language most likely diverged sometime within the last millennium or two, I think.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ongan_languages

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

#66

Post by naruvimama » Sun, Nov 01, 2020, 10:31 PM UTC

saagarjha wrote: post #58

naruvimama wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It was a joke, because every thread on hn about India, has a motivated group bringing out caste.

Just like every Hollywood movie involving Germany, has to have a hitler reference.

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

#67

Post by quadrifoliate » Sun, Nov 01, 2020, 10:32 PM UTC

dilippkumar wrote: post #35

quadrifoliate wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 anci…

That is interesting indeed! I skimmed over the paper, although most of it is too dense for me to understand.

A proven connection between Dravidian and Elamite would kind of upend most perceived ideas in India about Dravidian versus Indo-European languages (namely, that Dravidian ones are more indigenous than Indo-European).

Also, this is very likely just a coincidence, but I realized that the Tamil word for homeland is...Eelam [1].

-------------------------------------

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eelam

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

#68

Post by embit » Sun, Nov 01, 2020, 10:52 PM UTC

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?

You can find more information on their website.

http://www.peopleslinguisticsurvey.org/

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

#69

Post by mistrial9 » Sun, Nov 01, 2020, 10:53 PM UTC

yumraj wrote: post #59

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…

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 ne…

hmm American here - but I vaguely recall.. Gurmukhi is a variation on Punjabi, used by Sikhs for religious purposes, but Urdu is a 'persianized' version of Hindi (?)

Checking wikipedia, it mentions a "Punjabi diaspora family of languages." These distinctions seem understandable and interesting to me, of European descent and non-political.

thanks yumraj, for the many posts here today on this, it feels important at some basic level.

I enjoyed reading "In Search of the Cradle of Civilization" long ago.. and studied personally with one of the authors, in California.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subhash_Kak#In_Search_of_the_C...

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

#70

Post by Onewildgamer » Sun, Nov 01, 2020, 11:08 PM UTC

I come from a Sourashtra speaking community. We’re a small bunch of people immigrated from Gujarat to Southern parts in different waves during the Middle Ages, mostly because of war and trade.

Our language has been preserved though the common speak and has no agreed upon script, so it is majorly taught to the children by their parents and relatives. Most of us know Tamil/Kannada/Telugu because of the main language in the place we live in and also use it to publish local magazines.

The magazines though are published in Hindi, Tamil, Sourashtra scripts, the interest is declining at a fast rate. Fewer people want to buy and even fewer want to write. In my city, some are distributed for free only to see it being used for packing pakodas and samosas. Another factor is, many in our community marry people from outside the communities (I'm not against that) and their children can barely understand the language. Our language is still not in the endangered category, but I see it becoming one in the coming decades. More people in our community are getting educated, becoming modern (by western standards), want their children to communicate in English and as a result most people have become middle-class to rich. The reasons for our endangerment is partly because of modernisation.

I'm seeing the coming generations have lesser and lesser interest in growing the language as my Grandpa rightly feared, and will be one of the ones forgotten by the end of this century.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saurashtra_language