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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)

#71

Post by yorwba »

guruparan18 wrote: post #64
srtjstjsj wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> It is not possible to read at the get go, but after some practice, yes, any one can read old Tamil.

The "after some practice" makes this a bit of a squishy claim. For example, Malayalam and Tamil split less than 1000 years ago and are both descendants of Old Tamil. I would be surprised if "after some practice" a Malayalam speaker couldn't also read Old Tamil, or for that matter Modern Tamil (and vice versa for a Modern Tamil speaker learning Malayalam).

So is Tamil somehow older than Malayalam? I think not.

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

#72

Post by disown »

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 that languages divide us and silo us.

So should we just have one programming language? Should we have just one OS? Should we have one computer game? One social media? Should we have one political party? One school? One store? One book?

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

We already do. It's called math.

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

#73

Post by hawk_ »

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…

Italians can understand Spanish quite well and vice versa. Similar for Portuguese. That doesn't make them dialects of Latin.

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

#74

Post by yumraj »

hawk_ wrote: post #73
yumraj wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Italians can understand Spanish quite well and vice versa. Similar for Portuguese. That doesn't make them dialects of Latin.

I can understand some Punjabi, and given context might be able to guess Gujrati, Marathi, Bangla due to their origin in Sanskrit, but I did call them separate languages.

The ones I mentioned as dialects are indeed dialects, at least per commonly accepted standards.

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

#75

Post by bodhiandpysics1 »

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?

"Modern Tamil" is actually classical Tamil. The written language is basically fixed in form to the language of the first millenium CE (the Thirukural, a collection of aphorisms by a Jain monk from the 3-4th century is relatively understandable to modern readers of Tamil). The spoken language continued to develop and depending on your dialect is completely different! It's the equivalent if english speakers spoke modern english, and wrote like Beowulf. It is possible and common to be a native speaker of Tamil and not be literate. The situation is similiar in many other languages like Arabic. In general Malayalam speakers are not literate in Tamil, because classical Malayalam, though very similiar to classical Tamil gramatically, has a heavily Sanskritic vocabulary, while classical Tamil tends to not use sanskrit words. Incidentally, the earliest Tamil, the Cankam literature, is completely different, and was already incomprehensible by the end of the first millenium when commentaries were written to effectively translate it.

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

#77

Post by yumraj »

mistrial9 wrote: post #69
yumraj wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 som…

Gurmukhi is the script used to write Punjabi, at least in India. It was created by a Sikh Guru. Link: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gurmukhi

Interestingly, Pakistan has a state called Punjab where Punjabi is the main language, but I’m not sure what script they use.

Regarding Hindi and Urdu, I found the wikipedia page to at least be informative. Link: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hindi%E2%80%93Urdu_controver...

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

#78

Post by guruparan18 »

yorwba wrote: post #71
guruparan18 wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> It is not possible to read at the get go, but after some practice, yes, any one can read old Tamil. The "after some practice" makes this a bit of a squishy claim. For example, Malayalam and Tamil split less than 1000 years ago and are both descendants of Old Tamil. I would be surprised if "after some practice" a Malayalam speaker couldn't also read Old Tamil, or for that matter Modern Tamil (and vice versa for a Mo…

Malayalam split from Tamil around 1000 CE. When I said you might need some expertise and training to read old Tamil scripts, I mean this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aWIs17rSCg0&list=PLAU5iw78o0.... The video has closed captions if it is difficult to follow. Hope it helps.

Written Tamil have continuously evolved all along, the recent being around 1950 when printing became prevalent. The language itself changed very little, however only written letters survive and to know what was written 1000 years before you need some training.

Expert opinions might be different. Hope I am getting some information.

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

#79

Post by ido66667 »

yorwba wrote: post #71
guruparan18 wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> It is not possible to read at the get go, but after some practice, yes, any one can read old Tamil. The "after some practice" makes this a bit of a squishy claim. For example, Malayalam and Tamil split less than 1000 years ago and are both descendants of Old Tamil. I would be surprised if "after some practice" a Malayalam speaker couldn't also read Old Tamil, or for that matter Modern Tamil (and vice versa for a Mo…

There are many methods to try to determine how an ancient language was spoken, all of them by definition hypothetical, but since linguistic change does follow sensical rules, and happens in gradual steps (i.e. you can almost be sure that the vowel /u/ won't shift to the vowel /a/ in a single generation, and I bet there isn't a single recorded case of that happening, simply because /u/ and /a/ are very far away from each other in the mouth and acoustically).

For instance, we have very solid evidence (but still circumstantial, and therefore this is technically an hypothesis) that the Greek letter η, that now stands for /i/, had a long eh-like sound, likely /ε:/, for this and due to many other changes, we can say that were a Modern Greek speaker to speak with a Greek from the 5th century BC, they would have understood barely anything, barring certain specific words. From tracing how the language changed, according to the extent evidence, we can probably say that this speaker, however, would have mostly (but with difficulty) understood a speaker from 12th century Constantinople in simple day-to-day conversations. At the very least, the two speakers would have the same sound inventories and similar grammar, but somewhat different vocabularies.

I still agree with you that saying one language is older than another is meaningless. At most we can say that a language is probably more conservative than others.

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

#80

Post by bodhiandpysics1 »

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?

To give a sense of the differences the numbers one through ten in written tamil:

ondru, irandu, moondru, nangu, aintu, aru, ezhu (prounced like eru), ettu, ompattu, pattu

in modern:

oru, rendu, moonu, nalu, intu, aru, elu (or eru), ettu, ompati, pattu

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