Live data from Hacker News

How to count every language in India (2018)

atlasobscura.com

101–110 of 128 posts

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

#101
post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It takes a couple of years for the pain to really begin!

What pain you are talking about? Can you elaborate?

Having friends and families chanting it for generations, never heard of any such pain.

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

#102
post #97
post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any specific mantras ?

Gayatri Mantra would be a good start. Another one is "Om namah Bhagwate vasudevaya." YouTube has many if you just want to listen couple of times to remember them.

Check vishnu sahastranam too.

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

#103
post #101
post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What pain you are talking about? Can you elaborate?

Having friends and families chanting it for generations, never heard of any such pain.

There is a saying in sanskrit that you can either rule a kingdom or learn grammar. Learning sanskrit is a long road and its not an easy one.

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

#104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 e…

Fortunately, there are Tamil poems written around 200 CE that are still readable and understandable by native speaker. Tamil poems follow strict grammar and structural rules for poems, so they don't change over time (see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venpa ). Here is poem that speaks about children being joyous, and how they playfully eat food. A simple ordeal in everyday life. Its about 7 lines and everyday speaker…

Nice poem. thanks for sharing

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

#105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bengali is very much a descendent of Sanskrit. Assamese (and Oriya) is essentially a somewhat distant dialect of Bengali. Most languages of Asia that aren't part of the Chinese world (Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and modern Vietnamese) have tons of Sanskrit or Pali (or both) in them. Tamil has lots of sanskrit in it (good examples are naka meaning finger nail, singa meaning lion, ampala from ambara meaning sky) it just…

Assamese is NOT a dialect of Bengali. It is older than Bengali and infact the first non-Sanskrit language to which Ramayana was translated to. The Assamese script itself is in a continuous development since 5th century. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Umachal_rock_inscription

The earliest extent translation of the Ramayana is the Tamil Kampan Ramayana from the late 12th century. The might have been a Khmer translation earlier. The Assamese Kotha Ramayana is about two hundred years later. The Jain Ardhamagghadi Ramayana is very old, perhaps older than the Valmikiramayana!

I stand corrected about Assamese's relationship with Bengali.

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

#106

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…

I have many friends who speak Sourashtra. It is always exciting and interesting to see how much they love their language and want to keep it in day-today interaction in house hold. I think any language that is spoken in kitchen and in dining table will survive long. Sourashtra will to!

Your comment warms my heart. I’ll try my best to teach my nieces and nephews at least, hoping they carry the baton in the future.

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

#107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thirukural[1] is a classic Tamil text on philosophy and secular ethics, which is considered to be at-least 1500 years old. Many verses of this text can be easily read and understood by anyone with intermediate level proficiency in Tamil. And so are most text from Sangam literature[2], which are even older. Thiruvasagam[3] and other Bakthi literature are widely used as a prayer hymns and can be understood with basic l…

This politicization and purification drive has made tamil to some extent less usable. Far from preserving tamil, many in the current generation can not read, write or understand tamil. It is lacking in modern technical literature and comics. Most kids in school memorize tirukural, without understanding a word. Pushing the burden on preserving old language on kids is actually driving them from the language itself.

> This politicization and purification drive has made tamil to some extent less usable. Far from preserving tamil, many in the current generation can not read, write or understand tamil.

Can you elaborate on how you concluded that Tamil has become less usable? Citing sources will be helpful.

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

#108

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…

> It makes convenient to promote the varna system(modern caste system) Not sure how Hindi is related to the caste system. Caste system plagues all of India irrespective of the mother tongue. > forces in to the education of all non-hindi speaking states too Education is a state subject in India, the union government cannot force a language on a state

> Education is a state subject in India

This is not true anymore. Education used to be a state subject but it is now in concurrent list; which means the union govt. has a say in education. That's how the union govt. was able to mandate three language formula in New Education Policy 2020.

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

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

#109
post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having friends and families chanting it for generations, never heard of any such pain.

There is a saying in sanskrit that you can either rule a kingdom or learn grammar. Learning sanskrit is a long road and its not an easy one.

Long but pleasent journey, I must say.

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

#110
post #37
post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

They are distinct languages from the same language family, which are understood by speakers of the other language, but not spoken. Czechs understand Slovaks and vice versa, but both are talking in their own languages, and speaking the other language can't be done properly without studying it.
Post reply on HN