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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)

#121

Post by valarauko »

bodhiandpysics1 wrote: post #95
guruparan18 wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And Tamil have long tradition of resisting Sanskirt influence. With elaborate grammar rules dictating if you must use loan words when, where and how to use them. It is more true for literary setting and never true for day-today speaking. Also, Tamil words also made into Sanskrit, don't know what it means. Languages are basically for interchanging ideas. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I mean... Tamilians sort of dominated of dominated Sanskrit literature in 7th-10th centuries. Dandin, Kumarila, Shankara, Dharmakirti, Ramanujan and Madhva. Not to mention the Bhagavatapurana, which very quickly became probably the most important religious text in India! I wouldn't say Tamilians rejected sanskrit... they just kept the two seperate. There aren't very many tamilian words itself in sanskrit (mina meanin…

Most of the people in that list were likely not Tamilian - Shankara was likely Malayali, Kumarila & Dharmakirti are just as likely to have been from Assam, and Madhva was Tuluva.

What about the Bhagavatapurana is Tamil?

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

#122

Post by valarauko »

yumraj wrote: post #119
valarauko wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pakistani Punjabi uses the Shahmukhi script, which is based on the Perso-Arabic script.

Thanks. So, Punjabi must be one of those rare languages that is written in two entirely different scripts by roughly equal population sizes. Are there any other examples of such a language?

There are, with many more examples historically.

Konkani in the Devanagari script is an official language of India & the state language of Goa - while Christian Konkanis (a sizable proportion of the population) prefer to write it in the Latin script.

Kashmiri Pundits used the Sharda script, while Muslim Kashmiris wrote it in the Persian script.

Historically, the picture is more complicated. People were familiar with multiple scripts, and shifted across them based on context and jargon. For example, when the British took Sindh from the Nawab, they found the natives writing the same language in multiple scripts. The administration of the erswhile Nawab worked in Persian, while merchants used Khudabadi, a landa script related to Gurmukhi. They found that women in the home preferred the Devanagari script, as did the priestly class. Since the British were most concerned with the needs of the Persianate clerks, they mandated that Sindhi only in the Persian script would be taught in schools. You will find similar situations across India, with people adopting scripts geared towards the audience they were writing to, rather than an exclusive formalized script unique to a language. Literate Medieval Indian would be fluent in multiple languages and scripts, and combined them in interesting ways.

On a tangent, I recall an argument by Bhagat Singh that the different languages of India should adopt a common script to foster unity - Devanagari in his opinion.

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

#123

Post by bodhiandpysics1 »

valarauko wrote: post #121
bodhiandpysics1 wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean... Tamilians sort of dominated of dominated Sanskrit literature in 7th-10th centuries. Dandin, Kumarila, Shankara, Dharmakirti, Ramanujan and Madhva. Not to mention the Bhagavatapurana, which very quickly became probably the most important religious text in India! I wouldn't say Tamilians rejected sanskrit... they just kept the two seperate. There aren't very many tamilian words itself in sanskrit (mina meanin…

Most of the people in that list were likely not Tamilian - Shankara was likely Malayali, Kumarila & Dharmakirti are just as likely to have been from Assam, and Madhva was Tuluva. What about the Bhagavatapurana is Tamil?

It literally quotes the Azhvars... you're right about Malva, that was a mistake. I don't agree with a possible assamese origin of either Kumarila or Dharmakirti, and see no reason to doubt Taranatha, and in the 9th century, the distinction between Malayali and Tamil is academic.

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

#125

Post by known »

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.

Caste matters everywhere: schools, jobs or life at large

https://www.livemint.com/Opinion/wquRqpqgRGfDP58kN9BNOM/cast...

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

#126

Post by john4532452 »

yumraj wrote: post #7
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…

> The politics behind promoting Hindi is a religious one. It makes convenient to promote the varna system(modern caste system). This is the reason the religious party and organizations(BJP, RSS) promotes Hindi and forces in to the education of all non-hindi speaking states too. Rest of your comment is factual, except not sure if Tamil is the oldest language or Sanskrit or some other is. But the above quoted part of y…

> Hindi fits the bill among st all other Indian languages is because it has the largest footprint

Not true. Even if it were think about the following analogy given by a national leader. I dont remember his name. There are more crows in India than Peacock. Yet Peacock is the national bird not the crow.

If there must be a national language then it should be English. Simply because it is the one that has prospered the coutry. Hindi does not help the states where hindi is the primary language. Bihar people migrate to south india for jobs and learn tamil and telegu, while the south indians leave india to abroad.

Preach Hindi to the people who are still low class but you learn english conveniently, thats evil IMO.

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

#127

Post by john4532452 »

quetzthecoatl wrote: post #28
u801e wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Hindi was promoted because of the need for a common language for a nation with 300+ official languages (not counting the dialects) - as it's the language that is most commonly spoke and understood I thought that English actually served that purpose even in India (unofficially).

un officially yes, but as you can imagine, it's not an Indian language, and it's the language of our colonizer. It's more acceptable now, but back in the day, it was an absolute no no. Besides, common men did not speak English. Just the very highly educated (back then. Now, it's much more common among all classes).

For non-hindi speaking states both hindi and english are the same. At least with english it give jobs and enriches lives.

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

#128

Post by msaharia »

bodhiandpysics1 wrote: post #105
msaharia wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

No worries. I meant in the Indic language family, not Dravidian. The Tamil version definitely preceded that.
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