151–160 of 190 posts
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Why did CERN spend $185,000 plus labor on a TLD?
CERN is one of the rare cases this makes sense, since it's otherwise an international organisation with a domain under a ccTLD of a specific country (Switzerland).
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>>Part of that is South India tends to be assertively anti-Hindi for various historical/cultural reasons. We are pro-OurLanguage, whatever that language. If that feels anti-Hindi to you, one can't help. You almost are suggesting to be pro-YourLanguage one has to throw out their their language.
There are also a few anti-OtherLanguage protests. For example, this is hardly "pro-OurLanguage" - http://www.thehindu.com/news/cities/bangalore/karnataka-raks...
Also, as long as there is English, its totally useless to learn Hindi.
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>>I find it hard to process this claim. I think me means dialects. Which many times can sound very different. During my first semester engineering we had a electronics lecturer who came from North Karnataka. They speak a fairly different dialect of Kannada. When I heard her talking for the first time, I was quite startled to see that some thing like that would also mean Kannada. In Bangalore we have our typical stree…
I am pleasantly surprised to see Kannada and Karnataka mentioned. I am a Kannadiga from Bengaluru. As for street slang of the city, don't ignore the copious amounts of Urdu loan words! As you might already know, the case with Kannada is more complex. Firstly, it has high amount of diglossia. Even with all the unnecessary, flowery Sanskrit loan words removed, the spoken form is greatly different from the written form.…
Apparently if your language isn't used for economic, science or to say activities that advance the state of world affairs, your language stagnates. For example, you would run out of words to describe something like a Lorry/Truck. So you start naming it on the basis of number of wheels. Like for example you would call Auto Rickshaw as ತ್ರಿ ಚಕ್ರ ವಾಹನ. The literal translation comes down to three wheeled vehicle. But it sounds strange to say it that way. So you just say 'Auto', a loaned word from english.
So you end up borrowing a lot of words from other languages if the worldly state of affairs aren't getting invented in your language.
And yeah, the other part is spot on. Kannadigas aren't very assertive of their identity. As a language Kannada is >2000 years old. There are countries on earth today which didn't have a written language back then. And then of course with such a long history you also get a lot of literature.
I always wondered why many non-Latin (mostly cursive) scripts have little variation across different typefaces. Maybe I wasn't looking hard enough? Well, the article mentions a similar observation by a Sri Lankan typographer, so I guess I am not alone. Can someone maybe point me to other non-Latin typefaces that have "their own typographic style"? I found the Baloo samples (last one in the article) refreshing. The st…
> Can someone maybe point me to other non-Latin typefaces that have "their own typographic style"? CJK scripts have traditionally used Ming, Song, and Gothic (sans-serif) typefaces.
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It was pretty gradual. For a while the only public-facing domain was elgoog.google which I think started as an April Fool's joke.
Not that it matters much but IIRC joke was http://com.google
Based on what friends from South India tell me, it looks like South India in particular is embracing English. Even poor people are sending their children to schools where they can learn English. Most of the people I know, when they text on a phone use the Latin alphabet. India has fully embraced the global system which is based on English. I would guess that within 20 years, more people will speak English on a regula…
I always wondered why many non-Latin (mostly cursive) scripts have little variation across different typefaces. Maybe I wasn't looking hard enough? Well, the article mentions a similar observation by a Sri Lankan typographer, so I guess I am not alone. Can someone maybe point me to other non-Latin typefaces that have "their own typographic style"? I found the Baloo samples (last one in the article) refreshing. The st…
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Why fetishize diversity for its own sake, especially when it's a barrier to communication? I think we should all speak one language (preferably, the one we're speaking now). The information suddenly marketable to or directly consumable by anyone at any given place will significantly increase.
No way, English is too dry and limiting due to the lack of emotional tones that are present at least in Spanish and Russian (because of the flexibility of words and their order in a sentence). I'm ok with using it for technical purposes but I would prefer something else to actually talk.
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> Nearly 50 languages are indigenous to that one region alone. Not dialects. Languages. I am a native Indian, born, raised and living there (I mean in India). I find it hard to process this claim. I am pretty sure there are about 10 languages in any fairly diverse region of the country, but beyond that what we find are mostly dialects of various languages. I am not sure if you are a 'western mind' (as you self identi…
The distinction between dialects and languages is always rather dodgy and politically loaded (as anyone who uses the words "Chinese Language" soon finds out). One of the better working definitions I've seen is that "a language is a dialect with an army and a navy" -- which would explain why Hindi and Urdu get to be separate languages, but Bhojpuri is sometimes counted as a dialect. Anyhow, I personally am happy to re…
Do you remember the title or author of the book by any chance?
This is fascinating. Because there is a pocket of Brahui (a Dravidian language) speakers in Pakistan.
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> the Chinese government doesn’t want to acknowledge that they are separate mutually unintelligible languages. Except they are not mutually unintelligible. Put someone from heilongjiang province in Sichuan and they will still be able to understand the language, albeit with more difficulty. Though there are dialects that do have completely different pronunciation, they all use the same underlying script , save a selec…
Are you a native speaker? Because 廣東話 and 閩南話 are totally unintelligible to me, and I want your language superpower.
When youve talked to one of them youve talked to all of them.