181–190 of 190 posts
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Wasn't Roman numerals in use, before the Indo-Arabic came to Europe? How come they are similar? They look worlds apart to me.. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_numerals
These are the words the Romans used: unus duo tres quattor quinque six septem octo novem decem ...
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और क्या हाल है भाई? If you're using an Apple device, you could try using a transliteration keyboard. Type in English, the word is printed in Hindi (I dunno if they have a transliteration keyboard for Bengali)
Is there a difference in the minimum font size that you find comfortable reading between latin and non-latin alphabets?
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There are also a few anti-OtherLanguage protests. For example, this is hardly "pro-OurLanguage" - http://www.thehindu.com/news/cities/bangalore/karnataka-raks...
That is pro-OurLanguage protest. Also, as long as there is English, its totally useless to learn Hindi.
> The language and script change every five hundred miles Huh, somebody is making a vast over-simplification, presumably in a well-intentioned attempt to package this in a way the Western mind can comprehend. Which frankly is futile. India is much more diverse than that. In my youth I spent some time bumming around Saurashtra, a region in Gujarat state that's about 150 miles square. Nearly 50 languages are indigenous…
> 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…
My family has their own language that is spoken by 2-3 villages max. 80 languages in a region is perfectly believable .
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In India, language and food, both change every 200km. When you tell this to people who haven't been to India, they usually think you are exaggerating but it's surreal how diverse India actually is.
The best analogy for westerners IMHO is to compare India to the EU with a stronger central government.
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No, the one spoken with family and friends – it's still limiting. Profanities in English aren't diverse either.
> Profanities in English aren't diverse either English profanity feels unsatisfying/watered-down. I suspect overuse in pop-culture has worn away most of the taboo factor, making it less cathartic.
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Sure, I love the fact that I can speak many languages. Why not. If you don't like the translation form 方言 to dialect, should I just call it fangyan or 方言? Or is there a more precise linguistic term for that? Our definition for "Language" is also different then. Should we call it "Yuyan" instead?
Terms in different languages don't map 1:1. You're trying to fit Chinese square pegs into English round holes. I think this is due to Chinese education methods, since you all do it - even very fluent writers such as yourself. I'd translate "方言" to "dialect" when it's mutually understandable, and "language" when it's not. So Singapore Hokkien and Taiwan Hokkien are both dialects of the Hokkien language . But I'd trans…
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I don't see any part of your comment being correct. First of all, "Mandarin" is spoken not only in China mainland, but also the standard in Singapore and Taiwan. It was a creation by the Republic of China (which later became Taiwan government) back in 1923, long before the current Chinese government came into power. Children use Mandarin in school because they have to learn it to be able to communicate with people co…
The language we call Mandarin has been the native language of some parts of northern China for thousands of years, and was certainly not “created” any time recently. Some people speaking dialects of that language migrated to other parts of China. But there are various other languages natively spoken elsewhere in the country. Singapore is a cosmopolitan port city, there are several Chinese languages spoken there, and…
In the same way that Hindi has been the native language of northern India for thousands of years (which is to say that while the Mandarin of today has connections to earlier forms of Chinese, it is hardly a monolithic, unchanging remnant of thousands of years ago).
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That is pro-OurLanguage protest. Also, as long as there is English, its totally useless to learn Hindi.
How is that a pro-OurLanguage protest? The board already had Kannada and English. In addition, Hindi was being added. That is clearly an anti-Hindi protest. Not a pro-Kannada protest.
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And what are called "dialects" in the Chinese context are just as much dialects as French, Italian, and Romanian are "dialects" of Romance.
That's how languages form. You don't get a language like French just by hoping for it to emerge or by letting dialects run their own lives and continue to diverge; you take it by taking a bunch of Romance dialects including quite separate ones (Langue d'Oc and the Langue d'Oil groups) and pushing them together through a common system of mass media (printed for the time, but still), education and cultural acceptance o…
That's also not how standard French formed. Standardized French is Parisian French, so just the 'dialect' of the politically-important centre. Not too dissimilar to Latin (which was originally narrowly the dialect of Rome) in that.
Whatever the propaganda, China still contains a number of non-mutually intelligible (though related) languages, but of course Mandarin enjoys much prominence and has an enormous number of speakers.