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Languages of India

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Re: Languages of India

#51

Post by shripadk »

anuraj wrote: post #12

India's right wing government under Modi is trying to impose Hindi on Indians who belong to different ethnicity and speak diverse set of languages. A sure shot recipe for balkanization of a young nation.

> trying to impose Hindi on Indians

That turned out to be a big hoax. This is the second time such a frenzy was created for no apparent reason. There is no such "imposition" done by the Centre. A proposal is in draft which makes third-language compulsory for students. That does not mean Hindi would be imposed. The student can choose whichever language s/he wants to learn. The third language thing is implemented in quite a few states already but it is not Nationwide. This should be encouraged as it would allow students from Hindi belt and Dravidian states to learn a different third language.

> speak diverse set of languages

I disagree completely. I am from South and I can tell you that we have too much pride in our languages. So much so that we would rather speak English with our fellow Indians but not learn a different Indian language. Balkanization has already happened. What we need to do is try to unite by shedding this arrogance of language superiority. It doesn't matter which language came "first" or which is the most "ancient". A language is means of communication. That is it! There is no need for all this frenzy around it.

Re: Languages of India

#52

Post by viewtransform »

vishnugupta wrote: post #20

The diversity in general in India is mind boggling which most of Indians take for granted. Be it terrain, climate, language, culture, food, etc., And all the above change noticeably every 200KM or so such that you will find more similarities between Delhi and Lahore (different countries) than Delhi and Bangalore. It's a miracle that India manages to function as one country.

The West expected India to be a failed state within a decade of independance. There were 584 princely states and hundreds of linguistic, religious and cultural minorities to integrate within one country.

Compare India to Yugoslavia which broke up violently along ethnic lines or to Sri Lanka which had a bloody civil war that lasted 25 years. Or the division of Pakistan into Bangladesh along racial and linguistic lines even though they shared the same religion.

What I fear is that young Indians take nation for granted and don't understand that India's secular democracy is fragile and that it can within a generation 'be broken up into fragments by narrow domestic walls'.

Re: Languages of India

#53

Post by _emacsomancer_ »

staticautomatic wrote: post #38
_emacsomancer_ wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Standard Hindi itself has some characteristics of a creole; at the very least it has had both grammatical and vocabulary influences from a number of languages, including Punjabi, Persian, Portuguese and English.

Come to think of it, those are all Aryan languages. Does their mixing still constitute a creole?

Only Hindi and Punjabi are Aryan. English, Persian, and Portuguese are Indo-European but not Indo-Aryan.

Re: Languages of India

#54

Post by JumpCrisscross »

jfk13 wrote: post #21
aatharuv wrote: post #14

India's definition of what is and what is not a language is highly politicized and highly idiosyncratic. Hindi and Urdu, by any reasonable linguistic definition are not separate languages. The official standards for both Hindi and Urdu, are both based on the form of the huge dialect continuum that spans North India and Pakistan, as spoken in Delhi. The only difference is that Urdu uses Persian and Arabic as inspirati…

> on the street level, the language is identical Personal anecdote: when I first went to South Asia, I spent time in southern Pakistan and learned some basic Urdu. Then I spent time in north India, among Hindi speakers. The language I'd learned was immediately usable there, but my local friends could also tell where it came from -- and sometimes would tell me "Aha! yes, we know what you mean, but that's an Urdu word…

> my local friends could also tell where it came from

The same goes for my New York English in the South. As long as one speaker is cognisable to the other, the default assumption should be dialect, creole or pidgin, not separate languages.

Re: Languages of India

#56

Post by u801e »

owaislone wrote: post #42
jfk13 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> on the street level, the language is identical Personal anecdote: when I first went to South Asia, I spent time in southern Pakistan and learned some basic Urdu. Then I spent time in north India, among Hindi speakers. The language I'd learned was immediately usable there, but my local friends could also tell where it came from -- and sometimes would tell me "Aha! yes, we know what you mean, but that's an Urdu word…

They are almost identical. Standard Urdu taught in schools might be a bit hard to follow for Hindi speakers and vice-versa but on the street level, it really is almost exactly the same. As a native Urdu speaker, when I went to college in western India, people would often ask me if I knew Urdu and wanted to hear what it sounded like. They were always surprised when I revealed that I was speaking it all along as they a…

I've noticed that some words have different pronunciations. For instance, the word for "definitely" is pronounced zaroor in Urdu but in Hindi, it's pronounced jaroor.

Re: Languages of India

#57

Post by shripadk »

owaislone wrote: post #48
anuraj wrote: post #12

India's right wing government under Modi is trying to impose Hindi on Indians who belong to different ethnicity and speak diverse set of languages. A sure shot recipe for balkanization of a young nation.

While it is true they are trying to do it, it's not anything new as Delhi has for decades tried to impose Hindi on all states and the southern ones don't take it well. That said, I don't think this can result in balkanization of India as generally India is way more united in-spite of issues like Delhi seen as having way too much control over the states (which is true in my opinion). Also, IMO, balkanization of the In…

> impose Hindi on all states

This is so blatantly false. I am from South and a Kannadiga and I can tell you with conviction that in my lifetime I have never had anyone impose Hindi on me.

This frenzy of Hindi imposition exists only in the states of Tamil Nadu and Kerala (and a little in Karnataka but has since died down once people became more aware). I blame the excessive regionalism in part but major part of the blame lies with the regional political parties and media that is under their control. Too much misinformation is spread and negativity created to make it sound like the Centre is deliberately trying to impose Hindi. Since I am from the South and know the languages (Tamil and Kannada) and follow the local media, I can tell you with conviction that malicious misinformation is indeed being spread. Until this is stopped, the southern states will remain balkanized.

> federated Indian Union that could eventually make way for Bangaladesh, Sri Lanka, Pakistan and Nepal to become member states

This can never happen. It has been tried since Ancient times (the concept of Akhanda Bharat) and even though it succeeded for a few centuries it eventually failed. Even though we are culturally similar, the differences arise because of religious intolerance. The European member states have always had their own identity maintained irrespective of invasions. Hence why they can exist as a Union (even that Union is showing signs of crumbling after the Brexit but that is a different matter). Indian identity was split right in the middle and was done on religious lines. That is a deep scar that cannot be recovered from easily. Those who initiated that division are suffering today. And to bring it back into a Union is impossible. Why would India bear the burden of member states that are economically weak? A Union can only be of equals. Else you'll have a situation like Brexit happen sooner or later.

Re: Languages of India

#58

Post by [deleted] »

neuralzen wrote: post #2

When I visited Himachel Predesh I stayed a few days in a remote Himalayan village named Malana, sometimes referred to as "The Village of Taboos" due to all of the rules they have, largely concerning outsiders. Outsiders are not allowed to touch a Malanan person, touch or enter a building, or even speak the village language even if the outsider know some of it. They also claimed to be the world's oldest continuous dem…

[deleted]

Re: Languages of India

#59

Post by staticautomatic »

_emacsomancer_ wrote: post #53
staticautomatic wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Come to think of it, those are all Aryan languages. Does their mixing still constitute a creole?

Only Hindi and Punjabi are Aryan. English, Persian, and Portuguese are Indo-European but not Indo-Aryan.

Not Persian? I was under the impression that Hindi is Aryan as a result of the Persian invasion of the Indian subcontinent, which also resulted in the Dravidian languages being pushed south.

Re: Languages of India

#60

Post by lgessler »

ignoramous wrote: post #50

Not just Hindi but Gujarati has a dialect that is heavily influenced by Perso-Arabic vocabulary called Lisan ud-Da'wat [0] As a native speaker of the later, I can fully attest to the fact that the language isn't mutually intelligible with Gujarati as spoken in India. It is even more true for the written form of these languages. There's a day and night difference with Perso-Arabic influence simply overwhelming its Guj…

> This is true for Hindi and Urdu, esp when you're exposed to both. When you study both the languages theologically and linguistically, the differences become ever more apparent. It is only the mash of Hindi-Urdu called Hindustani [1] (popularized in modern day by Bollywood) that's mutually intelligible to both Hindi and Urdu speakers alike, and only in its spoken form.

You make it sound like everyday Hindi and everyday Urdu are far apart, but I'm not sure if that's true: if you took a Pakistani Urdu speaker and an Indian Hindi speaker, both from the middle class with only a modest amount of education (and therefore limited access to specialized technical vocabulary), both would have no trouble at all talking to each other. Occasionally one might use a word where the other might have preferred a different one (like زبان for the Urdu speaker and भाषा for the Hindi speaker for 'language'), but it's only possible to imagine them struggling if both were attempting to speak in the registers that are only used in exceedingly formal, technical, or literary contexts.

And when you ignore vocabulary, it becomes even more clear: the grammar of even highly Sanskritized Hindi is more or less identical to that of everyday Hindi, and while I'm less sure about what high Urdu is like, I don't think it differs grammatically from everyday Urdu either, with the possible exception of ezafe[1] (which both Hindi and Urdu speakers are perfectly able to comprehend, even if they do not produce it).

edit: this is Colin Masica's take in his book The Indo-Aryan Languages (p.27):

> The ultimate anomaly in the what-is-a-language dilemma in Indo-Aryan is presented by the Hindi-Urdu situation. Counted as different languages in sociocultural Sense B (and officially), Urdu and Modern Standard Hindi are not even different dialects or subdialects in linguistic Sense A. They are different literary styles based on the same linguistically defined subdialect.

> At the colloquial level, and in terms of grammar and core vocabulary, they are virtually identical; there are minor differences in usage and terminology (and customary pronunciation of certain foreign sounds), but these do not necessarily obtrude to the point where anyone can immediately tell whether it is "Hindi" or "Urdu" that is being spoken. At formal and literary levels, however, vocabulary differences begin to loom much larger (Hindi drawing its higher lexicon from Sanskrit, Urdu from Arabic and Persian), to the point where the two styles/languages become mutually unintelligible. To the ordinary non-linguist who thinks, not unreasonably, that languages consist of words, their status as different languages is then commonsensically obvious, as it is from the fact that they are written in quite different scripts (Hindi in Devanagari and Urdu in a modified Perso-Arabic).

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ez%C4%81fe

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