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A man who 'discovered' 780 Indian languages

bbc.com

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Re: A man who 'discovered' 780 Indian languages

#71

Post by 1024core »

nonamechicken wrote: post #18
1024core wrote: post #3

The BBC has to get an anti-Modi (Prime Minister of India) jab in: "He worries about the ruling Hindu nationalist BJP's efforts to impose Hindi all over India, which he calls a "direct attack on our linguistic plurality". " Various governments in Delhi, throughout history, have toyed with the idea of making Hindi the national language. It hasn't happened yet, and won't happen. But, of course, the BBC would like you to…

I am from Kerala (South India). Hindi imposition never bothered me until the last 2 years. I don't know if it's media's effect, but it is a really valid concern for me. Considering that Kerala exists more or less thanks to money from Gulf countries and little help from the center, I won't mind a separation either.

It is the media. No one bothers to remember the anti-Hindi riots during the Congress rule. Things were much, much worse then.

Re: A man who 'discovered' 780 Indian languages

#72

Post by astrodust »

deanstag wrote: post #65
astrodust wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rampant foreign interference and military juntas have a way of stunting your country's development.

Are you talking about Brazil or India here? ( I apologize in advance if it looks like I am arguing by asking questions. But I am asking because of curiosity/lack of knowledge )

Specifically Brazil here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brazilian_Military_Junta_of_19...

Decades of military rule is not good for your economy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brazilian_military_government

Not that India hasn't had more than its fair share of both over the centuries.

Re: A man who 'discovered' 780 Indian languages

#73

Post by jfk13 »

afghanPower wrote: post #57
axiom92 wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> On a slightly related topic, India has a vast and rich set of languages and millions of people that speak/read/write these languages. My landlady needs to know this. She still thinks we all speak "Indian".

Correct me if I'm wrong, but most Indians do understand "urdu", no?

That may be the case for many people across the "Hindi belt" of northern India. (Hindi and Urdu, at an everyday level, being fairly close to a case of "same spoken language, different scripts".) In the Dravidian-speaking south....not so much.

Re: A man who 'discovered' 780 Indian languages

#74

Post by [deleted] »

afghanPower wrote: post #57
axiom92 wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> On a slightly related topic, India has a vast and rich set of languages and millions of people that speak/read/write these languages. My landlady needs to know this. She still thinks we all speak "Indian".

Correct me if I'm wrong, but most Indians do understand "urdu", no?

[deleted]

Re: A man who 'discovered' 780 Indian languages

#75

Post by wolco »

jlg23 wrote: post #49
ravirajx7 wrote: post #20

One of the main reason behind the 'developing' state of India even after 70 years of independence is its differences which Indians still have in their mind. The language barrier is the only barrier which is proving to be resistance let alone culture prevention and all that. Languages are just a form of communication between people and people should accept it. People should learn languages like English(Which have vast…

Given that English is already fragmenting (just read a newspaper from Guyana) and with the example of the Arab language (watch an Egyptian try talking with a Moroccan - bring popcorn): I am not sure your advice is a good one. English, like every other language, limits what you can say to what can be expressed in it. From personal experience, I'd rather recommend to dabble in as many languages as possible: Each new la…

I think the French language as the one universal world language movement has failed. There was a chance in the 70's but business and the internet has forever changed that.

Re: A man who 'discovered' 780 Indian languages

#76

Post by titanix2 »

pavanred wrote: post #31

On a slightly related topic, India has a vast and rich set of languages and millions of people that speak/read/write these languages. With daily newspapers, tabloids, literature etc, I presume there is a (potential) huge corpus of rich data for each language too. And, I just read yesterday that India just surpassed US to become the second biggest mobile phone market. Then why is there not more of NLP work/products on…

The current tools were created by generations of scientists and engineers; people that these linguistics communities lack. As some of them get educated in NLP and related fields, more resources and corpora will be build. But heck, even languages for which there is universities and labs working on it (plus EU funding) there is a huge gap. For example czech.

As a side nodes, some existing researchers who have an interest in other languages start work on them even if it’s not their native language. I know researchers who did that with african languages: by working with students speaking them, there is transfer of knowledge and preliminary work done. Mentoring the first generation of native speaker scientists is the key imo.

Re: A man who 'discovered' 780 Indian languages

#77

Post by gowld »

beat wrote: post #69
boxy310 wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Before the printing press, there was dramatic variation in regional dialects of European nations. After the printing press, standardization and state centralization have been grinding these regional dialects into the ground. Even traditional regional languages like Irish or Scots Gaelic are going extinct.

I live in a city with tens of thousands of east African immigrants (mostly Somali). It's fascinating to me, to hear the difference between how the adult Somalis speak, and how their children speak. The teenagers, having grown up here, speak in perfect, accent-free English. Will their children even speak Somali at all? (As an aside, I totally love my little window into Somali teenage girl culture, just from riding the…

> perfect, accent-free English.

This is a myth. You mean they speak your local accent of English.

> (As an aside, I totally love my little window into Somali teenage girl culture, just from riding the train and sharing a neighborhood with them. Their fashions are incredible, and they're so energetic and happy. Somali teenage boys, on the other hand, are just as glum and faux-cool as teenage boys everywhere.)

Please don't be racist. Appreciate people without making convoluted assumptions about how their race and gender causes their behavior

Re: A man who 'discovered' 780 Indian languages

#78

Post by sumedh »

afghanPower wrote: post #57
axiom92 wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> On a slightly related topic, India has a vast and rich set of languages and millions of people that speak/read/write these languages. My landlady needs to know this. She still thinks we all speak "Indian".

Correct me if I'm wrong, but most Indians do understand "urdu", no?

Yes because most Indians can speak Hindi(Urdu is similar to Hindi). Hindi is the second or third language for many non native Hindi speakers.

Re: A man who 'discovered' 780 Indian languages

#79

Post by golergka »

beat wrote: post #68
cortesoft wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know, languages have been dying out for a lot longer than those technologies have been around. Languages die when the cultures who speak them either get assimilated or eradicated; I am not sure what technology has to do with that?

Thanks to a college professor long ago, I'm firmly convinced that technological advancement is the main reason cultures get assimilated/eradicated. Or more to the point, new cultures rise with new technologies, and wipe out the previous ones. Along the same lines as my original comment and the source of this story, one of the most educational nights of my life was a lecture by a visiting professor from India. His res…

When you say "obliterated", doesn't it really mean that people in these villages liked the music from the radio more than their local stuff? Why label people's preferences with such dramatic words?

Re: A man who 'discovered' 780 Indian languages

#80

Post by sumedh »

_jgdh wrote: post #56
deanstag wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Promoting a language because the Prime minister finds himself more proficient orator in the language? I find that hard to believe. Do you have sources on this?

The promotion of Hindi as the most important language in India is not limited to this Prime Minister or administration. It has a long history, starting from Independence in 1947, when the writers of the Constitution decided that English would slowly be phased out in preference to Hindi [1]. Unsurprisingly, foisting a foreign language on native speakers of Tamil, Telugu, Bengali and other languages was met with fierce…

> rather than Arabic numerals.

Just a minor correction, they are Indian numerals not Arabic.

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