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The New Wave of Indian Type

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Re: The New Wave of Indian Type

#81

Post by skosch »

nkoren wrote: post #59
shrimp_emoji wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> Why fetishize diversity for its own sake, especially when it's a barrier to communication? Ĉar diverseco estas la bazo de ĉia belo kaj ĉia kreemo. Sin diverseco, vivo estus sensignifa. > I think we should all speak one language (preferably, the one we're speaking now). Certe, mi konsentas -- sed nur aldone al vian unikan lokan lingvon. Kaj ne la Anglan, mi petas!

When I looked into Esperanto a few years ago, I lost interest relatively quickly as I figured that this Euro-mashup of a language probably won't ever make it very far into areas where it would be most useful to me (i.e. outside of the Western world). Is this true, in your experience? Do you know of any Indian/African/Chinese Esperantists? Has Esperanto been a worthwhile investment of your time, and would you recommend studying it over "real" languages, on the merit of its community alone?

Re: The New Wave of Indian Type

#82

Post by [deleted] »

jonathanyc wrote: post #36
bfred_it wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That sounds like an attack on westerners. Obviously westerners develop ideas for westerners first ; That’s what they understand and that’s what they need. The lack of solutions for the billions of users of a writing system should not be the fault of the people who don’t use it. Sure they can do better, but they don’t deserve that tone.

I fail to see how the tone in your comment is at all appropriate for the comment you are responding to. You seem overly sensitive on this issue.

[deleted]

Re: The New Wave of Indian Type

#83

Post by squiggleblaz »

skosch wrote: post #81
nkoren wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why fetishize diversity for its own sake, especially when it's a barrier to communication? Ĉar diverseco estas la bazo de ĉia belo kaj ĉia kreemo. Sin diverseco, vivo estus sensignifa. > I think we should all speak one language (preferably, the one we're speaking now). Certe, mi konsentas -- sed nur aldone al vian unikan lokan lingvon. Kaj ne la Anglan, mi petas!

When I looked into Esperanto a few years ago, I lost interest relatively quickly as I figured that this Euro-mashup of a language probably won't ever make it very far into areas where it would be most useful to me (i.e. outside of the Western world). Is this true, in your experience? Do you know of any Indian/African/Chinese Esperantists? Has Esperanto been a worthwhile investment of your time, and would you recommen…

Esperanto has speakers in China, Japan, Korea, Indonesia and Thailand. No doubt others besides but these are the ones I've met either in my own country or in theirs.

You can see some chinese uptake here: http://esperanto.china.org.cn/

Esperanto is very european in its appearance (both grammar and vocab). This seems to have helped it to gain a userbase, which allows others to adopt it who don't share its background. The regularity of the language helps people even if they have to learn a lot of weird roots and struggle to get the very latinate relative clause system (a lot of English speakers struggle with that too though, because agreement is moribund).

Esperanto havas parolantojn en Cxini, Japanio, Koreio, Indonezio kaj Tajlando. Nedube ankauw aliaj sed cxi tiuj estas tiuj de kiuj mi renkontis esperantistojn, aw en mia lando aw en ilia.

Jene vi povas vidi ion de la cxina uzigxo: http://esperanto.china.org.cn/

Esperanto estas tre ewropa law sia formo (kaj gramatike kaj vorte). Sxajne tio helpis gxin obteni fruajn uzantojn, kiuj instigas ekuzi gxin aliajn kiu ne kunhavas gxian historion. La reguleco de la lingvo helpas homojn ecx se ili devas lerni multajn strangajn radikojn kaj penas kompreni la tre latinan relativan fraz-sistemon (multaj angla-parolantoj devas peni per tiu ankaw, cxar konsento estas mortonta).

Re: The New Wave of Indian Type

#84

Post by nkoren »

skosch wrote: post #81
nkoren wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why fetishize diversity for its own sake, especially when it's a barrier to communication? Ĉar diverseco estas la bazo de ĉia belo kaj ĉia kreemo. Sin diverseco, vivo estus sensignifa. > I think we should all speak one language (preferably, the one we're speaking now). Certe, mi konsentas -- sed nur aldone al vian unikan lokan lingvon. Kaj ne la Anglan, mi petas!

When I looked into Esperanto a few years ago, I lost interest relatively quickly as I figured that this Euro-mashup of a language probably won't ever make it very far into areas where it would be most useful to me (i.e. outside of the Western world). Is this true, in your experience? Do you know of any Indian/African/Chinese Esperantists? Has Esperanto been a worthwhile investment of your time, and would you recommen…

I'd say it's been a worthwhile investment -- but not really on the merit of the community. That's probably my own fault: the community seems cool and I probably ought to be less of a hermit. There are certainly plenty of Chinese Esperantists; the China Radio International (the PRC's equivalent of Radio America, roughly) even has an Esperanto service that's pretty interesting to listen to[1].

What's really made it a worthwhile investment is that it's given me a better understanding of language itself. All languages have idiosyncrasies, including Esperanto -- but Esperanto's idiosyncrasies are unusually consistent, making it really easy to map things onto. So I often find it easier to comprehend some weird construct in (say) Hindi or Japanese by mapping it onto straightforward Esperanto, rather than trying to map it onto an English construct that's probably even weirder.

Plus it's just such an easy win. I can order off a menu and find my way around town in a fair handful of languages, but haven't really gotten much further than that. But I can easily read just about anything in Esperanto, with 1/10th the effort that I've put into any other language. Which is just kinda gratifying to be able to do.

1: http://esperanto.cri.cn/

Re: The New Wave of Indian Type

#85

Post by Stratoscope »

telotortium wrote: post #72

This is the first time I've ever seen this construction (using "that's" instead of "whose" as a relative possessive pronoun): "...the ongoing use of English, a language that's reach and influence has grown considerably..."

That's not very typical. (Pun intended, and John Clarke reference intended too.)

It was just a mistake. Given the topic, it's possible that that was written by someone who's not a native speaker - but whose writing is otherwise very good. (And arguably better than that showoff sentence!)

As you noted, a native American English speaker would write "...a language whose reach..." And that's that.

RIP John Clarke:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3m5qxZm_JqM

Re: The New Wave of Indian Type

#86

Post by squiggleblaz »

jacobolus wrote: post #75
_emacsomancer_ wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And what are called "dialects" in the Chinese context are just as much dialects as French, Italian, and Romanian are "dialects" of Romance.

These mostly get called “dialects” for political reasons: the Chinese government doesn’t want to acknowledge that they are separate mutually unintelligible languages. Media in Chinese languages other than Mandarin is restricted, children are forced to use Mandarin in school, all official business is done in Mandarin, etc. There is a concerted effort to make other languages economically unviable, and generally to dise…

However, it's worth noting that you call the official language of China "Mandarin" for political reasons. The analogy would be if you called French "Bureaucratese" and said "Yes, but Breton and Occitan are not mutually intelligible with Bureaucratese".

The statements "Bureaucratese is not mutually intelligible with Occitan" and "Mandarin is not mutually intelligible with Cantonese" are both true, but we could just say "French is not mutually intelligible with Occitan" and "Chinese in not mutually intelligible with Cantonese".

Re: The New Wave of Indian Type

#87

Post by naniid »

svat wrote: post #41
nkoren wrote: post #18

> 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…

For example, when the article says: > five of the most widely used scripts in India—Devanagari, Gujarati, Gurumukhi, Tamil, and Latin. Those five scripts support seven or eight of India’s most widely used languages, together spoken by hundreds of millions of people across the Indian subcontinent. this list of scripts actually does not cover (for example) Bengali and Telugu, which together have more speakers than the…

which means Telugu and Bengali have more speakers but their scripts are not as widely used in digital world.

Re: The New Wave of Indian Type

#88

Post by titanix2 »

PeterisP wrote: post #79
_emacsomancer_ wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I never heard that the language was standardized taking langue d’oc elements or any other French languages or dialects. You should give some sources to affirm that. The standard French is based on the French spoken in Paris which was then extended (or imposed in some case) in the whole country via the administration and the public school (forbidding the use of dialects).

Re: The New Wave of Indian Type

#89

Post by squiggleblaz »

nkoren wrote: post #47
allpratik wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seriously, I am trying my luck in NLP with some Indian languages like Marathi, Hindi, Gujarati and Tamil. The sheer number of dialects is driving me nuts. Even dialects have very different sounding words or pronunciations which increases the complexity exponentially. But I am trying it only with an eye on its potential. NLP will simply act as the catalyst for technology adoption in the rural and semi-rural area. I'm…

How does phonological complexity affect these things? I'm not a linguist, but Hindi at least seems way complex, with a much larger phoneme inventory than other languages I've studied.

In the World Atlas of Language Structures http://wals.info/chapter/1 , Hindi is considered to have a large consononant inventory. Hindi consonants plus vowels is not hugely different than English. But even though it's relatively large, I certainly wouldn't describe it as complex. It's mostly just the same properties repeated in different locations.

Language areas aren't made more complex by additional phonological complexity. The question you've asked seems to be "Does phonological complexity cause more language diversity". When put this way, there doesn't seem to be any causal mechanism that could do it. For instance, one might say: Well, English has a lot of vowels. People in California might simplify them one way, whereas people in Texas might simplify them in another way so that they can't understand each other well: therefore, you get additional linguistic diversity. But this requires the Texans and the Californians to be isolated from each other which isn't what people mean when they say "India is a very linguistically diverse country".

If we try it the other way "Does language diversity cause more phonological complexity", languages tend towards each other in case of diversity (because a person who speaks both Chinese and English will sometimes adopt features of one language into the other). This can sometimes lead to the propagation of more sounds (for instance, languages pretty much only use clicks if they're in contact with other languages that use clicks). And sometimes it can lead the elimination of them. I'm not sure of any particular research about this question, but my guess is on average it would tend towards the average, but if you took English and put it in India it wouldn't be too long before English in India sounds a lot more Indian.

Re: The New Wave of Indian Type

#90

Post by elSidCampeador »

sg0 wrote: post #76

I admit that despite of the ubiquity of Indian fonts these days, I still use English to write messages conveying Bengali/Hindi words, because I'm more comfortable that way. I don't remember the last time I wrote a letter in Bengali/Bangla or Hindi, and when it comes to electronic communication, it has always been English for me. So it feels strange for me to start writing in Bengali using my keypad all of a sudden.

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)
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