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I am not sure if I subscribe to the findings of this article completely. Popular English language words have made their way into almost all Indian languages. Wh

I am not sure if I subscribe to the findings of this article completely. Popular English language words have made their way into almost all Indian languages. When you are accessing the internet, unless you are reading long articles or online books, all you need is passing reading ability of some English words to get through. To say that Instagram doesn't have a Hindi equivalent of "filter" is simply missing the point - "filter" itself is called "फिल्टर" in Hindi which has the same English pronunciation and many people will get that. Also, many of my friends communicate with me in Hindi by literally using English alphabets but writing Hindi sounding words - another thing which the author fails to mention in his article.

amitsy 10y ago
I agree to the first point you mentioned. In certain utility apps like payments etc this would hold true. In an internet without words i.e. images and video that would be true as well. But currently a large part of internet we use is text. Case in point, this article itself and this discussion. With the current technologies we have, for most part of Hindi speaking users, it is easy to speak in Hindi but very difficult to type in it. As per using hindi words in english alpbhabets, my argument is - majority of India can't even read or speak english, how will they type in English? A lot of your friends do that because Hindi input is very hard and we need better tools.
- geon 10y ago
  > majority of India can't even read or speak english, how will they type in English? They won't. They type in Hindi, using the roman alphabet. Big difference. If anything, the roman alphabet is simpler than the syllable based Devanagari. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Devanagari https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Devanagari Apparently SMS is big in India: > SMS is hugely popular in India, where youngsters often exchange lots of text messages, and companies provide alerts, infotainment, news, cricket scores updates, railway/airline booking, mobile billing, and banking services on SMS. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Text_messaging https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Text_messaging I assume it has largely been done with cheap dumbphones even after 2007, which would mean no access to Devanagari characters, so there has been a long time, and a huge incentive to learn transliteration.
  - amitsy 10y ago
    So, are you saying in the long run Devanagari as a script will die but Hindi as a language shall remain. Pretty interesting point. Seems like this is the direction we are going as well.
    - geon 10y ago
      I suppose it is possible. For that to happen, there might be a need to teach and encourage it. I don't know how nationalistic India is, and if it would be well recieved. There is apparently an ISO standard for Indic scripts: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_15919 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_15919 My own experience is limited to my sri lankan wife who enjoys texting with her friends. Among them, spelling is rather haphazard.
  - vinay427 10y ago
    > If anything, the roman alphabet is simpler than the syllable based Devanagari. Sure, until you need to figure out which of the four phonemes a letter corresponds to which is very difficult for foreign language learners of Hindi, as it can be for English. I am a native English speaker but I picked up Devanagari in a day or so because it's actually relatively consistent due to the phonetic syllabic nature.
    - davidivadavid 10y ago
      But that problem is entirely due to English, not the roman alphabet. Same in French. No such problem in German or Italian.
      - geon 10y ago
        Swedish has a few redundant "ch" sounds; k, sj, sch, skj and tj.
      - vinay427 10y ago
        You would need quite a few diacritics to map to all of the Hindi phonemes, especially including loanword phonemes (/z/, etc.) I'm not saying this is bad, but it's not the easy solution that it was made out to be. Meanwhile, Devanagari handles consonant and vowel phonemes quite consistently as others have pointed out.
danmaz74 10y ago
Slightly OT: isn't the "English Alphabet" actually the "Latin Alphabet"?
- Cephlin 10y ago
  Yes it is.
  - GFK_of_xmaspast 10y ago
    Latin doesn't have a "J".
    - OJFord 10y ago
      Classical Latin doesn't, and also variation around 'u'/'v'/'w'. The "English alphabet" is _a_ Latin alphabet, however - cf. ISO basic Latin alphabet. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_basic_Latin_alphabet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_basic_Latin_alphabet

amitsy 10y ago

I agree to the first point you mentioned. In certain utility apps like payments etc this would hold true. In an internet without words i.e. images and video that would be true as well. But currently a large part of internet we use is text. Case in point, this article itself and this discussion. With the current technologies we have, for most part of Hindi speaking users, it is easy to speak in Hindi but very difficult to type in it. As per using hindi words in english alpbhabets, my argument is - majority of India can't even read or speak english, how will they type in English? A lot of your friends do that because Hindi input is very hard and we need better tools.

geon 10y ago
> majority of India can't even read or speak english, how will they type in English? They won't. They type in Hindi, using the roman alphabet. Big difference. If anything, the roman alphabet is simpler than the syllable based Devanagari. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Devanagari https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Devanagari Apparently SMS is big in India: > SMS is hugely popular in India, where youngsters often exchange lots of text messages, and companies provide alerts, infotainment, news, cricket scores updates, railway/airline booking, mobile billing, and banking services on SMS. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Text_messaging https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Text_messaging I assume it has largely been done with cheap dumbphones even after 2007, which would mean no access to Devanagari characters, so there has been a long time, and a huge incentive to learn transliteration.
- amitsy 10y ago
  So, are you saying in the long run Devanagari as a script will die but Hindi as a language shall remain. Pretty interesting point. Seems like this is the direction we are going as well.
  - geon 10y ago
    I suppose it is possible. For that to happen, there might be a need to teach and encourage it. I don't know how nationalistic India is, and if it would be well recieved. There is apparently an ISO standard for Indic scripts: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_15919 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_15919 My own experience is limited to my sri lankan wife who enjoys texting with her friends. Among them, spelling is rather haphazard.
- vinay427 10y ago
  > If anything, the roman alphabet is simpler than the syllable based Devanagari. Sure, until you need to figure out which of the four phonemes a letter corresponds to which is very difficult for foreign language learners of Hindi, as it can be for English. I am a native English speaker but I picked up Devanagari in a day or so because it's actually relatively consistent due to the phonetic syllabic nature.
  - davidivadavid 10y ago
    But that problem is entirely due to English, not the roman alphabet. Same in French. No such problem in German or Italian.
    - geon 10y ago
      Swedish has a few redundant "ch" sounds; k, sj, sch, skj and tj.
    - vinay427 10y ago
      You would need quite a few diacritics to map to all of the Hindi phonemes, especially including loanword phonemes (/z/, etc.) I'm not saying this is bad, but it's not the easy solution that it was made out to be. Meanwhile, Devanagari handles consonant and vowel phonemes quite consistently as others have pointed out.

danmaz74 10y ago

Slightly OT: isn't the "English Alphabet" actually the "Latin Alphabet"?

Cephlin 10y ago
Yes it is.
- GFK_of_xmaspast 10y ago
  Latin doesn't have a "J".
  - OJFord 10y ago
    Classical Latin doesn't, and also variation around 'u'/'v'/'w'. The "English alphabet" is _a_ Latin alphabet, however - cf. ISO basic Latin alphabet. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_basic_Latin_alphabet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_basic_Latin_alphabet