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A man who 'discovered' 780 Indian languages
- newyankee 9y agoHappy to see BBC highlight something positive about India for a change instead of rape stories
- ajeet_dhaliwal 9y agoThey’ll probably add a couple of rapes tomorrow to make up for it.
- 1024core 9y agoThe 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 believe that Modi thought of it first.
- detaro 9y agoI don't see how that line suggests that "Modi thought of it first", especially since the paragraph before talks about historic loss of languages.
- 1024core 9y agoReading that statement, as written, it comes across as if the "ruling Hindu nationalist BJP" is trying to impose Hindi. There's no mention of other attempts in the past. But the reality is: ever since India became independent in 1947, various political parties, including the Congress party, have considered making Hindi the national language: https://www.quora.com/Did-Prime-Minister-of-India-Jawaharlal-Nehru-proposed-to-make-Hindi-as-sole-official-language-why https://www.quora.com/Did-Prime-Minister-of-India-Jawaharlal...
- irishsultan 9y agoIt's interesting that you take the phrase "efforts to impose Hindi" to mean an unprecedented attempt, because nowhere do they state that this is an original idea or the first such attempt.
- exelius 9y agoI mean, it may be an attack on their linguistic plurality but the flip side of that plurality is that English is the de-facto national language rather than a language native to India. Not saying either viewpoint is more correct than the other, but I've heard both positions expressed.
- panglott 9y agoWhy do you think that the BBC is pushing its own agenda here, rather than accurately quoting the concerns and views of the person that they are profiling?
- puranjay 9y agoWhat other governments did is irrelevant. Those governments are out of power and incapable of doing anything. Modi is, so of course you'd talk about him. And let's be fair: I'm 30 years old and I haven't seen Hindi imposition pursued with as much zeal as it has been in the past 3 years.
- newyankee 9y agoI have not felt it to be the same, looks like a lot of this is in your or the media's imagination
- newyankee 9y agothat is just the BBC being BBC, i mean nothing short of a highly detailed analysis showing their bias against India would even change the image to a western crowd about an issue like this.
- dang 9y agoPlease don't take HN threads in flamewar directions. You managed to damage this one considerably, and it breaks the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
- 1024core 9y agoI was objecting to a mischaracterization in the article. I took a literal quote from the article and objected to it; I did not make it up, or change topics.
- n4r9 9y agoimo you focused on a minor part of the article in order to score a political point, and topped it off with an irrelevant generalisation about the BBC.
- dang 9y agoSure, but none of that changes the point about not taking HN into flamewars.
- 1024core 9y agoI agree. It was not my intention to start a flamewar; but with all the talk about "biased RT", "biased Al Jazeera", etc. flying about, I wanted to point out how BBC also is equally biased, just not in the direction "we" would like them to be. And https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wmin5WkOuPw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wmin5WkOuPw
- dang 9y agoI don't disagree with you, but in this context, it just doesn't matter. Being right is of small significance compared to not going up in flames. Nobody ever feels like they were the one who started anything, so that consideration has little value.
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- nonamechicken 9y agoI 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.
- mayankkaizen 9y agoEarlier governments, in general, weren't so vehement about language forcing. But this government is going too far with not only language forcing but also with cow worshipping, minorities hounding, history distortions, jingoism, suppression of freedom of speech. In any case, pls don't make HN a political forum.
- baali 9y agoI had a chance to visit one of academy he helped establish, adivasi academy(their domain name has expired), tejgarh, vadodra. I really liked how he played the role of catalyst in helping local people recognize their own culture and preserve it. [Edit]: My bad for linking to the infested URL, didn't realize it.
- anotheryou 9y agoThat link looks very virus infested, beware. probably ransomware: https://www.2-spyware.com/remove-the-arialtext-font-was-not-found-ads.html https://www.2-spyware.com/remove-the-arialtext-font-was-not-... It's some js file that loads exe files. How would they get executed than? Another prompt to manually do so? edit: thanks for removing the link :)
- DiabloD3 9y agoI concur, it tried to do the same thing for me. " The "Mercury Text" font was not found. The web page you are trying to load is displayed incorrectly, as it uses the "Mercury Text" font. To fix the error and display the next, you have to update the "Mozilla Font Pack"."
- astura 9y agoIt's probably a hijacked account too, that account has legitimate comments but was dormant until today.
- anotheryou 9y agoI doubt that, it's quality content apart from the link :) probably just a never updated, but originally legit wordpress site.
- baali 9y agoI find this ironical that the technology(in this particular case their site) which is considered as a savior for these languages and dialects, by archiving them, indexing them, can get itself rendered as something to stay away from instead of making this resource accessible.
- beat 9y agoThis reminded me of a video I saw once, many years ago. It was told by the last speaker of a language - from a tribe in El Salvador, iirc (Central America, for sure). Most of his tribe had been wiped out during civil war. He and his parents were the last living speakers of their language. When his parents died, he was the last. The video was a long, tearful poem, telling the story of his people and their destruction. Of course, no one could understand a word of it but him, but the emotion was unmistakable.
- Alex3917 9y agoIt's interesting that the same technologies we use to preserve language (audio/film/text) are also largely the reason for their destruction. If you just have two people talking with each other in the woods there aren't any economies of scale, no 'best' version of Wikipedia, no Hollywood movies to watch, etc. While not related to language, except for one episode, NPR's archive of lost & found sound is also worth checking out: http://www.npr.org/sections/lost-found-sound/archive?date=9-30-2008 http://www.npr.org/sections/lost-found-sound/archive?date=9-...
- nathancahill 9y agoAlong the same vein, worth checking out the archives of Alan Lomax. He spent 70 years collecting oral and folk music recordings across America, the Caribbean and the UK. Now in the Library of Congress[0]. Some of his recordings are famously sampled on Moby's Play album. [0] https://www.loc.gov/folklife/folkcat.html https://www.loc.gov/folklife/folkcat.html
- samstave 9y agoOh man, those samples on minus album are amazing. When that album came out it was the only CD I had with me on a six month back-packing trip... memories - and those samples are brilliant
- cortesoft 9y agoI 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?
- ravirajx7 9y agoOne 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 amount of resources available).As the growing trends suggest India will be the most populated country after 2020 and it will have around 70% of the citizens who will be youngsters. Believe it or not but sooner or later English will dominate(though i believe it's still dominating to bridge the gap between south and north india). In india you can't surf internet properly if you don't have any clue about English and india do have maximum number of smartphone users around the world and that will ofcourse help remove some sort of language barrier between people. Also Modi do promote Hindi(though his mother tongue is gujarati) but I believe he does so because he finds himself more proficent orator in the language. China is one more country which is preserving its culture by speaking chinese and i don't think anyone should stop someone to do so.Though it would be better if there is one unique language with which people should feel unity among themselves.
- soneca 9y agoBrazil never had this problem and it is still 'developing' 195 years after its independence. Same language, not that different regional culture (similar to USA I guess). And Europe as a whole was able to become developed despite its language barriers.
- ravirajx7 9y agoJust that it has almost double per capita income(PPP) when compared to India. $1576(76th) vs $7153 (122nd) respectively.
- deanstag 9y agoI think soneca's point was Brazil is still developing irrespective of any language barriers. So how does your statistics on PPP become an argument for that?
- pavanred 9y agoOn 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 Indian languages? There's a market for it, a huge market, isn't it?
- true_religion 9y agoBecause as you said.. thee's a vast set of languages instead of a single one of 300 million people.
- microcolonel 9y ago> Then why is there not more of NLP work/products on Indian languages? There's a market for it, a huge market, isn't it? The market effects of linguistic diversity work both ways: having more languages increases the potential demand for translation tools, but the sheer number of long-tail languages also makes it hard to justify compiling a corpus and making a considerable effort to study each of these languages enough to build tools for them. Some language communities may almost completely lack the kind of highly literate people who would make this task surmountable, and those who could help, may already be working another more stable or higher paying job.
- sandGorgon 9y agoHere's something that was released fairly recently by my alma mater - IIT Bombay https://arxiv.org/abs/1710.02855 https://arxiv.org/abs/1710.02855
- dodigitty32 9y agoIs this anoop ? :P
- axiom92 9y ago> 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".
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- adictator 9y ago> Dr Devy says there are more pressing anxieties. 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". Trust BBC to bring politics into this as well & inject the anti-India value somehow.
- aaron695 9y ago> He discovered that some 16 languages spoken in the Himalayan state of Himachal Pradesh have 200 words for snow alone A know urban legend often applied to Inuits. > Dr Devy, an untrained linguist But we'll still call him doctor. I'll guess he's a doctor in English? and they are there to entertain as he's done. (Obviously doctors in English can do other important things as well) I don't know.... the BBC when they do these stories... intelligent people know they are not true buuuut then what does one think when they report on Syria. Are stories like these symptoms and show we also should also take stories on Syria very very carefully or are they cancerous and encourage bad reporting and bad thinking? Are stories on Syria the same, just entertainment anyway and their accuracy for the masses is on equal importance? I guess for me a source of truth is important and I would have though many on HN would want to seek the truth, but perhaps not so much. [edit] There is also a interesting story here, I assume it's not a lie and the doctor believes what he's doing is true.... but I can't be sure from all the other inaccuracies.... but at face value he's done something really interesting that is BBC worthy. It just needs better framing.
- desi_ninja 9y agoThe article doesn't mention colonization as one of thr factors of dying languages because BBC.
- tmpnam 9y agoThe article touches on it, but it's a former threat. Hindu nationalism, on the other hand, is a current threat, desi_ninja.
- srean 9y ago> Hindu nationalism, on the other hand, is a current threat, desi_ninja. Wholly agreed, I would add a nuance that Hindu nationalism as pushed by the current govt is. Their view is that the only Hindu religious way to be a practicing Hindu is the way it is practiced in a particular region in India, even the most devout practicing Hindu from the east (from a generation and further ago) wouldn't have heard/practiced about dandia, dhanteras, karva-chauth. There are regions where devout Hindus would have beef and not feel that they are flouting norms of Hinduism. The only right way to speak/write is in a specific regional language of India. A lot of governmental machinery -- executive and legal -- is being expended to achieve this monoculture.
- taherchhabra 9y agoThis is the reason I am teaching my mother tongue to my kids first, where every parents in my area wants their children to speak English first and that too in American accent. I understand that it's a global language but some cultural things are really difficult to pass on to your kids without your mother tongue
- baali 9y agoOne more related link to the same story, Two episode podcast about languages in India. It talks about first survey conducted during British Raj and then Ganesh Devy ji's people's linguastic survey of India: https://soundcloud.com/theintersection/31-mission-impossible-surveying-indian-languages-and-dialects https://soundcloud.com/theintersection/31-mission-impossible...