20 ms·

Languages of India

216 points by happy-go-lucky 7y ago

neuralzen 7y ago
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 democracy, and descendants of Alexander the Great's armies. Definitely a strange and fascinating society.
- vishnugupta 7y ago
  It's a testimony to India's vastness and diversity that more than 99.5% Indians wouldn't have even heard about Malana let alone know about their unique culture and society.
  - wenderen 7y ago
    Can concur - I have never heard about Malana before reading that comment.
  - puranjay 7y ago
    On the contrary, most people I know have heard of Malana simply because of "Malana Cream", a variety of highly sought after hashish
    - talonx 7y ago
      "Most people you know" does not equate to 99 or even 90% Indians, so this does not negate the previous statement.
  - sbmthakur 7y ago
    True. It's only popular around Manali.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- z3phyr 7y ago
  "The descendants of Alexander's armies" is a pretty common trope across Northern India, Pakistan, Afghanistan and parts of Iraq. I doubt all the claims though Coming back to Malana, the language they speak, Kanashi, is not an Indo-European language in roots but rather a Sion-Tibetian one.
  - neuralzen 7y ago
    True, although they do seem to actually have the world's oldest continuous democracy, from what I've read. Could give some credence to their other claim. Ethnologue mentions this fact too, in the comments, although they got the religion wrong, so take it with a grain of salt (they are not Hindu, but worship a god named Jamul, who's will is interpreted by an Oracle. But they are very adamantly not Hindu). https://www.ethnologue.com/17/language/xns/ https://www.ethnologue.com/17/language/xns/
vikramkr 7y ago
The number of languages is stunning. Does anyone know if the number of languages is just the officially named languages or if it includes creoles? The language I speak is a creole of two languages and doesnt have a name or writing system really, and I'm curious to know how that is counted.
- abhiyerra 7y ago
  There are quite a few dialects. I don’t have the source off hand but something like 300. Also it is fun seeing the rupee notes because they have the denomination written in each of the scripts.
  - jfk13 7y ago
    The distinction between "language" and "dialect" is far from clear-cut, and often determined as much by socio-political as linguistic factors. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_language_is_a_dialect_with_an_army_and_navy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_language_is_a_dialect_with_a...
- staticautomatic 7y ago
  I'd consider "Mumbai Hindi" a creole. It's nominally a dialect of Hindi/Urdu but it has a lot of Marathi mixed in, among other languages.
  - aatharuv 7y ago
    Mumbai Hindi is not a creole by any definition of linguistics. It is actually a dialect of Hindustani with Marathi and other languages mixed in. A Creole specifically occurs when two languages (usually unrelated) suddenly mix together, usually with a _greatly_ simplified (but consistent) grammar from the parent languages. It's not just the result of heavy borrowing. I don't believe that's happened for Mumbai Hindi.
    - staticautomatic 7y ago
      Fair enough. Thanks for clarifying.
peterburkimsher 7y ago
This may be a long shot, but could anybody help me find a Bible in Oriya? Last year I did some research into Unicode PUA characters and discovered some unencoded Taiwanese & Hakka characters. I wrote a proposal to add them to Unicode, and a blog post on Medium (called Hakka news). Now I've done the same for all languages on Bible.com, and I'm trying to compare with printed copies to know what the text should say.
- jfk13 7y ago
  Try https://odia.bible https://odia.bible ?
  - peterburkimsher 7y ago
    It's the right translation! I emailed them, but they don't really understand my question and take a long time to reply.
- j0e1 7y ago
  You can find an online version here https://vachanonline.com/ https://vachanonline.com/ . If you are looking for the data, here is a repository: https://git.door43.org/BCS-BIBLE/Odiya-ULB-NT.BCS https://git.door43.org/BCS-BIBLE/Odiya-ULB-NT.BCS That is the New Testament only, the Old Testament can be found in the same way.
  - peterburkimsher 7y ago
    I can already get the online version! The trouble is that I can see some PUA codes being used in the text. https://www.bible.com/bible/1749/1KI.4.20.ODIAOV-BSI https://www.bible.com/bible/1749/1KI.4.20.ODIAOV-BSI https://www.bible.com/bible/1749/2KI.16.17.ODIAOV-BSI https://www.bible.com/bible/1749/2KI.16.17.ODIAOV-BSI https://www.bible.com/bible/1749/ROM.6.16.ODIAOV-BSI https://www.bible.com/bible/1749/ROM.6.16.ODIAOV-BSI No idea if these will appear in the comment, but let's try:  U+F020  U+F02F  U+F0A0 If I can compare to scans of a printed copy, then I'll be able to know what the characters should be (and therefore whether they're already in Unicode).
Jagat 7y ago
It's amazing how most Indians believe that Hindi is the national language of India, when there's no such as a national language in India. There are two official languages for union government communication - Hindi and English. I've also noticed that a lot of non Indians find it funny that most Indians here in bay area companies communicate among themselves in heavily accented English instead of The Indian language.
- _emacsomancer_ 7y ago
  The original plan was, of course, to phase out English as a national language. This never happened, I suppose partially because while 'Hindustani' (as was) made sense as a symbol of unity during the time leading up to Independence, afterwards, especially as 'Hindi', it was seen more as a regional language (even if the region involved is large) and so not necessarily more deserving of official nation-level status than Bengali or Tamil. English ends up being more neutral in many ways (though, of course, not without its own (post-colonial) baggage). > I've also noticed that a lot of non Indians find it funny that most Indians here in bay area companies communicate among themselves in heavily accented English instead of The Indian language. Ah, yes, of course, 'the Indian language'. :)
  - sn41 7y ago
    Besides the fact that in states like Kerala, for example, where you have nearly 92 percent literacy, declaring Hindi as official language will result in nearly 0 percent literacy. I think just like Charkha, and village-based self-sufficient economies, the idea of Hindi as a national language should be discarded as an idea whose time has gone.
  - naravara 7y ago
    I always thought India would have functioned better if it had confederated under a Swiss style cantonment system (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cantons_of_Switzerland https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cantons_of_Switzerland). They maybe could have even avoided partition this way too. And whatever paroxysms of violence from internal migration might have been mitigated against if it was all being overseen by a single government and army instead of the three-way clusterfuck of the actual partition. There would have needed to be some system for maintaining a rough level of parity/equality of representation of various minority groups at the high level. Scheduled castes and tribes would probably not have been as well protected under such a system, for example, but it's probably something than could have been worked out with effort.
anuraj 7y ago
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.
- owaislone 7y ago
  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 India sub-continent might not be the worst thing to happen. I've seen how proud and patriotic Indian hate this idea but IMO it could be actually quite good for the whole region. I'd actually like to a more federated Indian Union that could eventually make way for Bangaladesh, Sri Lanka, Pakistan and Nepal to become member states. Something like the EU perhaps. While I don't think anything like this has any real chance of happening, it would be a sure shot way to bringing peace to the whole sub-continent IMHO.
  - shripadk 7y ago
    > 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.
aatharuv 7y ago
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 inspiration/source for high vocabulary, whereas Hindi uses Sanskrit as a source for high vocabulary. And they use different scripts. But on the street level, the language is identical, not merely mutually intelligible. Many of the languages traditionally clubbed by the Indian government as Hindi are much farther away from standard Hindi than Urdu.
- jfk13 7y ago
  > 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 - in Hindi we say ...." So even on a basic street level, I don't think it's true that they're identical. Both part of the same huge dialect continuum, yes, but they're slightly different points on it. Whether to call them separate languages is as much a political question as a linguistic one, of course.
  - mc32 7y ago
    Maybe it’s akin to Galician and Portuguese or Galician and Spanish (Castilian). For the most part about 90% of everyday vocabulary is similar and understandable by each other yet may have some unique differences which are enough to be called separate languages, even if both resort to Classic Latin for high words and roots.
  - manbatman 7y ago
    Same way like Italian and Romanian and Spanish
    - 7y ago
vishnugupta 7y ago
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.
- fareesh 7y ago
  It depends on what you mean by function
- danans 7y ago
  > And all the above change noticeably every 200KM And if you are in a dense enough area, it can change every 2km, when accounting for differences in socially conditioned dialects and customs.
  - avemuri 7y ago
    You mean a sparse enough area? I've generally found dense areas are more homogeneous while even neighboring villages in sparsely populated areas with bad roads and no telecommunications tend to be very different. Makes intuitive sense since transmission of culture is easier.
    - danans 7y ago
      Not really. In dense areas, you often have far more diverse populations, as cities attrat people with different traditions and backgrounds. But in a place with as many social groups as India, these people often maintain many of their customs and habits even in the dense urban context, resulting in a great variety within a small area.
      - braindead_in 7y ago
        Within the same city, the Hindu majority areas will look and feel noticeably different from the Muslim majority areas. The culture, and sometimes even language, is different.
j0e1 7y ago
Here is a well respected source on this https://www.ethnologue.com/country/IN https://www.ethnologue.com/country/IN
supernova87a 7y ago
Too many languages, too many religions to govern a country like this effectively. Unpopular truth, but truth nonetheless.
- rishav_sharan 7y ago
  Yet governance has been pretty effective since the last 70 years and will only get better as more of Indians get educated and the population growth slows.
- ppsreejith 7y ago
  > Unpopular truth, but truth nonetheless. Why do you think so? The issues we do have with governance don't seem to be because of the diversity of languages or religions.
billfruit 7y ago
A bit strange that Sinhala is classified as Indo-European rather than as Dravidian, as one might think from geography.
- najarvg 7y ago
  I initially found that strange too given that there is a distinct Sri Lankan Tamil dialect (Jaffna, Batticaloa versions etc) but it looks like Sinhala came in as an original Indo-Eurpoean language and mingled with surrounding languages to borrow some words etc. Here are some opinionated commentaries on that: http://www.applet-magic.com/sinhaleselan.htm http://www.applet-magic.com/sinhaleselan.htm http://www.island.lk/2003/11/05/featur02.html http://www.island.lk/2003/11/05/featur02.html Would love to see an authoritative source confirming these.
- jvsg 7y ago
  The sinhalese people of Sri Lanka are Indo-European, not dravidian. IIRC they came from Modern day Bengal.
  - billfruit 7y ago
    But Sinhalese culture,food etc is closer to Dravidian.
vinni2 7y ago
The surprising thing for me is the fact “India (780) has the world's second highest number of languages, after Papua New Guinea (839).”
ignoramous 7y ago
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 Gujarati roots. This is also true for Hindi and Urdu, and you can tell esp if 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. I, for sure, know that the Punjabi [2] spoke in Multan (Saraiki) sounds different than anything I've heard in India; but my Indian Punjabi friends tell me its mutually intelligible to them. Imo, the Hindi-Urdu debate isn't similar to a Croatian-Serbian or even the EasternPunjabi-WesternPunjabi one, where the vocabulary remains the same for the most part and only phonetics remain a predominant source of divergence. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lisan_ud-Dawat https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lisan_ud-Dawat [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hindi%E2%80%93Urdu_controversy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hindi%E2%80%93Urdu_controversy [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punjabi_dialects https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punjabi_dialects
- lgessler 7y ago
  > 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 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ez%C4%81fe
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
vbtemp 7y ago
Lost among here is Sentinelese https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sentinelese_language https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sentinelese_language The only language where not a single word is known to the outside world!
- User23 7y ago
  On some level you have to respect a people whose response to anthropologists is to see how many arrows they can stick in them.
  - ahje 7y ago
    There has been friendly contacts with them according to Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sentinelese#Shipwrecks https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sentinelese#Shipwrecks
keeganjw 7y ago
It still boggles my mind that so many of the languages of India are related to European languages. Hindi and English share a common linguistic ancestor. Yet languages that are much physically closer together like English and Finnish or Hindi and Tamil aren't related at all.
- umanwizard 7y ago
  True, it boggles my mind also! But for reasons I'm struggling to explain, it doesn't strike me as weird or surprising that, for example, American English and Navajo are completely unrelated despite being spoken in close physical proximity to each other. I guess it is because the settlement and colonization of the Southwestern US is in much more recent memory, whereas we sort of think of Hindi and its ancestors like Sanskrit as having been spoken in India since time immemorial. FWIW, it should be pointed out, to be strictly correct, that we really have no idea whether the various language families are related to each other and descended from some "proto-World" language. So instead of saying "X and Y are completely unrelated", it's probably more accurate to say "there is no known evidence that X and Y are related".
- User23 7y ago
  This is because both Europe and India where both conquered by the Yamnaya people about 4 millennia ago[1]. Europeans and Indians are (distant) cousins. Take a look at most Bollywood stars for example and the resemblance is clear. [1] https://www.livescience.com/59703-north-india-populated-by-central-asian-invaders.html https://www.livescience.com/59703-north-india-populated-by-c...
ramgorur 7y ago
Those who are wondering why Indian languages are a subgrouop of Indo-European languages, this chart might be helpful. It shows some of the many words that Sanskrit and Slavic both share. https://www.rbth.com/blogs/2014/11/01/sanskrit_and_russian_ancient_kinship_39451 https://www.rbth.com/blogs/2014/11/01/sanskrit_and_russian_a...
- rusticpenn 7y ago
  Not all indian languages are in that subgroup. There are another family of dravidian languages.
_iyig 7y ago
A co-worker of mine once said then he heard a greater variety of spoken Indian languages in the Bay Area than he’d ever heard back in India, where he was born and educated. Never thought of a polite way to ask, but I’ve always been curious as to how many Indian co-workers of mine share a language other than English - seems like the number could be lower than expected, given the sheer amount of different languages.
- karthikvellanki 7y ago
  Your co-worker's observation is actually more obvious than we think it is. Since states in India are essentially divided based on linguistic grounds, he would have been exposed to two Indian languages at best - the regional language in his town and Hindi (if the dominant language in the town is not Hindi already). In the Bay Area you'll find people from various states of India.
  - skissane 7y ago
    > In the Bay Area you'll find people from various states of India. Doesn't the same thing happen within India itself, due to internal interstate migration? Not everyone who works in (for example) Bangalore's IT industry grew up there.
    - peterburkimsher 7y ago
      On a related note, does that make people in (e.g.) Bangalore speak Hindi more than Kannada? In China, the purpose-built electronics city of Shenzhen is full of migrants from other regions, so the local language is Mandarin even though the surrounding Guangdong province speaks Cantonese.
      - gopkarthik 7y ago
        In Hyderabad which is in a neighboring state to Bangalore, most people speak both Telugu and Hindi. Among white collar workers English is pretty common.
      - 7y ago
mshaler 7y ago
"The difference between a language and a dialect is an army and a navy." Of course this is all politicized, therefore sometimes militarized...
rurban 7y ago
For the movie industry it's a challenge, but they settled for 5 languages to target. Remember, the Indian movie industries are the biggest in the world, by far outnumbering Hollywood or porn. So they have English as lingua franca (mostly as repeated short statement to get the point to non-native speakers), but it's not a target language. 1. Hindi as dominant by the biggest industry from Mumbai (lot of trash movies, comparable to Hollywood). 2. Tamil from Chennai (much more political, having the more famous directors, but kinda ridicolous fashion styles). 3. Bengali from Kalkutta (very European, radical, cynical). 4. Telugu (Chennai, now Hyderabad) and I have no idea about the fifth. Is the a Punjab film industry? There are two more south Indian smaller industries, but the south combined (Tamil, Telugu, Malalayam, Kennada) has a market share of 50%, whilst in west you only hear about Bollywood with its musicals. Take that Hollywood.

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 democracy, and descendants of Alexander the Great's armies. Definitely a strange and fascinating society.

vishnugupta 7y ago
It's a testimony to India's vastness and diversity that more than 99.5% Indians wouldn't have even heard about Malana let alone know about their unique culture and society.
- wenderen 7y ago
  Can concur - I have never heard about Malana before reading that comment.
- puranjay 7y ago
  On the contrary, most people I know have heard of Malana simply because of "Malana Cream", a variety of highly sought after hashish
  - talonx 7y ago
    "Most people you know" does not equate to 99 or even 90% Indians, so this does not negate the previous statement.
- sbmthakur 7y ago
  True. It's only popular around Manali.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
z3phyr 7y ago
"The descendants of Alexander's armies" is a pretty common trope across Northern India, Pakistan, Afghanistan and parts of Iraq. I doubt all the claims though Coming back to Malana, the language they speak, Kanashi, is not an Indo-European language in roots but rather a Sion-Tibetian one.
- neuralzen 7y ago
  True, although they do seem to actually have the world's oldest continuous democracy, from what I've read. Could give some credence to their other claim. Ethnologue mentions this fact too, in the comments, although they got the religion wrong, so take it with a grain of salt (they are not Hindu, but worship a god named Jamul, who's will is interpreted by an Oracle. But they are very adamantly not Hindu). https://www.ethnologue.com/17/language/xns/ https://www.ethnologue.com/17/language/xns/

vikramkr 7y ago

The number of languages is stunning. Does anyone know if the number of languages is just the officially named languages or if it includes creoles? The language I speak is a creole of two languages and doesnt have a name or writing system really, and I'm curious to know how that is counted.

abhiyerra 7y ago
There are quite a few dialects. I don’t have the source off hand but something like 300. Also it is fun seeing the rupee notes because they have the denomination written in each of the scripts.
- jfk13 7y ago
  The distinction between "language" and "dialect" is far from clear-cut, and often determined as much by socio-political as linguistic factors. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_language_is_a_dialect_with_an_army_and_navy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_language_is_a_dialect_with_a...
staticautomatic 7y ago
I'd consider "Mumbai Hindi" a creole. It's nominally a dialect of Hindi/Urdu but it has a lot of Marathi mixed in, among other languages.
- aatharuv 7y ago
  Mumbai Hindi is not a creole by any definition of linguistics. It is actually a dialect of Hindustani with Marathi and other languages mixed in. A Creole specifically occurs when two languages (usually unrelated) suddenly mix together, usually with a _greatly_ simplified (but consistent) grammar from the parent languages. It's not just the result of heavy borrowing. I don't believe that's happened for Mumbai Hindi.
  - staticautomatic 7y ago
    Fair enough. Thanks for clarifying.

peterburkimsher 7y ago

This may be a long shot, but could anybody help me find a Bible in Oriya? Last year I did some research into Unicode PUA characters and discovered some unencoded Taiwanese & Hakka characters. I wrote a proposal to add them to Unicode, and a blog post on Medium (called Hakka news). Now I've done the same for all languages on Bible.com, and I'm trying to compare with printed copies to know what the text should say.

jfk13 7y ago
Try https://odia.bible https://odia.bible ?
- peterburkimsher 7y ago
  It's the right translation! I emailed them, but they don't really understand my question and take a long time to reply.
j0e1 7y ago
You can find an online version here https://vachanonline.com/ https://vachanonline.com/ . If you are looking for the data, here is a repository: https://git.door43.org/BCS-BIBLE/Odiya-ULB-NT.BCS https://git.door43.org/BCS-BIBLE/Odiya-ULB-NT.BCS That is the New Testament only, the Old Testament can be found in the same way.
- peterburkimsher 7y ago
  I can already get the online version! The trouble is that I can see some PUA codes being used in the text. https://www.bible.com/bible/1749/1KI.4.20.ODIAOV-BSI https://www.bible.com/bible/1749/1KI.4.20.ODIAOV-BSI https://www.bible.com/bible/1749/2KI.16.17.ODIAOV-BSI https://www.bible.com/bible/1749/2KI.16.17.ODIAOV-BSI https://www.bible.com/bible/1749/ROM.6.16.ODIAOV-BSI https://www.bible.com/bible/1749/ROM.6.16.ODIAOV-BSI No idea if these will appear in the comment, but let's try:  U+F020  U+F02F  U+F0A0 If I can compare to scans of a printed copy, then I'll be able to know what the characters should be (and therefore whether they're already in Unicode).

Jagat 7y ago

It's amazing how most Indians believe that Hindi is the national language of India, when there's no such as a national language in India. There are two official languages for union government communication - Hindi and English. I've also noticed that a lot of non Indians find it funny that most Indians here in bay area companies communicate among themselves in heavily accented English instead of The Indian language.

_emacsomancer_ 7y ago
The original plan was, of course, to phase out English as a national language. This never happened, I suppose partially because while 'Hindustani' (as was) made sense as a symbol of unity during the time leading up to Independence, afterwards, especially as 'Hindi', it was seen more as a regional language (even if the region involved is large) and so not necessarily more deserving of official nation-level status than Bengali or Tamil. English ends up being more neutral in many ways (though, of course, not without its own (post-colonial) baggage). > I've also noticed that a lot of non Indians find it funny that most Indians here in bay area companies communicate among themselves in heavily accented English instead of The Indian language. Ah, yes, of course, 'the Indian language'. :)
- sn41 7y ago
  Besides the fact that in states like Kerala, for example, where you have nearly 92 percent literacy, declaring Hindi as official language will result in nearly 0 percent literacy. I think just like Charkha, and village-based self-sufficient economies, the idea of Hindi as a national language should be discarded as an idea whose time has gone.
- naravara 7y ago
  I always thought India would have functioned better if it had confederated under a Swiss style cantonment system (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cantons_of_Switzerland https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cantons_of_Switzerland). They maybe could have even avoided partition this way too. And whatever paroxysms of violence from internal migration might have been mitigated against if it was all being overseen by a single government and army instead of the three-way clusterfuck of the actual partition. There would have needed to be some system for maintaining a rough level of parity/equality of representation of various minority groups at the high level. Scheduled castes and tribes would probably not have been as well protected under such a system, for example, but it's probably something than could have been worked out with effort.

anuraj 7y ago

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.

owaislone 7y ago
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 India sub-continent might not be the worst thing to happen. I've seen how proud and patriotic Indian hate this idea but IMO it could be actually quite good for the whole region. I'd actually like to a more federated Indian Union that could eventually make way for Bangaladesh, Sri Lanka, Pakistan and Nepal to become member states. Something like the EU perhaps. While I don't think anything like this has any real chance of happening, it would be a sure shot way to bringing peace to the whole sub-continent IMHO.
- shripadk 7y ago
  > 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.

aatharuv 7y ago

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 inspiration/source for high vocabulary, whereas Hindi uses Sanskrit as a source for high vocabulary. And they use different scripts. But on the street level, the language is identical, not merely mutually intelligible. Many of the languages traditionally clubbed by the Indian government as Hindi are much farther away from standard Hindi than Urdu.

jfk13 7y ago
> 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 - in Hindi we say ...." So even on a basic street level, I don't think it's true that they're identical. Both part of the same huge dialect continuum, yes, but they're slightly different points on it. Whether to call them separate languages is as much a political question as a linguistic one, of course.
- mc32 7y ago
  Maybe it’s akin to Galician and Portuguese or Galician and Spanish (Castilian). For the most part about 90% of everyday vocabulary is similar and understandable by each other yet may have some unique differences which are enough to be called separate languages, even if both resort to Classic Latin for high words and roots.
- manbatman 7y ago
  Same way like Italian and Romanian and Spanish
  - 7y ago

vishnugupta 7y ago

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.

fareesh 7y ago
It depends on what you mean by function
danans 7y ago
> And all the above change noticeably every 200KM And if you are in a dense enough area, it can change every 2km, when accounting for differences in socially conditioned dialects and customs.
- avemuri 7y ago
  You mean a sparse enough area? I've generally found dense areas are more homogeneous while even neighboring villages in sparsely populated areas with bad roads and no telecommunications tend to be very different. Makes intuitive sense since transmission of culture is easier.
  - danans 7y ago
    Not really. In dense areas, you often have far more diverse populations, as cities attrat people with different traditions and backgrounds. But in a place with as many social groups as India, these people often maintain many of their customs and habits even in the dense urban context, resulting in a great variety within a small area.
    - braindead_in 7y ago
      Within the same city, the Hindu majority areas will look and feel noticeably different from the Muslim majority areas. The culture, and sometimes even language, is different.

j0e1 7y ago

Here is a well respected source on this https://www.ethnologue.com/country/IN https://www.ethnologue.com/country/IN

supernova87a 7y ago

Too many languages, too many religions to govern a country like this effectively. Unpopular truth, but truth nonetheless.

rishav_sharan 7y ago
Yet governance has been pretty effective since the last 70 years and will only get better as more of Indians get educated and the population growth slows.
ppsreejith 7y ago
> Unpopular truth, but truth nonetheless. Why do you think so? The issues we do have with governance don't seem to be because of the diversity of languages or religions.

billfruit 7y ago

A bit strange that Sinhala is classified as Indo-European rather than as Dravidian, as one might think from geography.

najarvg 7y ago
I initially found that strange too given that there is a distinct Sri Lankan Tamil dialect (Jaffna, Batticaloa versions etc) but it looks like Sinhala came in as an original Indo-Eurpoean language and mingled with surrounding languages to borrow some words etc. Here are some opinionated commentaries on that: http://www.applet-magic.com/sinhaleselan.htm http://www.applet-magic.com/sinhaleselan.htm http://www.island.lk/2003/11/05/featur02.html http://www.island.lk/2003/11/05/featur02.html Would love to see an authoritative source confirming these.
jvsg 7y ago
The sinhalese people of Sri Lanka are Indo-European, not dravidian. IIRC they came from Modern day Bengal.
- billfruit 7y ago
  But Sinhalese culture,food etc is closer to Dravidian.

vinni2 7y ago

The surprising thing for me is the fact “India (780) has the world's second highest number of languages, after Papua New Guinea (839).”

ignoramous 7y ago

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 Gujarati roots. This is also true for Hindi and Urdu, and you can tell esp if 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. I, for sure, know that the Punjabi [2] spoke in Multan (Saraiki) sounds different than anything I've heard in India; but my Indian Punjabi friends tell me its mutually intelligible to them. Imo, the Hindi-Urdu debate isn't similar to a Croatian-Serbian or even the EasternPunjabi-WesternPunjabi one, where the vocabulary remains the same for the most part and only phonetics remain a predominant source of divergence. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lisan_ud-Dawat https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lisan_ud-Dawat [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hindi%E2%80%93Urdu_controversy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hindi%E2%80%93Urdu_controversy [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punjabi_dialects https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punjabi_dialects

lgessler 7y ago
> 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 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ez%C4%81fe

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

vbtemp 7y ago

Lost among here is Sentinelese https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sentinelese_language https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sentinelese_language The only language where not a single word is known to the outside world!

User23 7y ago
On some level you have to respect a people whose response to anthropologists is to see how many arrows they can stick in them.
- ahje 7y ago
  There has been friendly contacts with them according to Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sentinelese#Shipwrecks https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sentinelese#Shipwrecks

keeganjw 7y ago

It still boggles my mind that so many of the languages of India are related to European languages. Hindi and English share a common linguistic ancestor. Yet languages that are much physically closer together like English and Finnish or Hindi and Tamil aren't related at all.

umanwizard 7y ago
True, it boggles my mind also! But for reasons I'm struggling to explain, it doesn't strike me as weird or surprising that, for example, American English and Navajo are completely unrelated despite being spoken in close physical proximity to each other. I guess it is because the settlement and colonization of the Southwestern US is in much more recent memory, whereas we sort of think of Hindi and its ancestors like Sanskrit as having been spoken in India since time immemorial. FWIW, it should be pointed out, to be strictly correct, that we really have no idea whether the various language families are related to each other and descended from some "proto-World" language. So instead of saying "X and Y are completely unrelated", it's probably more accurate to say "there is no known evidence that X and Y are related".
User23 7y ago
This is because both Europe and India where both conquered by the Yamnaya people about 4 millennia ago[1]. Europeans and Indians are (distant) cousins. Take a look at most Bollywood stars for example and the resemblance is clear. [1] https://www.livescience.com/59703-north-india-populated-by-central-asian-invaders.html https://www.livescience.com/59703-north-india-populated-by-c...

ramgorur 7y ago

Those who are wondering why Indian languages are a subgrouop of Indo-European languages, this chart might be helpful. It shows some of the many words that Sanskrit and Slavic both share. https://www.rbth.com/blogs/2014/11/01/sanskrit_and_russian_ancient_kinship_39451 https://www.rbth.com/blogs/2014/11/01/sanskrit_and_russian_a...

rusticpenn 7y ago
Not all indian languages are in that subgroup. There are another family of dravidian languages.

_iyig 7y ago

A co-worker of mine once said then he heard a greater variety of spoken Indian languages in the Bay Area than he’d ever heard back in India, where he was born and educated. Never thought of a polite way to ask, but I’ve always been curious as to how many Indian co-workers of mine share a language other than English - seems like the number could be lower than expected, given the sheer amount of different languages.

karthikvellanki 7y ago
Your co-worker's observation is actually more obvious than we think it is. Since states in India are essentially divided based on linguistic grounds, he would have been exposed to two Indian languages at best - the regional language in his town and Hindi (if the dominant language in the town is not Hindi already). In the Bay Area you'll find people from various states of India.
- skissane 7y ago
  > In the Bay Area you'll find people from various states of India. Doesn't the same thing happen within India itself, due to internal interstate migration? Not everyone who works in (for example) Bangalore's IT industry grew up there.
  - peterburkimsher 7y ago
    On a related note, does that make people in (e.g.) Bangalore speak Hindi more than Kannada? In China, the purpose-built electronics city of Shenzhen is full of migrants from other regions, so the local language is Mandarin even though the surrounding Guangdong province speaks Cantonese.
    - gopkarthik 7y ago
      In Hyderabad which is in a neighboring state to Bangalore, most people speak both Telugu and Hindi. Among white collar workers English is pretty common.
    - 7y ago

mshaler 7y ago

"The difference between a language and a dialect is an army and a navy." Of course this is all politicized, therefore sometimes militarized...

rurban 7y ago

For the movie industry it's a challenge, but they settled for 5 languages to target. Remember, the Indian movie industries are the biggest in the world, by far outnumbering Hollywood or porn. So they have English as lingua franca (mostly as repeated short statement to get the point to non-native speakers), but it's not a target language. 1. Hindi as dominant by the biggest industry from Mumbai (lot of trash movies, comparable to Hollywood). 2. Tamil from Chennai (much more political, having the more famous directors, but kinda ridicolous fashion styles). 3. Bengali from Kalkutta (very European, radical, cynical). 4. Telugu (Chennai, now Hyderabad) and I have no idea about the fifth. Is the a Punjab film industry? There are two more south Indian smaller industries, but the south combined (Tamil, Telugu, Malalayam, Kennada) has a market share of 50%, whilst in west you only hear about Bollywood with its musicals. Take that Hollywood.