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How to count every language in India (2018)

100 points by haltingproblem 6y ago

strawberrypuree 6y ago
(2018), please.
tgv 6y ago
It's a pity there's no (link to the) definition of language they used. With so many, where do you draw the line?
- quadrifoliate 6y ago
  > With so many, where do you draw the line? The whole issue of language v/s dialect is a complex one; but I have adjusted to the one in this popular article [1]: if you speak a language and can enter into a conversation with a speaker of a variation on that language relatively easily, it qualifies as a dialect. > A Mandarin-speaker can no more “adjust” to Cantonese than a Swede could “adjust” to German. Most of the well-known Indian languages actually fail this test. Someone who has grown up speaking Hindi cannot reliably converse with someone in Bangla, Sambalpuri, or Tamil. If anything, the word "dialect" is overused regarding India – Bhojpuri [2] was often mentioned as a dialect of Hindi; but as a fluent Hindi speaker I cannot claim to understand or have a fluid conversation with someone speaking Bhojpuri. I am glad that it is at least sometimes referred to as a language now. ---------------------------------------------------- [1] https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2016/01/difference-between-language-dialect/424704/ https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2016/01/di... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bhojpuri_language https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bhojpuri_language
  - rusticpenn 6y ago
    At least with Hindi and Tamil, you can be sure because they come from different language families.
    - quadrifoliate 6y ago
      True. This may sound obvious to you, but I am not so sure about its obviousness in general in the West. A lot of western-educated people have asked me “So Hindi is the main language, and there are a lot of different dialects throughout the country, right?” – and I have no idea where to begin explaining that it's nothing like that, so I go with the time-tested “Well, it's slightly different...”
      - vram22 6y ago
        > and I have no idea where to begin explaining that it's nothing like that (I have studied Sanskrit and Hindi in school for multiple years, and can understand a good amount of Marathi and Tamil.) You can say this - I think it is true, not quite verified (partly heard from older relatives, partly deduction based on observing similarities in the mentioned languages' vocabularies): Sanskrit came first - thousands of years ago. It is the language of the Vedas, 4 of India's most ancient scriptures. Many northern (including east and west) Indian languages are similar to Sanskrit and likely are descendants of it. Hindi, Gujarati, Marwari, Punjabi, Bengali, Oriya (not sure, but it sounds some like Bengali), Marathi, are some of these. Languages of Indian states further east than Bengal, called the North Eastern states, like Assam, Nagaland, Manipur, etc. may not show a lot of Sanskrit influence because they may have Oriental influence instead, such as from SE Asia, China, etc. Except Assamese may have some Sanskrit influence, also not sure of Manipuri. And of the southern states in the peninsula, Tamil has the least Sanskrit influence and is also said to be very ancient. The other three, Malayalam, Kannada and Telugu, have some Sanskrit influence. Caveat: I am not a language expert.
        bodhiandpysics1 6y ago
        Bengali is very much a descendent of Sanskrit. Assamese (and Oriya) is essentially a somewhat distant dialect of Bengali. Most languages of Asia that aren't part of the Chinese world (Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and modern Vietnamese) have tons of Sanskrit or Pali (or both) in them. Tamil has lots of sanskrit in it (good examples are naka meaning finger nail, singa meaning lion, ampala from ambara meaning sky) it just has less than other dravidian languages, presumbaly because of its much older literary tradition. Literaly Malayalam looks literary Tamil, with all the words converted to Sanskrit. It's kind of funny!
  - Arnavion 6y ago
    That would make Hindi and Urdu dialects of each other. I'm not saying this is necessarily right or wrong; it's a landmine I don't want to touch :)
    - naruvimama 6y ago
      It is true Urdu is just a colonial imposition, it is synthetically derived from Hindi by insisting that the script be Persian. Tarek Fatah makes a point about why Urdu isn't a distinct language from Hindi.
      - srtjstjsj 6y ago
        Yiddish is written in both hebrew letters and latin letters, but is one language. Language speakers don't care too much about the script when evolving their language; they use what they have.
        iguy 6y ago
        I think Hindi/Urdu is quite a bit like Serbian/Croatian. The preferred script followed the religious divide, but (if I understand right) both sort-of standardised quite similar dialects out of a range of possibilities. And then later they were politically divided, and there were some efforts to move the official vocabulary away from each other's. IIRC Sanskrit has also been written in dozens of scripts, there's a perfect one-to-one transliteration into most (maybe all) the north-indian scripts, although they have extra characters for their own sounds.
        bodhiandpysics1 6y ago
        Since all indian scripts besides the Urdu Nastaliq were originally developed to write sanskrit, the transliteration is indeed perfect!
    - abdullahkhalids 6y ago
      Why is it a landmine? I am an Urdu speaker, and totally fine with realizing that Urdu is the Persianised standard register of the Hindustani language, and Hindi is the standardised and Sanskritised register of the Hindustani language.
  - emteycz 6y ago
    That definition does not work with Czech and Slovak.
    - tgv 6y ago
      Why? Aren't they rather close, and more of a language family than two distinct languages?
      - emteycz 6y ago
        They are distinct languages from the same language family, which are understood by speakers of the other language, but not spoken. Czechs understand Slovaks and vice versa, but both are talking in their own languages, and speaking the other language can't be done properly without studying it.
  - yumraj 6y ago
    Bhojpuri, Maithili, Haryanwi, Braj, Bundelkhandi, dialects from Rajasthan, Himachal and so and so forth, and I'll say even Khari boli are all dialects of Hindi. We may not be able to have a fluent conversation, but for most part we'll understand the context and will be able to speak. In fact Hindi dialects change every 100km or so I'll say in the Hindi belt. Punjabi, Gujrati, Marathi and others (picking from areas neighboring the Hindi belt) are not dialects, they are languages, even though from that list Gujrati and Marathi use Devnagri script (or very close to it).
    - mistrial9 6y ago
      hmm American here - but I vaguely recall.. Gurmukhi is a variation on Punjabi, used by Sikhs for religious purposes, but Urdu is a 'persianized' version of Hindi (?) Checking wikipedia, it mentions a "Punjabi diaspora family of languages." These distinctions seem understandable and interesting to me, of European descent and non-political. thanks yumraj, for the many posts here today on this, it feels important at some basic level. I enjoyed reading "In Search of the Cradle of Civilization" long ago.. and studied personally with one of the authors, in California. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subhash_Kak#In_Search_of_the_Cradle_of_Civilization https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subhash_Kak#In_Search_of_the_C...
      - yumraj 6y ago
        Gurmukhi is the script used to write Punjabi, at least in India. It was created by a Sikh Guru. Link: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gurmukhi https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gurmukhi Interestingly, Pakistan has a state called Punjab where Punjabi is the main language, but I’m not sure what script they use. Regarding Hindi and Urdu, I found the wikipedia page to at least be informative. Link: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hindi%E2%80%93Urdu_controversy https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hindi%E2%80%93Urdu_controver...
        valarauko 6y ago
        Pakistani Punjabi uses the Shahmukhi script, which is based on the Perso-Arabic script.
- politelemon 6y ago
  Unknown attribution, I've read that a language is a dialect with an army and a navy. Not entirely applicable here though, as there are likely geographic and historical separations at play too.
  - jfk13 6y ago
    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...
- embit 6y ago
  You can find more information on their website. http://www.peopleslinguisticsurvey.org/ http://www.peopleslinguisticsurvey.org/
john4532452 6y ago
There is a widespread misconception about India's National language as being Hindi. Article 343 of the Constitution prescribes Hindi as written in Devanagari script as the official language of the government along with English. The Constitution, however, did not declare Hindi as the national language or any other language. Hindi does not have any special privilege than any other state languages like Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, Oriya etc. Hindi is not even oldest language in India. It's Tamil. The politics behind promoting Hindi is a religious one. It makes convenient to promote the varna system(modern caste system). This is the reason the religious party and organizations(BJP, RSS) promotes Hindi and forces in to the education of all non-hindi speaking states too. Another misconception is all north indian states government administrative language is Hindi, which is not the case.
- Karishma1234 6y ago
  > The politics behind promoting Hindi is a religious one. It makes convenient to promote the varna system(modern caste system) You lost me there. Usual white man's burden speaking. BJP is not a "religious" party in any sense of the word. Hindi is just ridiculously popular language mostly because of Bollywood. Since most politicians tend to be 'hindi' speaking they try to make Hindi even more popular as it benefits them where as regional parties see that as threat. Stop drinking Equality Lab's kool aid.
- yumraj 6y ago
  > The politics behind promoting Hindi is a religious one. It makes convenient to promote the varna system(modern caste system). This is the reason the religious party and organizations(BJP, RSS) promotes Hindi and forces in to the education of all non-hindi speaking states too. Rest of your comment is factual, except not sure if Tamil is the oldest language or Sanskrit or some other is. But the above quoted part of your comment is utter BS. The reason to promote Hindi is nationalistic rather than religious. Why should the lingua franca of any country be a foreign language, it should be a local language. Hindi fits the bill amongst all other Indian languages is because it has the largest footprint and hence best odds of success, as opposed to say Tamil which is primarily spoken in 1 state.
ape4 6y ago
I was hoping an AI would analyze every post in the .IN domain.
- ffpip 6y ago
  Many people who speak some rare languages in India do not have the tech skills to put their language online. Some languages are already dead, except for academic purposes.
  - srtjstjsj 6y ago
    While it's not close to a complete solution, I'm glad that we have Unicode to help.
- naruvimama 6y ago
  As mentioned in the article, the real loss is the world view of the people. Culture, folklore and history would be lost.
zerop 6y ago
Learning Sanskrit and loving it. Chanting sanskrit mantras relaxes my facial muscles and feel lightweight on forehead.. might sound dramatic to some, but it's true....
- bodhiandpysics1 6y ago
  It takes a couple of years for the pain to really begin!
  - zerop 6y ago
    What pain you are talking about? Can you elaborate?
    - croh 6y ago
      Having friends and families chanting it for generations, never heard of any such pain.
      - bodhiandpysics1 6y ago
        There is a saying in sanskrit that you can either rule a kingdom or learn grammar. Learning sanskrit is a long road and its not an easy one.
        zerop 6y ago
        Long but pleasent journey, I must say.
- ssvss 6y ago
  Any specific mantras ?
  - zerop 6y ago
    Gayatri Mantra would be a good start. Another one is "Om namah Bhagwate vasudevaya." YouTube has many if you just want to listen couple of times to remember them.
beeforpork 6y ago
The notion of an 'old language' is weird. What does that even mean? Why is Bo one of the oldest languages? Is Greek old? Is English old? Is Lithuanian old? Is Tamil old? Korean? Chinese (which one?)? Any language? If your answer is 'yes', then (a) please explain what you mean, and (b) rest assured that it is not the same language today as when it was 'young' (whatever that means) -- 'young X' is probably a different language than 'old X', but what does that mean for 'X'? I don't get it. Such a weird notion. It seems to me that 'old' for a language is often used to imply that it is 'important' (culturally? presumably yes.), which feels, well, not racist, but maybe 'linguist' -- OK, that word is already occupied... Even fighting exists about which language is 'oldest' -- could you please make up the rules of the game before playing? Anyway -- this is just me not understanding what people mean.
- LudwigNagasena 6y ago
  I hate that it is trendy nowadays to claim that everything is racist. It is just ignorance.
  - srtjstjsj 6y ago
    People reuse old words for concepts that don't have their own names. Racism is the most common word for "using pseudoscience to give one group higher status than another"
- yorwba 6y ago
  I think what people who talk about "old languages" use to determine a language's age is something like "what's the earliest date an ancestor of this language was used in writing" or "how long has this area been inhabited by populations genetically similar to modern speakers of this language". Personally, I think most languages are old, except for constructed languages like Toki Pona that have only existed for a short time.
- ponker 6y ago
  Well very old languages like Tamil have a very ancient person with whom a modern speaker could have a mutually intelligible conversation. An English speaker could not speak English with someone from 1000 years ago but a Tamil speaker could.
RcouF1uZ4gsC 6y ago
The article takes as a given that preserving language is a good thing and it is a tragedy when a language dies. I say that languages divide us and silo us. It is a triumph when a language dies because the people who previously spoke it now think and speak in a different language. Of course we should try to preserve any literature or folk-lore. I look forward to the day when everyone on earth will be able to speak and communicate in a single language.
- ponker 6y ago
  Isn’t Facebook evidence enough that “connecting everyone” isn’t necessarily a good thing?
- vram22 6y ago
  On a brief look, Esperanto seems to be mainly Western-influenced.
- wavefunction 6y ago
  Different languages have different nuances for things so there are ideas and ways of thinking that are lost when a language dies, as you may have accidentally alluded to. I grew up in Colorado and my family normalized many terms like couloir or scree that got me in a bit of temporary trouble with an English instructor in Texas who thought I'd been fishing for exotic words to use in a paper. He was a great guy and accepted my explanation that these were words I used frequently while growing up: they are my language.
- srtjstjsj 6y ago
  I don't see how that argument applies to language but not culture.
- davehcker 6y ago
  I say why not have an environment for people to have the opportunity to learn multiple languages so that the inherent beauty of the variety of languages is preserved, and yet, we can communicate and silo. As a matter of fact, then multiple languages could actually come to bond us together. Goethe said something along the lines- “He who does not know foreign languages does not know anything about his own”. As for the inherent beauty in a language, most would agree that certain thing expressed in language X 'tastes' different than in Y. As for uniting, I am neither German nor Persian, but it is my ability to use German or Persian that unites me to both the cultures (and people) in a much deeper way; of course, you can argue that the fact that I drew the boundaries of German/Persian is in itself a problem, and having had a single language would have been the ideal, but again, I doubt that since language X might be superior in terms of certain expressions over Y (until proven otherwise).
Onewildgamer 6y ago
I come from a Sourashtra speaking community. We’re a small bunch of people immigrated from Gujarat to Southern parts in different waves during the Middle Ages, mostly because of war and trade. Our language has been preserved though the common speak and has no agreed upon script, so it is majorly taught to the children by their parents and relatives. Most of us know Tamil/Kannada/Telugu because of the main language in the place we live in and also use it to publish local magazines. The magazines though are published in Hindi, Tamil, Sourashtra scripts, the interest is declining at a fast rate. Fewer people want to buy and even fewer want to write. In my city, some are distributed for free only to see it being used for packing pakodas and samosas. Another factor is, many in our community marry people from outside the communities (I'm not against that) and their children can barely understand the language. Our language is still not in the endangered category, but I see it becoming one in the coming decades. More people in our community are getting educated, becoming modern (by western standards), want their children to communicate in English and as a result most people have become middle-class to rich. The reasons for our endangerment is partly because of modernisation. I'm seeing the coming generations have lesser and lesser interest in growing the language as my Grandpa rightly feared, and will be one of the ones forgotten by the end of this century. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saurashtra_language https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saurashtra_language
- guruparan18 6y ago
  I have many friends who speak Sourashtra. It is always exciting and interesting to see how much they love their language and want to keep it in day-today interaction in house hold. I think any language that is spoken in kitchen and in dining table will survive long. Sourashtra will to!
  - Onewildgamer 6y ago
    Your comment warms my heart. I’ll try my best to teach my nieces and nephews at least, hoping they carry the baton in the future.
known 6y ago
In 1932 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communal_Award https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communal_Award British regime offered separate electorates/countries to Muslim/Sikh/Christian/Parsi/Buddhist/Jain/SC/ST where Upper caste/Brahmin/Bania/Kshatriya can live on a Visa

strawberrypuree 6y ago

(2018), please.

tgv 6y ago

It's a pity there's no (link to the) definition of language they used. With so many, where do you draw the line?

quadrifoliate 6y ago
> With so many, where do you draw the line? The whole issue of language v/s dialect is a complex one; but I have adjusted to the one in this popular article [1]: if you speak a language and can enter into a conversation with a speaker of a variation on that language relatively easily, it qualifies as a dialect. > A Mandarin-speaker can no more “adjust” to Cantonese than a Swede could “adjust” to German. Most of the well-known Indian languages actually fail this test. Someone who has grown up speaking Hindi cannot reliably converse with someone in Bangla, Sambalpuri, or Tamil. If anything, the word "dialect" is overused regarding India – Bhojpuri [2] was often mentioned as a dialect of Hindi; but as a fluent Hindi speaker I cannot claim to understand or have a fluid conversation with someone speaking Bhojpuri. I am glad that it is at least sometimes referred to as a language now. ---------------------------------------------------- [1] https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2016/01/difference-between-language-dialect/424704/ https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2016/01/di... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bhojpuri_language https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bhojpuri_language
- rusticpenn 6y ago
  At least with Hindi and Tamil, you can be sure because they come from different language families.
  - quadrifoliate 6y ago
    True. This may sound obvious to you, but I am not so sure about its obviousness in general in the West. A lot of western-educated people have asked me “So Hindi is the main language, and there are a lot of different dialects throughout the country, right?” – and I have no idea where to begin explaining that it's nothing like that, so I go with the time-tested “Well, it's slightly different...”
    - vram22 6y ago
      > and I have no idea where to begin explaining that it's nothing like that (I have studied Sanskrit and Hindi in school for multiple years, and can understand a good amount of Marathi and Tamil.) You can say this - I think it is true, not quite verified (partly heard from older relatives, partly deduction based on observing similarities in the mentioned languages' vocabularies): Sanskrit came first - thousands of years ago. It is the language of the Vedas, 4 of India's most ancient scriptures. Many northern (including east and west) Indian languages are similar to Sanskrit and likely are descendants of it. Hindi, Gujarati, Marwari, Punjabi, Bengali, Oriya (not sure, but it sounds some like Bengali), Marathi, are some of these. Languages of Indian states further east than Bengal, called the North Eastern states, like Assam, Nagaland, Manipur, etc. may not show a lot of Sanskrit influence because they may have Oriental influence instead, such as from SE Asia, China, etc. Except Assamese may have some Sanskrit influence, also not sure of Manipuri. And of the southern states in the peninsula, Tamil has the least Sanskrit influence and is also said to be very ancient. The other three, Malayalam, Kannada and Telugu, have some Sanskrit influence. Caveat: I am not a language expert.
      - bodhiandpysics1 6y ago
        Bengali is very much a descendent of Sanskrit. Assamese (and Oriya) is essentially a somewhat distant dialect of Bengali. Most languages of Asia that aren't part of the Chinese world (Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and modern Vietnamese) have tons of Sanskrit or Pali (or both) in them. Tamil has lots of sanskrit in it (good examples are naka meaning finger nail, singa meaning lion, ampala from ambara meaning sky) it just has less than other dravidian languages, presumbaly because of its much older literary tradition. Literaly Malayalam looks literary Tamil, with all the words converted to Sanskrit. It's kind of funny!
- Arnavion 6y ago
  That would make Hindi and Urdu dialects of each other. I'm not saying this is necessarily right or wrong; it's a landmine I don't want to touch :)
  - naruvimama 6y ago
    It is true Urdu is just a colonial imposition, it is synthetically derived from Hindi by insisting that the script be Persian. Tarek Fatah makes a point about why Urdu isn't a distinct language from Hindi.
    - srtjstjsj 6y ago
      Yiddish is written in both hebrew letters and latin letters, but is one language. Language speakers don't care too much about the script when evolving their language; they use what they have.
      - iguy 6y ago
        I think Hindi/Urdu is quite a bit like Serbian/Croatian. The preferred script followed the religious divide, but (if I understand right) both sort-of standardised quite similar dialects out of a range of possibilities. And then later they were politically divided, and there were some efforts to move the official vocabulary away from each other's. IIRC Sanskrit has also been written in dozens of scripts, there's a perfect one-to-one transliteration into most (maybe all) the north-indian scripts, although they have extra characters for their own sounds.
        bodhiandpysics1 6y ago
        Since all indian scripts besides the Urdu Nastaliq were originally developed to write sanskrit, the transliteration is indeed perfect!
  - abdullahkhalids 6y ago
    Why is it a landmine? I am an Urdu speaker, and totally fine with realizing that Urdu is the Persianised standard register of the Hindustani language, and Hindi is the standardised and Sanskritised register of the Hindustani language.
- emteycz 6y ago
  That definition does not work with Czech and Slovak.
  - tgv 6y ago
    Why? Aren't they rather close, and more of a language family than two distinct languages?
    - emteycz 6y ago
      They are distinct languages from the same language family, which are understood by speakers of the other language, but not spoken. Czechs understand Slovaks and vice versa, but both are talking in their own languages, and speaking the other language can't be done properly without studying it.
- yumraj 6y ago
  Bhojpuri, Maithili, Haryanwi, Braj, Bundelkhandi, dialects from Rajasthan, Himachal and so and so forth, and I'll say even Khari boli are all dialects of Hindi. We may not be able to have a fluent conversation, but for most part we'll understand the context and will be able to speak. In fact Hindi dialects change every 100km or so I'll say in the Hindi belt. Punjabi, Gujrati, Marathi and others (picking from areas neighboring the Hindi belt) are not dialects, they are languages, even though from that list Gujrati and Marathi use Devnagri script (or very close to it).
  - mistrial9 6y ago
    hmm American here - but I vaguely recall.. Gurmukhi is a variation on Punjabi, used by Sikhs for religious purposes, but Urdu is a 'persianized' version of Hindi (?) Checking wikipedia, it mentions a "Punjabi diaspora family of languages." These distinctions seem understandable and interesting to me, of European descent and non-political. thanks yumraj, for the many posts here today on this, it feels important at some basic level. I enjoyed reading "In Search of the Cradle of Civilization" long ago.. and studied personally with one of the authors, in California. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subhash_Kak#In_Search_of_the_Cradle_of_Civilization https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subhash_Kak#In_Search_of_the_C...
    - yumraj 6y ago
      Gurmukhi is the script used to write Punjabi, at least in India. It was created by a Sikh Guru. Link: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gurmukhi https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gurmukhi Interestingly, Pakistan has a state called Punjab where Punjabi is the main language, but I’m not sure what script they use. Regarding Hindi and Urdu, I found the wikipedia page to at least be informative. Link: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hindi%E2%80%93Urdu_controversy https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hindi%E2%80%93Urdu_controver...
      - valarauko 6y ago
        Pakistani Punjabi uses the Shahmukhi script, which is based on the Perso-Arabic script.
politelemon 6y ago
Unknown attribution, I've read that a language is a dialect with an army and a navy. Not entirely applicable here though, as there are likely geographic and historical separations at play too.
- jfk13 6y ago
  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...
embit 6y ago
You can find more information on their website. http://www.peopleslinguisticsurvey.org/ http://www.peopleslinguisticsurvey.org/

john4532452 6y ago

There is a widespread misconception about India's National language as being Hindi. Article 343 of the Constitution prescribes Hindi as written in Devanagari script as the official language of the government along with English. The Constitution, however, did not declare Hindi as the national language or any other language. Hindi does not have any special privilege than any other state languages like Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, Oriya etc. Hindi is not even oldest language in India. It's Tamil. The politics behind promoting Hindi is a religious one. It makes convenient to promote the varna system(modern caste system). This is the reason the religious party and organizations(BJP, RSS) promotes Hindi and forces in to the education of all non-hindi speaking states too. Another misconception is all north indian states government administrative language is Hindi, which is not the case.

Karishma1234 6y ago
> The politics behind promoting Hindi is a religious one. It makes convenient to promote the varna system(modern caste system) You lost me there. Usual white man's burden speaking. BJP is not a "religious" party in any sense of the word. Hindi is just ridiculously popular language mostly because of Bollywood. Since most politicians tend to be 'hindi' speaking they try to make Hindi even more popular as it benefits them where as regional parties see that as threat. Stop drinking Equality Lab's kool aid.
yumraj 6y ago
> The politics behind promoting Hindi is a religious one. It makes convenient to promote the varna system(modern caste system). This is the reason the religious party and organizations(BJP, RSS) promotes Hindi and forces in to the education of all non-hindi speaking states too. Rest of your comment is factual, except not sure if Tamil is the oldest language or Sanskrit or some other is. But the above quoted part of your comment is utter BS. The reason to promote Hindi is nationalistic rather than religious. Why should the lingua franca of any country be a foreign language, it should be a local language. Hindi fits the bill amongst all other Indian languages is because it has the largest footprint and hence best odds of success, as opposed to say Tamil which is primarily spoken in 1 state.

ape4 6y ago

I was hoping an AI would analyze every post in the .IN domain.

ffpip 6y ago
Many people who speak some rare languages in India do not have the tech skills to put their language online. Some languages are already dead, except for academic purposes.
- srtjstjsj 6y ago
  While it's not close to a complete solution, I'm glad that we have Unicode to help.
naruvimama 6y ago
As mentioned in the article, the real loss is the world view of the people. Culture, folklore and history would be lost.

zerop 6y ago

Learning Sanskrit and loving it. Chanting sanskrit mantras relaxes my facial muscles and feel lightweight on forehead.. might sound dramatic to some, but it's true....

bodhiandpysics1 6y ago
It takes a couple of years for the pain to really begin!
- zerop 6y ago
  What pain you are talking about? Can you elaborate?
  - croh 6y ago
    Having friends and families chanting it for generations, never heard of any such pain.
    - bodhiandpysics1 6y ago
      There is a saying in sanskrit that you can either rule a kingdom or learn grammar. Learning sanskrit is a long road and its not an easy one.
      - zerop 6y ago
        Long but pleasent journey, I must say.
ssvss 6y ago
Any specific mantras ?
- zerop 6y ago
  Gayatri Mantra would be a good start. Another one is "Om namah Bhagwate vasudevaya." YouTube has many if you just want to listen couple of times to remember them.

beeforpork 6y ago

The notion of an 'old language' is weird. What does that even mean? Why is Bo one of the oldest languages? Is Greek old? Is English old? Is Lithuanian old? Is Tamil old? Korean? Chinese (which one?)? Any language? If your answer is 'yes', then (a) please explain what you mean, and (b) rest assured that it is not the same language today as when it was 'young' (whatever that means) -- 'young X' is probably a different language than 'old X', but what does that mean for 'X'? I don't get it. Such a weird notion. It seems to me that 'old' for a language is often used to imply that it is 'important' (culturally? presumably yes.), which feels, well, not racist, but maybe 'linguist' -- OK, that word is already occupied... Even fighting exists about which language is 'oldest' -- could you please make up the rules of the game before playing? Anyway -- this is just me not understanding what people mean.

LudwigNagasena 6y ago
I hate that it is trendy nowadays to claim that everything is racist. It is just ignorance.
- srtjstjsj 6y ago
  People reuse old words for concepts that don't have their own names. Racism is the most common word for "using pseudoscience to give one group higher status than another"
yorwba 6y ago
I think what people who talk about "old languages" use to determine a language's age is something like "what's the earliest date an ancestor of this language was used in writing" or "how long has this area been inhabited by populations genetically similar to modern speakers of this language". Personally, I think most languages are old, except for constructed languages like Toki Pona that have only existed for a short time.
ponker 6y ago
Well very old languages like Tamil have a very ancient person with whom a modern speaker could have a mutually intelligible conversation. An English speaker could not speak English with someone from 1000 years ago but a Tamil speaker could.

RcouF1uZ4gsC 6y ago

The article takes as a given that preserving language is a good thing and it is a tragedy when a language dies. I say that languages divide us and silo us. It is a triumph when a language dies because the people who previously spoke it now think and speak in a different language. Of course we should try to preserve any literature or folk-lore. I look forward to the day when everyone on earth will be able to speak and communicate in a single language.

ponker 6y ago
Isn’t Facebook evidence enough that “connecting everyone” isn’t necessarily a good thing?
vram22 6y ago
On a brief look, Esperanto seems to be mainly Western-influenced.
wavefunction 6y ago
Different languages have different nuances for things so there are ideas and ways of thinking that are lost when a language dies, as you may have accidentally alluded to. I grew up in Colorado and my family normalized many terms like couloir or scree that got me in a bit of temporary trouble with an English instructor in Texas who thought I'd been fishing for exotic words to use in a paper. He was a great guy and accepted my explanation that these were words I used frequently while growing up: they are my language.
srtjstjsj 6y ago
I don't see how that argument applies to language but not culture.
davehcker 6y ago
I say why not have an environment for people to have the opportunity to learn multiple languages so that the inherent beauty of the variety of languages is preserved, and yet, we can communicate and silo. As a matter of fact, then multiple languages could actually come to bond us together. Goethe said something along the lines- “He who does not know foreign languages does not know anything about his own”. As for the inherent beauty in a language, most would agree that certain thing expressed in language X 'tastes' different than in Y. As for uniting, I am neither German nor Persian, but it is my ability to use German or Persian that unites me to both the cultures (and people) in a much deeper way; of course, you can argue that the fact that I drew the boundaries of German/Persian is in itself a problem, and having had a single language would have been the ideal, but again, I doubt that since language X might be superior in terms of certain expressions over Y (until proven otherwise).

Onewildgamer 6y ago

I come from a Sourashtra speaking community. We’re a small bunch of people immigrated from Gujarat to Southern parts in different waves during the Middle Ages, mostly because of war and trade. Our language has been preserved though the common speak and has no agreed upon script, so it is majorly taught to the children by their parents and relatives. Most of us know Tamil/Kannada/Telugu because of the main language in the place we live in and also use it to publish local magazines. The magazines though are published in Hindi, Tamil, Sourashtra scripts, the interest is declining at a fast rate. Fewer people want to buy and even fewer want to write. In my city, some are distributed for free only to see it being used for packing pakodas and samosas. Another factor is, many in our community marry people from outside the communities (I'm not against that) and their children can barely understand the language. Our language is still not in the endangered category, but I see it becoming one in the coming decades. More people in our community are getting educated, becoming modern (by western standards), want their children to communicate in English and as a result most people have become middle-class to rich. The reasons for our endangerment is partly because of modernisation. I'm seeing the coming generations have lesser and lesser interest in growing the language as my Grandpa rightly feared, and will be one of the ones forgotten by the end of this century. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saurashtra_language https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saurashtra_language

guruparan18 6y ago
I have many friends who speak Sourashtra. It is always exciting and interesting to see how much they love their language and want to keep it in day-today interaction in house hold. I think any language that is spoken in kitchen and in dining table will survive long. Sourashtra will to!
- Onewildgamer 6y ago
  Your comment warms my heart. I’ll try my best to teach my nieces and nephews at least, hoping they carry the baton in the future.

known 6y ago

In 1932 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communal_Award https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communal_Award British regime offered separate electorates/countries to Muslim/Sikh/Christian/Parsi/Buddhist/Jain/SC/ST where Upper caste/Brahmin/Bania/Kshatriya can live on a Visa