How to count every language in India (2018)

https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/peoples-linguistic-survey-of-india-ganesh-devy

by haltingproblem • 6 years ago

100 95 6 years ago

atlasobscura.com

strawberrypuree• 6 years ago

(2018), please.

tgv2• 6 years 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?

quadrifoliate2• 6 years 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/di...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bhojpuri_language

rusticpenn• 6 years ago

At least with Hindi and Tamil, you can be sure because they come from different language families.

Arnavion• 6 years 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 :)

emteycz2• 6 years ago

That definition does not work with Czech and Slovak.

yumraj5• 6 years 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).

politelemon• 6 years 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• 6 years ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_language_is_a_dialect_with_a...

embit• 6 years ago

You can find more information on their website.

http://www.peopleslinguisticsurvey.org/

ape4• 6 years ago

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

ffpip• 6 years 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.

srtjstjsj7• 6 years ago

While it's not close to a complete solution, I'm glad that we have Unicode to help.

naruvimama4• 6 years ago

As mentioned in the article, the real loss is the world view of the people. Culture, folklore and history would be lost.

zerop4• 6 years 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....

bodhiandpysics110• 6 years ago

It takes a couple of years for the pain to really begin!

zerop4• 6 years ago

What pain you are talking about? Can you elaborate?

ssvss• 6 years ago

Any specific mantras ?

zerop4• 6 years 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• 6 years 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• 6 years ago

I hate that it is trendy nowadays to claim that everything is racist. It is just ignorance.

srtjstjsj7• 6 years 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"

yorwba2• 6 years 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.

ponker4• 6 years 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.

srtjstjsj7• 6 years ago

How is that measured?

hassancf• 6 years ago

Arabic. I can read/write Arabic texts from 1400+ years ago. As could anyone who studied Arabic at school... Now that I think of it, that’s pretty damn amazing! I can’t say the same for French or English.

naruvimama4• 6 years ago

As the article says pre-neolithic, if you are not aware Andaman is also home to the sentinelese, a known isolated and uncontacted tribe who have preserved their way of life for 60,000 years of isolation.

Oldest language could be a distinct language that has preserved its uniqueness. Due to the ice age, European languages can not be the oldest.

The isolation of these tribes and the long human habitation in these regions could make the languages some of the oldest as well as primitive.

marc_abonce• 6 years ago

the sentinelese, a known isolated and uncontacted tribe who have preserved their way of life for 60,000 years of isolation.

I don't think they have actually been isolated for 60,000 years though. If I understand correctly, they chose to isolate in the 1800's because the British were kidnapping people. Before that they had contact with other Andaman islanders at least. For example, apparently the Sentinelese may speak a language of the Ongan family[1], which would mean that their language most likely diverged sometime within the last millennium or two, I think.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ongan_languages

furyroad2• 6 years ago

Thirukural[1] is a classic Tamil text on philosophy and secular ethics, which is considered to be at-least 1500 years old. Many verses of this text can be easily read and understood by anyone with intermediate level proficiency in Tamil. And so are most text from Sangam literature[2], which are even older. Thiruvasagam[3] and other Bakthi literature are widely used as a prayer hymns and can be understood with basic language training.

Tamil has two forms. Sentamil and Koduntamil, both survived till date. Sentamil is the formal/literary form and Koduntamil is the colloquial form used by common people. Koduntamil is made of simplified and shortened forms of words from Sentamil, some loan words and slang words. Due to the cultural and political influences in the last few centuries, there are many loan words from European and Persian languages in Koduntamil.

Other Dravidian languages[4] such as Telugu, Malayalam and Kannada has heavy influence of Sanskrit. There were efforts to Sankritise Tamil as well by using Sankrit words in Tamil syntax, which was called Manipravalam. Manipravalam was in use till early 20th century. In the beginning of 20th century, Tanittamil Iyakkam[5] aka Pure Tamil Movement restored the language and Maripravalam is no more in use. The formal Tamil used today, such as in news bulletins and official documents, is very close to the classical form.

Pure Tamil Movement, the two language policy[6] adopted by Tamil Nadu government and related efforts helped preserve the language. Although the Tamil speaking population is lesser compared to other languages such as Hindi and Telugu, Tamil has a thriving art, literature and media industry which are economically successful too.

Recent archeological research at Keezhadi has revealed a 6th century BCE Sangam era settlement in Vaigai river valley[7]. If more research confirms the findings, Tamil would be one among the oldest surviving classical languages.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tirukku%E1%B9%9Fa%E1%B8%B7

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sangam_literature

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thiruvasagam

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dravidian_languages

[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tanittamil_Iyakkam

[6] https://www.thehindu.com/opinion/lead/policy-lessons-in-tami...

[7] https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/tamil-nadu/keeladi-fi...

naruvimama4• 6 years ago

This politicization and purification drive has made tamil to some extent less usable. Far from preserving tamil, many in the current generation can not read, write or understand tamil.

It is lacking in modern technical literature and comics. Most kids in school memorize tirukural, without understanding a word. Pushing the burden on preserving old language on kids is actually driving them from the language itself.

RcouF1uZ4gsC• 6 years 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.

ponker4• 6 years ago

Isn’t Facebook evidence enough that “connecting everyone” isn’t necessarily a good thing?

vram223• 6 years ago

On a brief look, Esperanto seems to be mainly Western-influenced.

wavefunction• 6 years 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.

srtjstjsj7• 6 years ago

I don't see how that argument applies to language but not culture.

davehcker• 6 years 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).

disown• 6 years ago

I say that languages divide us and silo us.

So should we just have one programming language? Should we have just one OS? Should we have one computer game? One social media? Should we have one political party? One school? One store? One book?

I look forward to the day when everyone on earth will be able to speak and communicate in a single language.

We already do. It's called math.

Onewildgamer2• 6 years 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

guruparan185• 6 years 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!

Onewildgamer2• 6 years 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• 6 years ago

In 1932 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

How to count every language in India (2018)

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