Hacker News Reader

Comment by gnipgnip | Hacker News Reader

I'm not going to waterdown my analysis for some two bit politically correct occidentals and "hyper-nationalist" orientals.

A large fraction of Indian children will be illiterate in these "thriving" languages in the coming decades, with "zero" monetary loss. Not living is death, and they haven't been alive for a long time - I can neither get any Govt. services in my mother tongues, nor can get the laws done by the colonial state in Delhi.

A zombie is not alive IMO. If Indians wish to parlay their tongues for money, it's upto them. I for one will not deceive myself. We are going to be part of the borg that is the Anglosphere in less than 3-4 generations.

View on HN

Was the two bit politically correct occidental supposed to be me? Not sure I've ever had the pleasure of being called that before.

Regardless, dead has a specific meaning for languages and if people speak it(especially hundreds of millions of people) then it is not dead

Someone who says "essentially dead for all practical purposes" is likely not using the specific technical meaning.

Do you think gnipgnip believes something that isn't true, or do you think they're just using words differently to how you'd use them?

gnipgnip is first of all projecting, according to his analysis, Indians will stop talking local languages and adopt English and in 80 years its all over, India is an English speaking country, the flaw in that logic. The main problem is Indians do entertain themselves in their native languages, yes, many languages spoken by smaller groups of people are certainly under threat, but languages with currently massive footprints like Hindi, Telugu, Bengali etc. ain't going any where 80 years from now.

A language that is spoken by 80 million people is not dead, and is not dying. The colonial two-step when coming to languages existed for a long time and its just matter of time, people with help of machine learning will provide support in multiple languages etc.

For much large part of Mughal period the court language was Farsi, but Hindi/Urdu survived, you are underestimating the ability of people to straddle multiple languages. For many Indians its just a necessity.

Language shift occurs when mothers stop talking to their infants in the language. Not being able to access government services in the language may indicate a decline in the language's vitality, in its prestige and influence, but it is a long, long way from language "death".

Reply on news.ycombinator.com