Languages of India | Hacker News Reader

Languages of India

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216 pointshappy-go-lucky239 comments

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

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hindi%E2%80%93Urdu_controversy

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

> 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

Thanks.

> 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 vocabulary), both would have no trouble at all talking to each other.

Hence this from the parent post: It is only the mash of Hindi-Urdu called Hindustani (popularized in modern day by Bollywood) that's mutually intelligible to both Hindi and Urdu speakers alike, and only in its spoken form.

> And when you ignore vocabulary...

That's the crux of my point. The punjabi dialects vary mostly in phonetics and not so much in vocabulary. In my case Gujarati and Lisan ud Dawat aren't exactly mutually intelligible in spoken form and most def not in their written form. As for Hindi-Urdu, it is mutually intelligible when in its hugely popular Hindustani [0] form, which is what your saying as well, I think.

> I don't think it differs grammatically from everyday Urdu either, with the possible exception of ezafe.

That's one difference that has Perso-Arabic tilt to it. The Urdu/Rekhta literature has other elements [1] that diverge from high Hindi that it couldn't possibly pass off as the same language as Urdu, imo. Exhibit A: https://www.rekhta.org/ghazals Most native Hindi speakers would have trouble parsing through most of those Urdu ghazals, I'd reckon.

> 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.

Exactly. For a language like Lisan ud-Da'wat spoken by a much less number of people, there's a common ground with Gujarati which is simply to speak the main language Gujarati itself, even if the core vocabulary and grammar are similar between the two. The only thing working for Hindi-Urdu mutual intelligibility, imo, is that Hindi is spoken by a large number of people who are exposed to Urdu, on a day to day basis, and vice versa.

I guess, like someone mentioned [2], 'a language is a dialect with an army and a navy.'

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hindustani_language

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

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6759103

Legal vocabulary in the sense of interacting with the court or revenue system (patwaris, thanedars, kotwals) is still strongly mutually intelligible IIRC

Punjabi dialects do vary in vocabulary. Just go to Indian Punjab, and converse with people from Majha, Malwa, Doaba or Poadh. You will instantly find differences. Singers from Majha sometimes use vocab that needs help translating.

> 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.

Hindustani is not a mash of Hindi-Urdu that came into popularity with Bollywood. The distinction between Hindi and Urdu is a modern political division. Hindustani predates that political division.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hindustani_language

I can easily understand 80% Siraiki. It is some words that I cannot understand due to peculiar ‘tongue bent’; but my friends from Malwa region of Punjab can understand it fully. Punjabi differs from rest of the languages due to being a strong tonal language, which are not present in any other Indian language. Some researchers have said it is due to specialized alphabets denoted to tones, and also due to loss of aspiration. Punjabi borrows very generously from Farsi.

With Croatian-Serbian it isn't even about the difference in phonetics. The only reason you wouldn't understand each other is the 1-5% of vocabulary but even with that there are bigger differences within the country's regions than there is between official variants of the languages.

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.

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.

Can concur - I have never heard about Malana before reading that comment.

On the contrary, most people I know have heard of Malana simply because of "Malana Cream", a variety of highly sought after hashish

"Most people you know" does not equate to 99 or even 90% Indians, so this does not negate the previous statement.

True. It's only popular around Manali.

"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.

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/

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.

It depends on what you mean by function

> 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.

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.

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.

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.

> the Hindu majority areas will look and feel noticeably different from the Muslim majority areas

Even within the Hindu majority areas, the look, feel, and even language is noticeably different between the different Hindu subgroups.

Yup. Southern and present day Eastern Pakistan is extremely similar to northern India given how the region was artificially divided. For example, India Punjabis and Pakistani Punjabis have way more in common than say Indian Punjabis and other neighboring states like Rajasthan, Bihar, etc.

The West expected India to be a failed state within a decade of independance. There were 584 princely states and hundreds of linguistic, religious and cultural minorities to integrate within one country.

Compare India to Yugoslavia which broke up violently along ethnic lines or to Sri Lanka which had a bloody civil war that lasted 25 years. Or the division of Pakistan into Bangladesh along racial and linguistic lines even though they shared the same religion.

What I fear is that young Indians take nation for granted and don't understand that India's secular democracy is fragile and that it can within a generation 'be broken up into fragments by narrow domestic walls'.

Also mentioned in India After Gandhi.

I wonder why some countries (like India) have so much diversity, while others (like Russia) have so little...

Well, India has a history of for millennia, whereas Russia is way younger.

Maybe, but I think Russia got less diverse with time.

Russia does have plenty of linguistic diversity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_Russia

Oh come on, how can you say that with a straight face in a thread about India? In India, 57% can speak Hindi, in Russia 99.4% can speak Russian. Less than 10% of Russians have a non Russian native language.

People in this thread say: "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"

In Russia, you can travel 2000km in any direction from the center, and see no noticeable difference in terms of people, culture, food, or language. There can a be a slight accent in some regions, but nothing as dramatic as say accents in US.

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.

> 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.

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.

Same way like Italian and Romanian and Spanish

To some extent but not really. At the street level, it is very much possible for a Hindi and Urdu speaker to talk to each other and not realize they are speaking different standard languages. Spoken Hindi and Urdu are almost identical except some vocabulary which is also interchangeable in day to day use.

If you speak Italian to a Spanish person, they might be able to understand quite a lot but they'll know that you are speaking Italian. This is not always the case with Hindi and Urdu.

Nope. Not at all. Even though they are all Romance languages they aren't mutually intelligible. They share many stems but have too many differences in grammar to be called the same language.

You can perhaps argue Norwegian, Swedish and Danish are different dialects of the same language, or say the same for Portuguese and Galician but most linguists, Nordic and Iberian people will be offended by such a notion.

Not quite. As a Romanian speaker I can’t understand more than very basic Italian. Perhaps Spanish is slightly more understandable but still not to a 90% level for sure.

I also doubt they understand any Romanian at all.

Romanian kept its case system unlike the other Romance languages by virtue of ending up in the Slavic sprachbund. I'd wager that there are Slavic loanwords as well?

11-14%

> A statistical analysis sorting Romanian words by etymological source carried out by Macrea (1961)[88] based on the DLRM[99] (49,649 words) showed the following makeup:[89]

> 43% recent Romance loans (mainly French: 38.42%, Latin: 2.39%, Italian: 1.72%) 20% inherited Latin 11.5% Slavic (Old Church Slavonic: 7.98%, Bulgarian: 1.78%, Bulgarian-Serbian: 1.51%) 8.31% Unknown/unclear origin 3.62% Turkish 2.40% Modern Greek 2.17% Hungarian 1.77% German (including Austrian High German)[97] 2.24% Onomatopoeic If the analysis is restricted to a core vocabulary of 2,500 frequent, semantically rich and productive words, then the Latin inheritance comes first, followed by Romance and classical Latin neologisms, whereas the Slavic borrowings come third.

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

They are almost identical. Standard Urdu taught in schools might be a bit hard to follow for Hindi speakers and vice-versa but on the street level, it really is almost exactly the same. As a native Urdu speaker, when I went to college in western India, people would often ask me if I knew Urdu and wanted to hear what it sounded like. They were always surprised when I revealed that I was speaking it all along as they assumed I was speaking Hindi which was technically correct as they really are the same language with different script and a bit of unique vocabulary. The day to day language that people of the region call Hindi or Urdu, and what you'll hear in all of the Bollywood movies is actually a mix of both. Many experts call the language Hindustani and consider Urdu and Hindi two dialects of it.

A video from one of my favourite Youtube channels explains it in detail: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vxSd7p1i_TA

I've noticed that some words have different pronunciations. For instance, the word for "definitely" is pronounced zaroor in Urdu but in Hindi, it's pronounced jaroor.

Very true, in most Hindi speaking states people have a hard time pronouncing Z and often pronounce it as J even quite often even in English. Same thing with SH vs S.

That said, I've personally seen this as a common occurrence among people who didn't study any other languages other than Hindi or didn't study any at all.

I struggle with this sort of thing a lot, as I'm learning Hindi as a native English speaker. So I suppose I should learn it as za, (sabzi is an example that comes to mind), but just understand that if I hear someone else say it it may be ja? Everyone's going to understand za, even if it's not how they personally say it right?

Yes, pretty sure everyone will understand you perfectly irrespective of whether you say sabzi or sabji.

This isn't really a difference in pronunciation between Hindu and Urdu as much as it is a sound change that has occurred in some dialects of the Hindustani language. Both Hindi and Urdu have the consonant /z/. However in parts of India this consonant has shifted from /z/ to /dʒ/. It is considered colloquial or uneducated.

TIL that it's supposed to start with a "z" sound…I've always heard it be pronounced with a "j".

Jaroor/zaroor is Urdu word. Hindi is निश्चित (nishchit).

Just because zaroor is commonly used doesn't make it Hindi.

Noone uses the so called text book Hindi on the street. Text book Hindi was introduced as a way to eliminate Persian words from Hindi about 100 years ago. So far text book Hindi has stayed strictly inside text books and dramas. Zaroor is indeed a Hindi word of Persian origin. Just like zeher, as opposed to Vish - which can only be found in text books.

What's your point? I already said in a separate comment that there is colloquial Hindi, which like many other languages has words from other languages, especially from Urdu. But that does not make those words Hindi. They remain Urdu words.

We similarly use several words from Latin, French and other languages in colloquial English, but from pure language standpoint I doubt that they'd be called English words.

Edit: A Wikipedia page of interest [0]

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hindi–Urdu_controversy

Would you consider 'similar', 'several', 'language', 'colloquial', or 'doubt' to be English words?

All of them are of foreign origin.

I'm not qualified to answer that.

Me personally, yes I would. A linguist, I can't say, would perhaps depend on each word and when they became part of the language.

Hindi is obviously derived from Sanskrit and other languages. However, Hindi and Urdu are quiet different. Give a word and in most cases most people will be able to tell if it's a Hindi word or an Urdu word.

Clearly you are not qualified to answer the questions, but you keep on answering.

Linguistically there is no difference between Hindi and Urdu. The primary criterion is grammatical structure which is identical in Hindi and Urdu. Writing systems and choice of nouns don't matter either.

Hindi is not obviously derived from Sanskrit. Can a Hindi speaker follow Sanskrit easily or is Punjabi easier? Urdu/Hindi are indirectly derived from Sanskrit and both of them have the same connection to Sanskrit.

The so called pure Hindi/Urdu is a language noone speaks. The artificial text book Hindi which noone speaks was constructed 100 years ago by replacing Persian loanwords with Sanskrit words and writing suitable Sanskrit based dictionaries.

If you are certain that pure Hindi is a thing, please tell us what percentage of Hindi speaking population uses nischit in place of zaroor and why is this minority Hindi pure.

As a side note, language relationships are not dictated by loan words. Otherwise south Indian languages would be considered indo-aryan rather than dravidian. In fact, some south Indian languages use more Sanskrit based words than Hindi.

The only difference between hindi and Urdu is political.

Appendix: list of loanwords from Persian in Hindi, for which nobody uses Sanskrit based equivalents in real life.

Saaya, hamesha, pareshaan, Khushi, sabzi, mehrban, deewar, taaza, darwaaza.

Maybe there is some dude somewhere who uses pratidin instead of Roz - I have never met this mythical creature. Just like using a word like "light* in a Hindi sentence doesn't change the language, neither does using Persian loanwords.

Over and out.

Crossing into personal attack will get you banned here, regardless of how wrong someone is. Doubly so when the topic is divisive, for example as nationalistic topics are.

Would you please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and edit the incivilities out of your comments here in the future? We'd appreciate it.

Crossing into personal attack will get you banned here, regardless of how wrong someone is. Doubly so when the topic is divisive, for example as nationalistic topics are.

Would you please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and edit the incivilities out of your comments here in the future? We'd appreciate it.

Would you say सफ़ेद, गरम, अख़बार, वक़्त, मुज्ररिम, इलज़ाम, ख़त, etc are not Hindi words? Would you rather say श्वेत, ऊष्म, समाचारपत्र, मुजरिम, आरोप, पत्र? Most people use them interchangeably.

Most people just use words in the former category. A lot of people wouldn't even recognise some of the words in the latter category if they heard them being spoken, as opposed to seeing them in writing.

Yes, they are Urdu words, not Hindi. Yes, they are more commonly used than the Hindi words you mentioned.

For what it's worth, मुजरिम is also Urdu. Not sure about आरोप, but I have a feeling that it's also Urdu, though I could be wrong.

Edit: read any Hindi newspaper these days, at least the online edition, and in fact you will find a lot of common Hindi/Urdu words being replaced with English words written in Devnagri.

What you have been basically arguing is that Urdu is India's most widely spoken language and Hindi is a niche minority language, definitely outside the top 20.

It's not clear to me how that conclusion can be drawn simply my looking at a very small set of words, while completely ignoring all else that makes a language.

Moreover, there are hundreds of dialects of Hindi spoken in India, each with its own nuances and varying degrees of Urdu words.

In addition, there is no denying that Urdu and Hindi have some shared lineage.

Again will refer to the Wikipedia [0] for better coverage of this topic

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hindi–Urdu_controversy

> while completely ignoring all else that makes a language.

What else makes a language? Syntax? Hindi and Urdu have almost identical syntax. There are more syntactical differences between Hindi and Punjabi than there are between Hindi and Urdu.

The Wikipedia article does not support your argument. It merely relates the history of the bifurcation primary driven by differences in script and religion. I am well versed with the history of Hindi and Urdu going beyond this Wikipedia article.

If you want to make your argument rigorous please give an estimate of pure textbook Hindi speakers (people who use avashya instead of zaroor, hriday instead of Dil outside academics and newspapers) and "hindustani" speakers.

My conservative estimate is less than 10M for "pure Hindi" and greater than 300M for regular hindi/Urdu.

This is because virtually every one from North India and Pakistan speaks the so called Hindi/Urdu mixed language. I have also met bhojpuri, awadhi, marwari speakers but I am yet to meet the mythical pure Hindi speaker and I am a really old guy.

Again, Hindi and Urdu are not 2 languages with shared lineage. They were one and the same language until about 1850 until Britains choice of using the Arabic script for administering India angered the Hindus.

Yes there were cultural/academic differences and many different dialects of Hindi. Kabir sounds very different from Ghalib. But for the man on the street there was no difference. At most, you can argue that Urdu is the most popular dialect of Hindi. It wouldn't be correct, but less wrong.

Hyderabadi and Tamil Muslims speak a dialect of Hindi that they call urdu that would make Ghalib spin in his grave.

Differences within Urdu/Hindi are far more tremendous than the Hindi Urdu split. Calling them separate languages is crazy.

It's a cultural standard. Muslims call their language Urdu. Hindus call it Hindi. The language is the same, whatever you call it.

Is चाभी a Hindi word?

Hindi and Urdu both.

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E0%A4%9A%E0%A4%BE%E0%A4%AD%E...

Sorry, it was supposed to be rhetorical. It's a borrowing from Portuguese, so by the standards yumraj seems to be employing it shouldn't count as Hindi.

Likewise, निश्चित certainly isn't Hindi in this narrow sense. It's a direct borrowing from Sanskrit, not a native, inherited word of the language.

And Hindi (हिन्दी) itself isn't a Hindi word; it's Persian (likewise Hindu).

Sorry, I didn't realise it was rhetorical.

If we discount direct borrowings from Sanskrit, I guess there would be very little left. Something like Pali, essentially.

No, the core of Hindi is inherited, ultimately from something like 'vulgar Sanskrit', not borrowed from Sanskrit. So like the core of Italian vocabulary is inherited from (vulgar) Latin, though there are of course also direct borrowings (at later dates) from Latin into Italian.

So 'fire' in Hindi(/Urdu) is āg (आग), but 'fire' in Sanskrit is agni (अग्नि), which has also been borrowed into Hindi (as the name of the god of fire; or fire in ritual contexts). Now, āg descends from agni, but represents the natural linguistic development into Hindi.

That's why I said Pali, or something like Pali. Pali words seem like they are vulgarised Sanskrit words.

Fire in Pali is 'aggi'. Seems a plausible link between 'agni' and 'aag'.

Well, Pali is a sort of standardised form of Middle Indo-Aryan, so, yes.

But you suggested there would be very little left. Yet the core of both Hindi & Urdu is (unsurprisingly) inherited from Vulgar Sanskrit>(some sort of) Prakrit>Apabhramśa>... , so it's rather a lot of vocabulary that's there.

You’re right, my sloppy remark was incorrect. Is there any reading you can recommend in this area, anything that may come to mind easily?

For the more modern vocabulary issues (borrowings from Persian, Perso-Arabic, English, Portuguese etc.) in Hindi/Urdu, I would recommend the introduction to

(1) Christopher Shackle & Rupert Snell. 1990. Hindi and Urdu since 1800: a common reader. New Delhi: Heritage Publishers.

[which is actually now freely available online at https://repositories.lib.utexas.edu/handle/2152/46072 (had I known, I would have linked it earlier/higher in the thread, since it's very relevant) its bibliography is also good for further reading]

For the earlier development of modern Indo-Aryan languages from Sanskrit:

(2) Jules Bloch (ed. & translated by A. Master). 1965. Indo-Aryan from the Vedas to modern times. Paris: Adrien-Maisonneuve.

For a good general overall (including history and other things) to Indo-Aryan languages:

(3) Colin P. Masica. 1991. The Indo-Aryan languages. Cambridge: CUP.

In Hindi (modelled on S.K. Chatterjee's The Origin & Development of the Bengali language [written in English!]):

(4) Tiwari, U.N. 1961. हिंदी भाषा का उद्गम और विकास [hindī bhāṣā kā udgam aur vikās]. Prayag, Allahabad: Bharati Bhandar.

Another great (free, online) reference is the Digital Dictionaries of South Asia (including non-Indo-Aryan languages of India as well) at: https://dsal.uchicago.edu/dictionaries/ (perhaps esp. including Turner's A comprehensive dictionary of Indo-Aryan languages: https://dsalsrv04.uchicago.edu/dictionaries/soas/ ).

[Some of the other references can be found 'freely' online in pdf form in the usual 'dark' corners.]

Wow, wow. This information is greatly appreciated, many thanks.

> Just because zaroor is commonly used doesn't make it Hindi.

By this reasoning Urdu is the most widely spoken language of India.

'Nishchit' doesn't even by itself replace 'zaroor'. 'Nishchit' means certain or definite. To replace 'zaroor' (certainly or definitely) you would actually have to say 'nishchit roop se'.

Hindi-speaking people absolutely use 'zaroor' and 'bilkul' instead of 'nishchit roop se' when they're actually speaking Hindi, instead of self-consciously speaking Sanskritised Hindi in a formal register -- and this is always in the context of a specific political alignment.

> By this reasoning Urdu is the most widely spoken language of India.

Exactly! Couldn't have worded it better.

अवश्य - Avashya

It is closer to "Certainly"

Yes, but I didn't say there was no word in formal Hindi that didn't mean the same thing as 'zaroor'. I said 'nishchit' isn't that word.

'Avashya' is again a word you wouldn't be able to use in colloquial speech without coming across as eccentric. It means the same thing as 'zaroor' but it's like saying "I am desirous of x" instead of "I want x".

My grandmother was illiterate, but I remember her using Avashya even when she did not speak Khari boli much

I've grown up in North India and have never word anyone speak the word "avashya" outside of a Hindi lesson. I can only assume your grandmother was using it as an exemplar for your benefit. Perhaps there are communities where it is spoken colloquially but by far the norm is "zaroor" or "jaroor" (same word but the sound has shifted in some places like Western UP from Z to J).

You can find examples of the use of "avashya" in the movies of Hrishikesh Mukherjee (like Golmaal and Chupke-Chupke) in which off-beat characters who made a special point of speaking the purest Hindi as part of their characters' eccentricity used "avashya" and other words like it, while the other characters who spoke normal Hindi didn't.

That's like saying: "Star is a Latin word. English is tungol. Just because English speakers say star all the time doesn't make it English."

It depends. For what an urdu speaking person will use "Zaroor", a hindi speaking person would use "Avashya".

Even the Hindiest of the Hindi-speaking people, e.g. in Uttarakhand say "zaroor".

You will only find someone like a Hindi teacher or a priest using a word like "avashya" when they're trying to signal that they are educated and thus speaking in the 'pure' register. In the natural language of Hindi, the word used is 'zaroor'. Using 'avashya' is speaking a conlang, pretty much.

Is there a script you find "better" between the Hindi and Urdu one?

I can't say better but I learned Urdu for 10 years in school as opposed to Hindi which was taught for just a year or so. As a result I find the Urdu (Persian) script easier to read but I don't think one is better than the other. Probably a linguist expert could compare the Arabic/Persian script to the Devanagri one and try to explain pros and cons of both. That would be an interesting read.

The Hindi script is easier for a foreign learner to deal with, because it more accurately maps to the phonemes of the language. So it's possible to "sound out" an unknown Hindi word from the written form, and get it fairly close to correct. With the Urdu script, this is more difficult, as many of the vowels are left unwritten or under-differentiated.

(For a trivial example, is اس the word /ɪs/ "this" or /ʊs/ "that"? In Devanagari, they're clearly different, इस vs उस. Urdu script can distinguish them, by adding a diacritic to the ا, but it's usually omitted, leaving the reader to infer the intended word from context. For a native speaker, that's not usually a problem, but for a learner it can be an added challenge.)

On the other hand, I suspect the Urdu script might be faster for an experienced writer to use, as there's a beautiful simplicity and smoothness to its cursive forms, compared to the relatively complex shapes of many Devanagari letters.

> Urdu script can distinguish them, by adding a diacritic to the ا, but it's usually omitted

Not in my experience and certainly not as a student. I'm not an expert but at my school اس for something that sounds exactly as /ɪs/ would be considered completely invalid. Only اِس would be considered correct. Actually, I think اِز (more like iz) might be more correct phonetically.

In school, perhaps so. But looking at something like https://ur.wikipedia.org/wiki/اردو, there's scarcely more than a handful of short vowel marks (zabar, zer, pesh, or fatha, kasra, damma as an Arabic speaker would call them) anywhere on the page; the vast majority are left unwritten.

While I'm not 100% sure, I think it _might_ be the case of writing Urdu online vs on paper. I'll try to grab an Urdu book or newspaper tomorrow and see how it is written. Thanks for the insight, this was very interesting.

If you look at say Jang, you will almost never see the diacritics except maybe in headlines

Devanagiri script has one drawback for non-native speakers though, which is identifying the schwa syncope rule. All Devnagiri consonants always carry an implicit schwa unless otherwise modified by a diacritic. However, in Hindustani, this schwa is sometimes dropped, and it is not always obvious where or when it should be dropped to a non-native speaker.

Another issue is the allophony of the schwas surrounding ह (/h/) in words like कहना which is actually pronounced [kɛɦɛnaː] and not [kəɦ(ə)naː]. (note that this is also an instance of the schwa deletion)

> my local friends could also tell where it came from

The same goes for my New York English in the South. As long as one speaker is cognisable to the other, the default assumption should be dialect, creole or pidgin, not separate languages.

You are right. The OP's statement is pure falsehood.

> Many of the languages traditionally clubbed by the Indian government as Hindi are much farther away from standard Hindi than Urdu.

Indeed, a large percentage of 'Hindi dialects' are nothing of the sort. Many Rajasthani 'dialects' are far closer to Gujarati than they are to Hindi.

>India's definition of what is and what is not a language is highly politicized and highly idiosyncratic.

To some extent this is true of all languages, and it's a big part of nation building to draw the lines in whatever ways are convenient. Like, who decided Catalan, Portuguese, Spanish, and Italian are all separate languages but Swiss, Quebecois, Alsatian, West African, and French versions of French are all the same? Where are we drawing lines if not at political boundaries?

According to Hobsbawn, the original sources of developing national identity came from newspapers. Once the printing press became a thing, over time, whatever language a region read its news in slowly became the way for natural cultural divisions to form. The presence of news and a common literary canon created an imagined community around it.

India didn't have nationalism form this way since British administrative districts cut across linguistic/cultural lines. They muddied the natural process of nation-formation by having everyone speak English as a lingua franca and relegating the native languages to private life. But the Islam/Hindu cleavage was still there, so that's where the division came in at independence. (Among other cleavages that the early government of India managed to keep under control).

> To some extent this is true of all languages...

Very true. An even clearer example is Catalan and Occitan, which are just the two most famous/prestigious/standardized poles in a still clearly-existing dialect continuum.

Or Scots and English: polls suggest that people's answers to the questions "is Scots a separate language, or a dialect of English?" and "should Scotland be an independent country?" are strongly correlated. On the surface, it seems that the former is a scientific question and the latter is a political one, so they shouldn't be correlated at all, but in reality they are both political questions.

Other examples include the various Chinese varieties (Mandarin, Cantonese, Shanghainese, Hokkien, etc. etc.), which are often considered one language for political reasons, Serbian, Croatian, Montenegrin, and Bosnian, which are nearly identical but often considered different languages for political reasons (imagine if we considered US American to be a different language from Canadian), Romanian and Moldovan to which the same description applies, and so on. There are examples practically everywhere you look.

Hindi and Urdu are similar because of how they evolved and they are essentially the vernacular of parts of Northern India and Pakistan. Other Indian languages are nowhere near as similar to each other as Hindi and Urdu are to each other. Another thing to note is that the vernacular as spoken in India on the street is often not one single language.

It's often a mix and the fact that it's understandable to you so long as you speak one Indian language should not surprise you. One thing Indians do subconsciously is adapt to using a mix of words and grammatical structure understandable to the group they are speaking to, for example when speaking to a well educated person who understands Hindi and English, I will frequently speak neither but rather Hinglish, mixing idioms and words from both languages in the same sentence, choosing words and idioms that most closely convey my thought. If I'm speaking to someone who also speaks Punjabi, I'll frequently throw in some Punjabi as well.

None of this is done consciously.

Also note that there are dialects even of Hindi. If you record Hindi spoken by someone from Bihar when speaking to someone else who also understands that dialect natively and only understands Hindi at the speed it's spoken may take someone from Punjab who also speaks Hindi some amount of focus to understand. However if you throw the person from Punjab into the mix of people speaking, the dialect and accent will adjust.

This is something Indians never actually consciously realize they are doing. I only figured it out because I now have kids who we are raising in New York and teaching Hindi to and they haven't learned natively how to switch like that like kids growing up in India have.

I've thought about this a bit and now think learning multiple "human" languages, ideally fairly different ones, should be absolutely required of everyone. Much like programming languages, there are certain thoughts you really can't think effectively in certain languages.

> One thing Indians do subconsciously is adapt to using a mix of words and grammatical structure understandable to the group they are speaking to, for example when speaking to a well educated person who understands Hindi and English, I will frequently speak neither but rather Hinglish, mixing idioms and words from both languages in the same sentence, choosing words and idioms that most closely convey my thought. If I'm speaking to someone who also speaks Punjabi, I'll frequently throw in some Punjabi as well.

This is called "code switching", a universal human phenomenon (not just in India) which I find extremely fascinating. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code-switching

I have personally observed it happening between Spanish and English in ethnically Mexican communities in the Southwestern US, and ethnically Puerto Rican and Dominican communities in New York. Also between French and English on the streets of Montreal.

> Also note that there are dialects even of Hindi. If you record Hindi spoken by someone from Bihar when speaking to someone else who also understands that dialect natively and only understands Hindi at the speed it's spoken may take someone from Punjab who also speaks Hindi some amount of focus to understand. However if you throw the person from Punjab into the mix of people speaking, the dialect and accent will adjust.

This is true even in English, which is often considered (incorrectly) "not to have any dialects".

I'm a native American English speaker, and I would have quite a bit of difficulty understanding a recording of a conversation between two people from rural Scotland or Northern England.

But me and someone from those places would be able to communicate face-to-face just fine, slowing things down a bit and avoiding slang.

> Hindi and Urdu, by any reasonable linguistic definition are not separate languages.

That is a common misconception. You are confusing colloquial Hindi and colloquial Urdu with the pure Hindi and pure Urdu.

Pick a word, any word and there is Hindi equivalent and there is a Urdu equivalent. Just because the spoken Hindi, primarily in India, uses a mixture doesn't make them same or even similar.

> reasonable linguistic definition

For linguists, the colloquial language is the most important aspect of a language, and it's actually very reasonable for that.

First, most languages do not have a written form, and for those that do, most could not communicate in writing until very recently.

Second, until very recently, most people could not communicate in anything but their colloquial form, and even then, most communication is colloquial form.

Finally, linguists are primarily concerned with analyzing what makes a language a language (vs. not a language) rather than what makes a language a language (vs. another language). For this reason it makes sense to consider only the colloquial language, since everyone who participates in a language to communicate and not for ideological reasons participates in the colloquial language, but the same cannot be said for "standard language".

> Hindi and Urdu, by any reasonable linguistic definition are not separate languages.

For any non-Indian person reading this, please note that this statement is 100% false. I am an outsider to Hindi speaking and Urdu speaking region. I have no dog in any political fight here but I have studied Hindi all my academic life and can assuredly tell you this statement is utter rubbish.

But this might not be a fault of OP. A lot of people have this feeling because of Bollywood. Both Bollywood and Hindustani music is a cross of both Hindi and Urdu. If you never study Hindi or Urdu but watch a lot of Bollywood movies you will end up learning a bit of both the languages. But that does not mean they are same.

You are 100% wrong. The Bollywood Hindi is actually the real Hindi. It's not a mix of 2 languages. It's just one language - Hindi. Just like Hollywood English is simply English. The Hindi that is taught in text books in India is an artificial Hindi constructed 100 years ago by replacing Hindi words of Persian origin with words rooted in Sanskrit. So far this artificial language has stayed inside text books. If you actually speak text book artificial Hindi on the street, people will think you are crazy

Which part of India wouldn't you say

"Zara kitaab dena"

Instead of text book artificial

"Kripaya pustak Dena"

> constructed 100 years ago by replacing Hindi words of Persian origin with words rooted in Sanskrit

That is untrue I have a master degree in Hindi. Bollywood Hindi is not Hindi in any sense. For example it does not match to a Navbharat Times to typical classic of Hindi literature.

> Which part of India wouldn't you say > "Zara kitaab dena"

Essentially everywhere from railway signs to classrooms to essays and everywhere. Bollywood is heavily influenced by Urdu but in general Hindi speaking heartland of UP one would perfectly ignore the Urdu influence.

>Essentially everywhere from railway signs to classrooms to essays and everywhere.

These are official government sanctioned institutions practicing text book Hindi. I have used it in classrooms too. This language is never used in the streets. Differing choice of nouns perfectly intelligible to each other doesn't even constitute a different dialect, much less a different language. There are cultural and scriptural differences and an effort to use more Sanskrit words in Hindi literature starting 150 years ago and an effort to use Persian words by Mughal courtiers words going back even further. I know several people from the Hindi heartland and absolutely noone uses pustak in place of kitaab or ullas in place of khushi, unless they want to be laughed at. That language belongs to classrooms, dramas and to a lesser extent Hindi literature. Just listen to this interview of mayawati.

https://youtu.be/X8tbH-TCyqA

She uses awaaz, nafrat and afsos as well as English words and claims to be speaking Hindi. Is she wrong? Is she not from the heartland? Is she actually speaking Urdu? If you use these words like of Dil instead of hriday in an academic exam you will lose points, but that is an exercise in linguistic politics that any true student of language has no time for.

I understand that Hindi and Urdu are taught as distinct languages in India and there is an ongoing effort to bifurcate the nouns used in both systems but this effort has been largely unsuccessful amongst actual speakers of Hindi. They have succeeded with news anchors, plays, newspapers etc. But not anywhere else.

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.

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.

> 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.

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.

Not really... native Bangaloreans generally make it a point not to speak Hindi. As for people in the IT Sector, "English is the Lingua Franca" (pun intended) :)

The three states surrounding karnatake (where banglore is located) don't speak Hindi...

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.

It does, but it's more likely if you're in one of the large cities - Mumbai, Delhi, Bangalore, Kolkata, Chennai. People move for jobs and economic opportunity. Smaller cities have fewer opportunities and thus fewer reasons for out-of-state people to move there.

Similarly, there is a wider variety of European languages spoken in New York than in a village in France.

Just ask them directly. I've simply asked my Indian coworkers if anyone else in the workplace also speaks their native language and they have no problem talking about it. I've learned a lot from asking them about their languages.

I've discovered that they generally share the same native language when they are from the same region in India, otherwise they don't. The only exception I've seen so far in Punjabi, since it seems that Delhi also has a significant population of Punjabi speakers who have migrated there from Punjab, which is farther to the west.

Sometimes my coworkers do share languages, and that's obvious if I hear them speaking to each other in a language other than English. Sometimes they have to speak English to each other because that's their only common language.

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.

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".

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-c...

Lost among here is Sentinelese https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sentinelese_language

The only language where not a single word is known to the outside world!

On some level you have to respect a people whose response to anthropologists is to see how many arrows they can stick in them.

There has been friendly contacts with them according to Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sentinelese#Shipwrecks

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.

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.

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_a...

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.

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.

Fair enough. Thanks for clarifying.

I believe you are confusing a "creole" with a "pidgin".

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

> pidgin language, is a grammatically simplified means of communication that develops between two or more groups that do not have a language in common: typically, its vocabulary and grammar are limited and often drawn from several languages. It is most commonly employed in situations such as trade, or where both groups speak languages different from the language of the country in which they reside (but where there is no common language between the groups). Fundamentally, a pidgin is a simplified means of linguistic communication, as it is constructed impromptu, or by convention, between individuals or groups of people. A pidgin is not the native language of any speech community, but is instead learned as a second language

I'm not sure Mumbai Hindi would qualify as a pidgin either then since it's definitely the native language of a significant number of people.

Pidgins and Creoles are on a continuum -- once pidgin's get native speakers and a stable grammar, they're creoles. But Yeah, I didn't mention that.

Standard Hindi itself has some characteristics of a creole; at the very least it has had both grammatical and vocabulary influences from a number of languages, including Punjabi, Persian, Portuguese and English.

Come to think of it, those are all Aryan languages. Does their mixing still constitute a creole?

Only Hindi and Punjabi are Aryan. English, Persian, and Portuguese are Indo-European but not Indo-Aryan.

Not Persian? I was under the impression that Hindi is Aryan as a result of the Persian invasion of the Indian subcontinent, which also resulted in the Dravidian languages being pushed south.

The commonly accepted view right now is that there was an Aryan migration and not an invasion over the Indian subcontinent. But there are politically motivated narratives abound that are pushing this theory to either extremes (Aryan immigration theory vs Aryan == Dravidian theory). Please don't trigger a flame war. It is surprising as it is that this topic hasn't triggered one yet.

Whether one calls it an invasion or a migration (I take no side), the Dravidians headed south around that time, no?

It's not really clear. There are pockets of Dravidians outside of the 'Dravidian south', but in some cases these seem to represent later migrations.

And in Sri Lanka both Indo-Aryan (Sinhala) and Dravidian (Tamil) speakers seemed to have arrived around the same time.

There weren't really any major 'Persian' invasions of India. The closest would be the Mughal invasions (the Mughals being Persianised Turco-Mongols), which were relatively recent, in the history of India (16th century A.D.)

There are claims of earlier 'Aryan invasions' of India (nothing to do with Persians), meaning essentially an invasion of Sanskrit speakers into India, though to what degree these migrations were 'invasions' in any sense is unclear.

It is also unclear whether migrations/invasions of these Sanskrit speakers displaced Dravidian speakers. It is clear that both Sanskrit/Indo-Aryan speakers and Dravidian speakers partially displaced earlier Austro-Asiatic (Munda) speakers, who themselves seemed to have displaced yet earlier populations.

I knew or could guess about influences from the other three, but didn't really know about influences from Portuguese - interesting. Got any examples? Only one I can think of right now is kaju in Hindi for cashew, which I think may be from Portuguese because I think I've read the Portuguese brought the cashew tree to India [1]. Okay, pao or pav [2] for a particular kind of bread in Mumbai and Maharashtra may be another one. I know that bread is called pan and similar words in some European languages, and many Portuguese words end in "o" or "ao".

Just looked it up in Google Translate, pão is Portuguese for bread:

https://translate.google.com/#view=home&op=translate&sl=auto...

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

https://translate.google.com/#view=home&op=translate&sl=auto...

[2] https://www.google.com/search?q=pao+bread+of+mumbai

Another example is "vindaloo", from "vinho d'alho" ('garlic wine').

Over in Japan, "tempura" is from a Latin reference to the holiday of Lent, as used by Portuguese people in Japan. (At that time the Catholic Portuguese would eat fried fish or fried vegetables.)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tempura#Etymology

(edit: it seems that the original reference is to four different seasons of religious fasts, not just to the Lenten fast)

Oh yes, good ones, thanks. I knew about both of those, but had forgotten. Knew about vindaloo from both reading [1] about it and eating it, and about tempura just from reading.

Tempura sounds like our Indian bhajji [2], but with many other fillings; must try it out some time.

I've been to Goa, which is one place the Portuguese had a colony in India, and have had vindaloo - both the authentic and non-authentic kinds. The authentic kind at Goan-run restaurants in Goa, and the unauthentic kind at non-Goan run restaurants (also in Goa). What makes it unauthentic (although not necessarily bad in taste) is that they add potato to the dish, probably based on the wrong understanding that the "aloo" part of the dish name means it should have potato in it (aloo means potato in Hindi). I've read that some "Indian" restaurants in the UK do the same too.

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

From the article about Vindaloo:

>Restaurants outside Goa serve vindaloo with chicken or lamb, which is sometimes mixed with cubed potatoes. Even though the word aloo (आलू) means potato in Hindi,[5](as the name is a corruption of a Portuguese phrase with no Hindi etymology) traditional vindaloo does not include potatoes.

>Vindaloo served in restaurants of the United Kingdom differs from the original vindaloo dish; it is simply a spicier version of the standard "medium (spiciness)" restaurant curry with the addition of vinegar, potatoes and chili peppers.

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

Yes (re. your edit), saw that (after seeing your link). The 4 / quatre stuff.

Googled for this term - Japanese words of Portuguese origin - results are also a bit interesting, e.g.:

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

What language do you speak that's a creole?

It's an odd mix of Tamil and telugu, two davidian languages, barely mutually intelligible with telugu

>The number of languages is stunning.

True.

From the article:

>According to the Census of India of 2001, India has 122 major languages and 1599 other languages. However, figures from other sources vary, primarily due to differences in definition of the terms "language" and "dialect". The 2001 Census recorded 30 languages which were spoken by more than a million native speakers and 122 which were spoken by more than 10,000 people.

When I was in high school, for instance, Hindi was one subject. Our teacher told us that there are a few major versions, like Khari Boli and Braj Bhasha and maybe Awadhi was another one (don't remember). For example, we read poetry of Tulsidas and Surdas, which were, IIRC, composed in one of the first two languages, each. Good poetry, BTW.

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

Yes, Awadhi was one:

Awadhi: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Awadhi_language

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

Braj Bhasa: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Braj_Bhasa

Khariboli: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khariboli_dialect

There were creole-like languages that existed in the South, usually when Dravidian culture was mixed with Sanskrit. One famous instance is "Manipravalam", which is a blend of Tamil-Malayalam with Sanskrit. I think in Manipravalam eventually led to modern Malayalam.

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

What language/area is it?

From the top of my head as a very lay person, I can count several languages that are not only completely distinct but also completely alien to me as a Hindi speaker: Marathi, Bengali, Oriya, Assamese, Kannada, Tamil, Telugu, Malyalam. These are major languages and form the basis of a lot of state boundaries.

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.

Try https://odia.bible ?

It's the right translation! I emailed them, but they don't really understand my question and take a long time to reply.

You can find an online version here https://vachanonline.com/ .

If you are looking for the data, here is a repository: 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.

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/1749/2KI.16.17.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).

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

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.

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'. :)

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.

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). 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.

> 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). They maybe could have even avoided partition this way too.

In what way? Having even more autonomy than they have as states?

>in heavily accented English instead of The Indian language.

Also called "Indian" by some non-Indians, as in: "sorry, I don't speak Indian" :)

A bit like saying "chai tea", mentioned in the recent thread about the history of tea.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20015505

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20009037

And naan bread.

Yeah totally, from the moment when they realize I am from India, they say they watch bollywood in Netflix to which I say "I do not speak much Hindi and I seldom watch bollywood movies"

They must be thinking i'm pulling their leg.

> 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.

I don't live in the Bay area but when I meet another Indian abroad, I still initiate conversation with them in English because it's not fair to assume that they'd speak the languages that I speak.

> 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.

It's amazing how most Americans believe that English is the national language of the US, when where's no such thing as a national language in the US.

Concluding that English is the national language of the US is totally reasonable. Most government documents are in English. The Constitution is in English. English is the language overwhelmingly taught in schools, used in the workplace, and is the most spoken language in the country by far. Saying that English isn't the official language in the US is really just highlighting the fact that the Federal government hasn't bothered to designate an official language. In fact, 32 states have designated English as an official language. For all practical purposes the official language of the US is English.

This is much different from the India where only ~40% of the population are native Hindi speakers. More than 2/3rds of the US population only speaks English, and under 10% of the population have English proficiently categorized as "less than proficient" (but often this is still enough to get by).

English is clearly dominant, but official linguistic pluralism does exist in the US in some ways. For example:

* Large parts of the US provide ballots and other voting materials in Spanish (or Vietnamese, or Chinese, or various Native American languages, ...).

* Courts in the US will go to pretty extreme lengths to find interpreters for criminal defendants who can't understand English, even if their native language is somewhat obscure.

* There were public schools teaching primarily in Spanish until at least the early 2000s in Arizona; not sure if they still exist in other places. There are definitely still private schools teaching in non-English languages in some parts of the country, particularly Yiddish.

Anyway, making explicit any link between citizenship on the one hand and language or culture on the other is considered a somewhat solidly right-wing belief in the US (and I would expect in other countries that began their history as settler colonies, like Canada or Australia), whereas it would seem like much more of a centrist consensus in even some overall more progressive-leaning societies (from Article 2 of the French Constitution: "The language of the Republic is French". I would be shocked if France lets you vote in Arabic or teach public school classes in Lingala).

Because it's perceived as solidly right wing, and the other side of the political spectrum will fight it tooth and nail, it's hard for me to imagine the US declaring English as a federal official language in the foreseeable future.

> Large parts of the US provide ballots and other voting materials in Spanish (or Vietnamese, or Chinese, or various Native American languages, ...).

Sure, in locations where other languages have a significant presence. But these languages always exist alongside English. There are no areas that I know of that do not produce said documents in English. English is universal.

> Courts in the US will go to pretty extreme lengths to find interpreters for criminal defendants who can't understand English, even if their native language is somewhat obscure.

And what do those interpreters translate said languages into? English.

> There were public schools teaching primarily in Spanish until at least the early 2000s in Arizona; not sure if they still exist in other places. There are definitely still private schools teaching in non-English languages in some parts of the country, particularly Yiddish.

Language immersion schools exist in plenty of countries with official languages. English is not an official language in Spain, I went to an English language immersion school when I lived in Spain.

> Because it's perceived as solidly right wing, and the other side of the political spectrum will fight it tooth and nail, it's hard for me to imagine the US declaring English as a federal official language in the foreseeable future.

Not really, there are plenty of practical reasons why designating official languages would be useful. One of my friends worked in a hospital, and talked about how much of a nightmare it was to treat non-English speaking patients (or more specifically patients that didn't speak English, Spanish, Mandarin, or the couple other languages that staff members spoke). Ostensibly they're required to find interpreters for any and all languages that patients may speak. This of course is a mess. Designating certain languages as supported and not supported would be a big efficiency gain and result in better care. There are also concerns of people only producing advertisements for housing in specific languages (e.g. a Chinese landlord only producing ads in Mandarin or Cantonese), and some see it as de-facto racial discrimination in housing. What happens when a juror can't speak English? One could argue that dismissing non English-speaking jurors is a form of jury discrimination, but it'd be a bureaucratic nightmare to provide interpreters for every language a juror might speak. There are plenty of good reasons to designate English as an official language.

Regardless, whether or not English is designated an official language is pretty much moot. Over 80% of the population speaks English at home and over 90% are fluent in English. The next closest competitor is Spanish at roughly 1/6th the population. English will be the de-facto official language for the foreseeable future.

If I interpret you correctly, I think we mostly agree, on (at least) the following points:

* English is clearly dominant in the US and enjoys a special status both in law and in practice.

* However, linguistic pluralism is accommodated to a significant degree in the US, to a greater extent than it is in some other countries.

* Whether to designate an official language is more of a cultural/political wedge issue than something that would have a meaningful practical effect on life in the US.

The first two yes, but I disagree that the last one is so much of a political wedge. The fact that English is the de-facto official language, but not actually an official language is the source of much headache. Actually designating several languages as officially supported (English for sure, probably Spanish as well. Maybe others like Mandarin & Cantonese but that would make more sense to delegate to the State level) would be beneficial. It would have practical and meaningful effect. Perhaps not to an individual's daily life, but definitely for institutions that need to interact with large segments of the population. I also fail to see why you think this is a right-wing opinion. Liberal states including California, Colorado, Hawaii, Illinois, Massachusetts, and New Hampshire, have made English an official language.

I am of the firm belief that it is government's job to reach out to the people it represents and not the other way around. Designating an official language or set of official languages renders a section of people as disadvantaged outcasts. It is not a crime to not know a language.

Even if we are not talking about impact to an individual from a liberal point of view, this official favoring of languages leads to extinction of smaller languages by means of them not being as useful to future generations as some other mainstream language.

> I am of the firm belief that it is government's job to reach out to the people it represents and not the other way around. Designating an official language or set of official languages renders a section of people as disadvantaged outcasts. It is not a crime to not know a language.

What and Earth makes you think that designating an official language makes it a crime for people not to know that language? Designating official languages is just being transparent about what languages will be used to render services.

> Even if we are not talking about impact to an individual from a liberal point of view, this official favoring of languages leads to extinction of smaller languages by means of them not being as useful to future generations as some other mainstream language.

Language extinction happens as populations become more interconnected, regardless of official languages. They're not going to be as useful regardless. And in fact, official language designation is sometimes employed to keep dying languages alive. North and South Dakota designated some indigenous languages as official languages.

> English is the national language of the US, when where's no such thing as a national language in the US

"This is America, Speak English!" does have legal might behind it because of 8 USC 1423[1]

The new DREAM act which went through the house of reps specifically calls out an exemption from that.

[1] - http://uscode.house.gov/view.xhtml?req=(title:8%20section:14...

> heavily accented English instead of The Indian language.

Over the years I have grown to think of English as an honorary Indian language, kind of like the Mother Theresa of Indian languages. Not a mother-tongue perhaps, but definitely, a beloved aunty-tongue at the very least.

Thats because the Class 1 CBSE books said that Hindi is our national language, Peacock is the national bird, Tiger the national animal and Hockey the national sport. :D

That's not entirely correct. Hindi is the official language of Republic of India. That is why 14 September is celebrated as Hindi Divas: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hindi_Divas

That is not entirely correct either. Hindi and English are official languages of the Republic of India. If you watched the swearing-in ceremony of the recent Modi government some cabinet members chose to be sworn-in in English.

There is a difference between "national" and "official".

>in heavily accented English

This reminded me of Mike Tyson - https://youtu.be/3QC-H9ozuSQ?t=156

That's amusing. It does however take some time to get used another person's accent. I sure had difficulty in the beginning with the English accent of my Scottish coworker (not to mention American/Canadian accent itself when I was a new immigrant).

> It's amazing how most Indians believe that Hindi is the national language of India

I am not Indian, so please correct my outsider's perspective if it is wrong, but from what I have seen, this is mainly believed by North Indians, and often deeply resented by South Indians, who are more likely to view English as a common, neutral, pan-Indian lingua franca, and Hindi as too North-centric to be appropriate for that role.

Your perspective is correct. Hindi has been imposed only recently after Independence and there have been protests/movements pre-Independence too. For eg: None of my uncles/aunts or my grand parents generation know Hindi. I learnt it (or had to learn it) only because of school policy , not personal choice.

You'd be surprised how it's a common belief even in south India where hindi isn't spoken.

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.

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

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.

> 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.

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

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_a...

Not all indian languages are in that subgroup. There are another family of dravidian languages.

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

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.island.lk/2003/11/05/featur02.html

Would love to see an authoritative source confirming these.

The sinhalese people of Sri Lanka are Indo-European, not dravidian. IIRC they came from Modern day Bengal.

But Sinhalese culture,food etc is closer to Dravidian.

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

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.

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.

> 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.

"I can tell you with conviction that in my lifetime I have never had anyone impose Hindi on me."

This is because several fellow south Indians gave up their lives to ensure that north Indian language bigots would not have their way.

Read your history. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Hindi_agitations_of_Tamil...

> This is because several fellow south Indians gave up their lives to ensure that north Indian language bigots would not have their way.

I know everything about these agitations. There is a huge difference between what happened in 1940s and what is happening today. You are just extrapolating your fears needlessly.

When I talk about "my lifetime" I talk about 30 years of my life. I was not born in the 1940s so there is no point talking about this period. If I have never had Hindi imposed on me should I lie about it just to please your political end-goals? Or are you one of those who loves to only dwell in the past and not accept any positive changes that have happened since?

The Centre today is not talking about "imposing Hindi". It is talking about a draft proposal of making a third language compulsory for all students in India. You should be welcoming that move. If I were you, instead of protesting against Hindi, I would be asking the Centre to ensure a Dravidian language is taught as a third language in the Northern Hindi belt. Now that is a constructive! That would unite the Country rather than balkanize it! But we have bigots on both sides who believe in their own language being superior!

This is way different from the C. Rajagopalachari order of imposing Hindi as the only common language across the Nation. If you are unable to differentiate between the two then no one can help you!

I never understood the sensibility of the notion of imposing Hindi to others in the country. It is like say Germany imposing German to be the de facto language all across Europe!

And I do appreciate that we have one common language, English, which is tremendously useful in practical sense (not even including politics in here).

I'm going to post my response here as HN moderators have put a limit on my account (I think it is silly but whatever):

It is a bad analogy only in political sense. Not everything has to be seen in political light.

And my appreciation of being able to converse in English, as a neutral common language, has naught to do with the capability of people of the Indian origin in learning other languages, and more to do with not having to learn the native language(s) of fellow Indians. I'm more than happy, for instance, to merrily be able to converse with people from Karnataka or Kerala in English, instead of having to learn their languages (or them having to learn Tamil) first.

And I have no baggage whatsoever with English, as one another commenter indicated in this thread.

> Then don't give such analogies.

Given that not everyone sees the issue of, for instance, being forced to learn a language in political sense like you, then telling them not to give their perspective on this matter is rather myopic.

> It talks about third-language being made compulsory.

I'd not even care to have a second-language being made compulsory. And this is not an exclusive issue of politics; my parents made me learn Hindi (I passed till Praveen Uttarardh) for economics reasons; yet because I wasn't enthusiastic about speaking Hindi, my fate became that of Canadians who learned French during that 4 years or so in school.

> I don't think you have actually encountered ground reality [...] an agitation against Tamilians in Bangalore in the 90s

What has that got to do with not having to learn another language when both parties can understand and speak English?

> If I can accept Hindi and enjoy the language without any sort of prejudice anyone can. There is no justification for the hatred being shown to Hindi apart from regional linguistic pride. Nothing you say will change my opinion on that.

It seems you are making a big issue out of language learning, which is more of a practical matter, such as taking not being able to fully comprehend a local's driving directions (from your other comment) to be discrimination/ hatred. It might pay you to explore this issue (a commenter here called it "baggage") within you.

> You have an ego that is coming in the way of learning/appreciating the language that is all.

If anything my ego -- and I'm using the word in its psychological sense -- actually has aided me in learning a new language (French), moving to a part of the world with over 90% locals speaking it, and being successful in interacting with them in their language.

> It has a tinge of racism

Everybody is racist/classist/casteist/etc. to an extent. Do you see that in yourself as well (in regards to your driver not being able to comprehend the driving directions given by a local)? If so you might well be on your way to understanding what the word "identity" means ... B-)

> You know when you start saying stuff like 'a commenter here called it "baggage"' it sounds like those fascist dictators who couldn't say "me" or "I" but would in a convoluted manner refer to themselves in third-person.

Ha, given that you easily see discrimination in the simple event of being given wrong instructions (for whatever reasons), it doesn't surprise me that you see me as some "fascist dictator" now (before "racist"). Be that as it may, there is in fact a commenter (not me) who did use that word. You can use the search function of your browser to find it.

> You can throw away that ego you have in the bin where it belongs and just say "I said I have no baggage".

As I have far more intimate knowledge of the word "identity" and the word "ego" than you, I know very well that it is impossible to throw away ego (as if there is an disembodied entity throwing another entity out), be it in the bin or elsewhere. And it does not require the presence or absence of ego to be able to acknowledge, as I've done before (which apparently have eluded your attention), that I have no baggage whatsoever with English (and it is a simple matter of fact acknowledgement involving no egoistic feelings; it is just a delight to be virtually freed of one's nationalistic identity)

> You have a huge difficulty in comprehending the simple English that I am speaking. Where did I say we had difficulty comprehending local's driving directions? We caught the locals giving wrong directions because I understand and speak Tamil. So I knew that they were fooling us and when I spoke in Tamil their giggled and gave the right directions.

I see, okay. Yes, it was my error that I had overlooked your reporting of knowing Tamil. Regardless, there is no evidence (in your story) that their "giggling" automatically meant hatred and discrimination.

> I see you have absolutely zero comprehension skills because you thought my driver could not comprehend when I clearly mentioned that the local gave the wrong directions and he was caught red-handed.

Given that there are more than a few people who would rather impute malice in place of ignorance, it is not unreasonable to make that assumption. However, my overlooking your speaking Tamil still does not invalidate that assumption (as stated above).

> You are prejudiced, a racist and couple that with ego and we now have a recipe for disaster.

Everybody is racist/classist/casteist/prejudiced/etc. to an extent. And everybody harbours egoistic feelings to whatever extent. Do you see that in yourself as well (in regards to your imputing group-wide hatred and discrimination without clear evidence)? If so you might well be on your way to understanding what the word "identity" means ... B-)

Ain't life grand!

That is a really bad analogy. Germany is a country. Europe is a continent. Germany is part of Europe not the other way round.

India is a country. Tamil Nadu is a state inside the country called India. Tamil Nadu is not greater than India. No state in India is greater than India. Tamilians cannot dictate to India what is and what is not allowed just like Germany cannot dictate to Europe what is and what is not allowed.

Legally, India has all rights to impose a single language on all states in India. Deal with it! The founding fathers of Modern India empowered the Centre to make sweeping changes to the Constitution. All it requires is an Amendment to the Constitution and the Centre has all powers to do so. Yet it is not imposing any language. It is not making Hindi the only language for all states. It has not moved any such Amendment. To insinuate it is doing so when it is not showing any such intentions is ignorance at best and malicious at worst!

Germany does not have any legal jurisdiction over rest of Europe. Hence, even if it wants to impose it can't impose German on the rest of Europe. Makes sense?

You are comparing Apples to Oranges.

Now, can we just appreciate the simple fact that the Centre, even with all its powers (now that it has near absolute majority), is not imposing Hindi on all states? The proposal is pretty clear. It talks about third-language being made compulsory. I don't understand what the fuss is all about! Are you saying we Indians have the capacity to learn Maths, Science and all the complicated topics in the World but are incapable of learning one extra Indian language? Are we that weak?

> And I do appreciate that we have one common language, English, which is tremendously useful in practical sense (not even including politics in here).

I don't understand why would you need to compare Indian languages with English? Are you saying that we Indians are incapable of learning more languages? What are you hinting at?

> It is a bad analogy only in political sense. Not everything has to be seen in political light.

Then don't give such analogies. Analogies are made to shed light on your argument. Not to convolute it further. And analogies have to have some sense to the topic at hand. The analogy you gave doesn't make sense even if you take it non-politically.

> instead of having to learn their languages (or them having to learn Tamil) first.

I don't think you have actually encountered ground reality. In Bangalore's private companies it was a trend for Tamilians to only hire Tamilians. It got to a point where if a Kannadiga spoke to a Tamilian in Kannada the colleague would reply back in Tamil. This led to an agitation against Tamilians in Bangalore in the 90s especially after the Kaveri verdict which was the tipping point. So when you say stuff like this I just can't take it seriously.

> It seems you are making a big issue out of language learning, which is more of a practical matter, such as taking not being able to fully comprehend a local's driving directions to be discrimination. It might pay you to explore this issue (a commenter here called it "baggage") within you.

You know when you start saying stuff like 'a commenter here called it "baggage"' it sounds like those fascist dictators who couldn't say "me" or "I" but would in a convoluted manner refer to themselves in third-person. You can throw away that ego you have in the bin where it belongs and just say "I said I have no baggage".

> not being able to fully comprehend a local's driving directions to be discrimination.

You have a huge difficulty in comprehending the simple English that I am speaking. Where did I say we had difficulty comprehending local's driving directions? We caught the locals giving wrong directions because I understand and speak Tamil. So I knew that they were fooling us and when I spoke in Tamil they giggled and gave the right directions. If you are going to justify this sort of maliciousness with your logics then go ahead. You are only doing a great disservice to your people.

> Everybody is racist/classist/casteist/etc. to an extent. Do you see that in yourself as well (in regards to your driver not being able to comprehend the driving directions given by a local)? If so you might well be on your way to understanding what the word "identity" means ... B-)

I see you have absolutely zero comprehension skills because you thought my driver could not comprehend when I clearly mentioned that the local gave the wrong directions and he was caught red-handed. You are prejudiced, a racist and couple that with ego and we now have a recipe for disaster.

The right solution is to leave it to parents and students to decide what languages they want to study in and what languages they choose to learn.

Hindi is gradually becoming universally understood all over the country precisely because it was not imposed on linguistic minorities. When people don't feel that their culture is threatened they are open to learning Hindi. Bollywood and television has done more to promote Hindi than all the academic language bigots making decisions from Delhi.

I am sorry but I have to disagree with you here. What you are saying isn't happening universally and I am a witness to it myself. I am from Karnataka (Kannadiga) and I can travel around Karnataka and speak in Hindi or English and I am not discriminated against. Heck people here speak Tamil as well to those Tamilians who do not know Kannada.

However, I travelled to Trichy, Kumbakonam and Chennai and the atmosphere is sadly totally opposite to what you claim. Unless you know Tamil no one is going to respond positively. My driver (who doesn't speak Tamil) had trouble asking for directions as the locals knew that he was not a Tamilian and guided him incorrectly. Only after I involved was I able to get the correct directions.

I noticed the same issue in Kerala when I visited Palakkad and Guruvayur (Thrissur). Unless you know Malayalam it is really hard to find your way around. You speak Hindi and you get a stare down so English is the only way to converse. And let me tell you, these are people who know Hindi and other languages. They just don't want to speak it.

These are anecdotes and may not be reflective of the entire state but nevertheless left a really bad taste in my mouth. I never experienced this sort of discrimination anywhere else in the Country (and I have travelled a lot). And that says a lot coming from a South Indian!

Why do you expect South Indians to know hindi. Do you go to North and speak in Kannada.

Learn the local languages. Don't impose your language or try to speak in common tongue be it English.

> Indian identity was split right in the middle and was done on religious lines

India and Pakistan also each have their own major river system (Ganges for India, Indus for Pakistan) which is important for food supply and low transport costs. This helps each country remain functionally independent from the other.

Exactly! We can leave the unionising of the Indian subcontinent to a future generation that has risen above language, religious and ethnic divides and embraced common culture. Until then, it would be futile and foolish to unite diametrically opposed states into one entity. The unity should come from the people and not from political masters. That is when the Union would be able to function effectively.

> 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.

May be. I only think this because I've been so this by many people from South India and I'd rather take their word over the state's. Also, even if it is just a perception, it means such things were definitely attempted by the center. Perceptions don't just form out of nowhere.

> This can never happen....

I tend to disagree. You are implying a loosely bound union of many nations cannot exist because of religious differences. That means a tightly integrated and mostly centrally controlled state cannot function either if there are multiple religions identities present in the country which by extension means that the state of J&K has no place in present day India. I think it is definitely possible for such a "weak" union to exist. After all, people of this region have so so much in common. Plus, in such a union each "nation" would retain it's identity while having extremely close ties to other "nations of the union" e.g, free trade, travel, etc.

I agree that it's not probable for this to happen but it definitely is very much possible IMO.

Anyway, the original thought was not a proposal or even a prediction that this would happen but that this wouldn't be the worst thing to happen in case it did.

> That means a tightly integrated and mostly centrally controlled state cannot function either if there are multiple religions identities present in the country which by extension means that the state of J&K has no place in present day India.

It doesn't. That is the reason why you see so much bloodshed with one side trying to overpower the other. J&K is not homogenous. The Jammu part is majority Hindu and Kashmir part is majority Muslim dominated (it had a minority Hindu population too called Kashmiri Pandits but they were raped, murdered and eventually driven out by the majority. Read up on "Exodus of Kashmiri Pandits": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exodus_of_Kashmiri_Hindus). The Muslim dominated part wants to break away from the "Union" and form its own Country. Do you see what I have been hinting at? The religious division that was created when India was partitioned continues to plague Indian society even to this day. Now you want the Indian society to somehow forget and forgive all these issues and just join into a bigger Union with states that were created with diametrically opposite ideas? That is impossible! Why would Indian taxpayer want to carry the burden of states that have a hatred for Indians?

> After all, people of this region have so so much in common. Plus, in such a union each "nation" would retain it's identity while having extremely close ties to other "nations of the union" e.g, free trade, travel, etc.

I appreciate your desire for unification on a common ground and I wish for it too. But that is not a probability because of religious intolerance. You can bury your head in the sand and choose to look the other way but that is the reality. Until you have religions that believe that theirs is the "true path" and the rest will go to "Hell" there is no way we can achieve any sort of common ground. Reformation should happen first. Some sticking points that exist in each religious denomination should be discarded as being irrelevant for today's day and age. Now that is very much possible. Hinduism has undergone various reformations over the ages and continues to do so. Sati system was abolished. Caste system that discriminated has been upended by a Reservation system that uplifts the socially deprived. Sure it is not perfect yet but it shows positive intent. But these reformations cannot be a one-way street. If such similar reformations happen in all other religions then you would automatically have unification. If you are only looking at economic/political advantages then that is a poor solution that is bound to fail. Unification should only be on mutual-respect for culture, tradition, religion, creed etc. Things that have real social value. Not money or politics. The former will cement the Union, the latter (example: EU) is a weak foundation that will eventually crumble.

I see your opinion is that it's literally impossible for such a union to exist. Sorry for judging and writing up a comment personally targeted at you but I also sense some level of prejudice in your comments. May be (and I hope) I misjudged.

In 1983 when Farooq Abdullah wanted to use J and K’s autonomy to repatriate Jammu Muslims (comparable to if not greater in number than Pandits), Indira Gandhi came in and campaigned on the issue as ‘infiltration’ and her son left the Pandits to twist in the wind in the resulting backlash. In 1978, she sponsored the Sant Nirankari sect in Punjab while giving Bhindranwale a free hand to attack these ‘heretics’ at the same time. My grandfather fled his birthplace of Gulbarga in 1948 after watching Indian Army kill civilians. Please tell me more about Nehru-Gandhi secularism.

> Indian identity was split right in the middle and was done on religious lines

Religion is only one factor. People also derive their group identity along cultural, caste and social lines.

This is not specific to India. Although religion is less emphasized in America, other factors (cultural, social, racial, economical, etc.) still continue play its role in forming the identity of its denizens.

Response to below comment inline, due to moderator comment limit:

> When was Indian identity split on cultural, caste or social lines?

You do not seem to have a good understanding of the word "identity". I'd consult this link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Identity_(social_science)

And not everything has to be seen from the exclusive lens of politics and religion.

> I am talking about splitting Indian identity on religious lines.

What do you think the word "identity" refers to?

> Last I checked, Tamil Nadu is still a part of India. Karnataka is still a part of India. Kerala is still a part of India. They haven't "split" out of India. Makes sense?

Although Kerala for instance is still politically situated in India, that is besides the point, as the word "identity" does not exclusively refer to one's political identity.

Generally, the political distinction of states, as you repeatedly bring here, has no relevance whatsover to the subject of identity which, as stated above, can be based on several factors (not just religion). Just to state a few (in general terms, for the benefit of non-Indian readers):

1. A vocational identity as ‘employee’/‘employer’, ‘worker’/‘pensioner’, ‘junior/‘senior’ and so on.

2. A national identity as ‘English’, ‘American’, ‘Australian’ and etcetera.

3. A racial identity as ‘white’, ‘black’, ‘brown’ or whatever.

4. A religious/spiritual identity as a ‘Hindu’, a ‘Muslim’, a ‘Christian’, a ‘Buddhist’ ad infinitum.

5. A ideological identity as a ‘Capitalist’, a ‘Communist’, a ‘Monarchist’, a ‘Fascist’ and etcetera.

6. A political identity as a ‘Democrat’, a ‘Tory’, a ‘Republican’, a ‘Liberal’ and all the rest.

7. A family identity as ‘son’/‘daughter’, ‘brother’/‘sister’, ‘father’/‘mother’ and the whole raft of relatives.

8. A gender identity as ‘boy’/‘girl’, ‘man’/‘woman’.

> Sigh! I can't believe someone will have such a big problem understanding such a simple thing. [...] I spoke about Indian identity being divided on religious lines.

You keep bringing this up as if division/ splitting is the central issue, when I acknowledged no such thing. Really, my comment is exclusively to do with identity itself. I'd suggest a re-read of my comment, from top to the bottom.

> What was once a homogenous Indian identity was split into a Pakistani identity, a Bangladeshi identity and a smaller Indian identity.

There was never a "homogenous" Indian identity in the first place. People think this because they do not fully acknowledge the various identities they themselves personally harbour. It is one thing to talk about something in abstract, and another thing entirely to intuitively feel it out for themselves.

> You are so wrong here. The creation of States was done on linguistic/ethnic/regional lines.

As I never said anything about creation of states -- only that the the political distinction of (Indian) states has no relevance whatsoever to the (general) subject of identity -- you might just as well go for a re-read of my comment?

> People also derive their group identity along cultural, caste and social lines.

You are missing the point I made. I said Indian identity was split on religious lines. When was Indian identity split on cultural, caste or social lines? Last I checked, Tamil Nadu is still a part of India. Karnataka is still a part of India. Kerala is still a part of India. They haven't "split" out of India. Makes sense?

> You do not seem to have a good understanding of the word "identity". I'd consult this link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Identity_(social_science)

Gosh this is getting ridiculous! You do not seem to have a good understanding of what I wrote in the first place. I am talking about splitting Indian identity on religious lines. I never said Indian identity is only based on "religion". How hard is it for you to understand that? Pakistan was created on religious lines. Pakistan did not take language, caste or social issues with it! Those remained in India. Makes sense?

Sigh! I can't believe someone will have such a big problem understanding such a simple thing. I have a feeling you are deliberately nitpicking my comments just to prove some non-existent point. I don't understand why you think I have no idea about what "identity" means. That is besides the point mate. I never spoke about "identity" by itself or the definition of "identity". I spoke about Indian identity being divided on religious lines.

Since you are finding it so difficult to understand, I'll make it even simpler for you. Let me take your own definition of identity and explain my statement:

You stated a few factors for "identity" right? Namely: Vocational Identity, National Identity, Racial Identity, Religious Identity, Ideological Identity, Political Identity, Family Identity, Gender Identity etc etc.

Now can we just say that all the above identities reasonably define the Indian identity? If yes, then out of all those identities, only the "religious identity" was used as a tool to split Indian identity. What was once a homogenous Indian identity was split into a Pakistani identity, a Bangladeshi identity and a smaller Indian identity. Each of these are now independent identities.

> Generally, the political distinction of states, as you repeatedly bring here, has no relevance whatsover to the subject of identity which, as stated above, can be based on several factors (not just religion). Just to state a few (in general terms, for the benefit of non-Indian readers)

You are so wrong here. The creation of States was done on linguistic/ethnic/regional lines. It is not "political distinction" but a "linguistic/ethnic/regional distinction". If you do not understand that basic thing about India then you are doing a big disservice to not just yourself but to also those who will be reading your comment mate.

Here you crossed into breaking the site guidelines by becoming personally abrasive if not abusive. Please don't do that. "Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive."

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Once upon a time after independence, many tamils lit themselves on fire so that Hindi imposition is stopped...

That would surely help Islamize the 'Hindu' land.

The only ones that would benefit would be the nations you mentioned. 70 odd years of building a republic with the inherent ups and downs would be laid waste. It just won't happen.

> trying to impose Hindi on Indians

That turned out to be a big hoax. This is the second time such a frenzy was created for no apparent reason. There is no such "imposition" done by the Centre. A proposal is in draft which makes third-language compulsory for students. That does not mean Hindi would be imposed. The student can choose whichever language s/he wants to learn. The third language thing is implemented in quite a few states already but it is not Nationwide. This should be encouraged as it would allow students from Hindi belt and Dravidian states to learn a different third language.

> speak diverse set of languages

I disagree completely. I am from South and I can tell you that we have too much pride in our languages. So much so that we would rather speak English with our fellow Indians but not learn a different Indian language. Balkanization has already happened. What we need to do is try to unite by shedding this arrogance of language superiority. It doesn't matter which language came "first" or which is the most "ancient". A language is means of communication. That is it! There is no need for all this frenzy around it.

> A language is means of communication. That is it!

As any sociolinguist will tell you, languages are partly a means of communication, partly a signal of group identity. The latter trait of human language is why some demographics intentionally take the common language and attempt to make it difficult to understand by outsiders by adding in-group slang and cant. It is why many peoples determine that a person is no longer a member of their community when he/she switches to entirely speaking an outside language.

If you see language merely as a means of communication, a lot of sociographic and inter-ethnic phenomena are going to elude you.

What does that have to do with the topic at hand? I am talking about irrational hatred for a language. Not about how a language can be misused. The misuse of language is secondary. What is the point of knowing about slang and cant if you aren't even going to learn the language in the first place?

> Not about how a language can be misused. The misuse of language is secondary.

Again, use of language as a way to signal group identity and block out others is not "misuse" of a language. It is an inherent part of the human language faculty, it is normal usage. I know that in a venue like this who many participants are developers or sympathetic to the software community, there is a tendency to think of human language like a programming language, as solely a means of communication, purely a matter of "utility", but as I said, that is not how human communities actually work.

As for “irrational hatred”: considering the danger that large languages supported by a central government can pose to regional languages – a danger illustrated by numerous case studies all over the world – the desire of certain South Indians to avoid Hindi is not irrational at all.

> It is an inherent part of the human language faculty, it is normal usage

If it is normal usage then there is nothing to fear right? This logic makes no sense because I don't see this happening with other regional languages vis-a-vis Hindi.

> a danger illustrated by numerous case studies all over the world

Are you telling me that Hindi speaking people are deliberately targeting Tamil and Malayalam while giving a free pass to other linguistic communities? Why don't I see Assamese or Odia people having similar issues with Hindi? Surely they should also feel threatened by Hindi right? But they don't! They are thriving and they continue to speak their own language, maintain their own culture and traditions and also know to speak and write Hindi!

India has a 5000 year recorded history. Never has any language in these 5000 years been deliberately destroyed. I am a Kannadiga. I speak Kannada at home and yet have studied Hindi as my 3rd language and am fluent in it. It hasn't destroyed my culture, tradition or language. I don't see Hindi as a danger. If at all it has enriched my life, my thinking and given me a greater perspective.

But I am open minded enough to know other perspectives. Even if I disagree 100%. Can you share links to some of those studies? I find it hard to believe that any study can come to a conclusion on one Indian language being a danger to another language.

>That turned out to be a big hoax. This is the second time such a frenzy was created for no apparent reason. There is no such "imposition" done by the Centre

https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/centre-removes-mandat... The controversial sentence appeared in Section 4.5.9, titled ‘Flexibility in the choice of languages’. It said: “In keeping with the principle of flexibility, .... the study of languages by students in the non-Hindi-speaking states would include the regional language, Hindi and English. ”

This was just a draft. The Centre keeps getting drafts of various policies every single day. Most of them never see the light of the day.

Drafts are made to get people talking about and changes are made as necessary. An example of that is the Net Neutrality draft that was changed radically. Even the "Free basics" program which was part of the initial draft and was removed in the final policy.

These are drafts made at committee level that shouldn't be taken seriously. Only after the Government vets such drafts and puts out a call for "public opinions" would the the draft be finalised into a policy. The State Governments basically preempted the Government's intention. This is what is dangerous. If the State Government starts cornering the Central Government over committee level drafts then it creates a situation where the Government wouldn't even make public any draft policy fearing backlash. Instead have patience and see what the Central Government does with the drafts. All policies go through a call for "public opinion" and until and unless all issues related to public opinion are not taken into account it won't be finalised into a policy.

So it was a daft draft. Nothing to worry then.

Obviously it was! Why else would it be changed to remove Hindi being compulsory and only talk about 3 language formula?

The only daftness in this process was that the entire Government machinery had to be put in force just to allay the fears of one State over a committee's draft policy.

If this sort of reactionary response becomes the norm, then the Central Government will just stop publishing draft policies on their websites and instead wait until the final draft is ready. I prefer that as we have too many emotional people in the country who have no patience to wait for the final draft.

A language is means of communication very true. Let's hope North Indian at least now learn south indian languages and improve communication.

> North Indian at least now learn south indian languages and improve communication.

Am a North Indian living in Blore. You are right. The thing is there is no incentive to learn Kannada for me. At work everyone speaks English, outside of work too, English does it for me. I have never had the need to learn Kannada in Blore. I found its requirement when I went to Hampi and other than that in Blore itself I never felt handicapped for not being able to speak in Kannada. I know that its my fault, learning local language is always nice to experience local culture, but I have been lazy and English is slowly but certainly replacing all Indian languages.

I can say for sure - the right wing government want to impose a common identity across the nation which is a very bad idea.

Not just the languages - we have vast differences but find unity in diversity. Inclusiveness is what makes India tick. As a Tamilian i don't think we will ever allow Hindi to be enforced on us. But our first Identity is more of an Indian than a Tamilian. India is quite a fabric and we should cherish the diversity.

> I can say for sure - the right wing government want to impose a common identity across the nation which is a very bad idea.

Strengthening national identity is the job of any national government. And this doesn't mean it has to come at the cost of regional identity. I am an Indian and a Maharashtrian at the same time. I don't see the national government harming regional identity anyway.

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