05-04-2007, 06:39 AM (This post was last modified: 05-04-2007, 09:26 AM by Hauma Hamiddha.)
Some neo-indic words of Raghuvira (vocabular for sanskrit News read in India):
pitrya-sUtra:chromosome
pakSha-mAnga: ciliate
bhaga-shepha: (original saMskR^ita: bhagA~nkura)
apibadarati: Apicomplexa
kadalI-makShI: Drosophila
shoNavartuli:haemoglobin
shishu-dhAna-mR^iga:marsupial
An easy to use and helpful comparative alphabet chart of the modern descendants of the ancient Brahmi script. Side by side, the chart shows the alphabets of these scripts: Devanagari, Gujarati, Punjabi(Gurmukhi), Bengali, Assamese, Oriya, Tibetan, Telugu, Kannada, Tamil, Malayalam, Sinhala, Burmese, Lao, Thai, Khmer, Javanese, Balinese, Tagolog, Batak, and Bugis (Buginese).
Bernard Lewis makes a comparison of the number of Arab works translated into European languages (contributing to European learning) with the number of European works translated into Arabic.
It turns out that Arabs have hardly bothered to translate anything worthwile and make it accessible to Arabs, while anything that used to be worthwhile in Arabic has long since been translated into multiple European languages. Lewis uses this as an example of why Arab are in the state that they are in now.
The situation in India is somewhat different. Courtesy of Macaulay-uncle Indians ended up reading European gyan in European languages. Indian languages were hardly developed to include the jargon required for technical education. There has been plenty of translation from Indian languages to English and other languages by Europeans and Indians, but hardly any translation from foreign languages to Indian languages - especially technical books.
It is all very well for the likes of Mohd Iqbal Ahmed to lament the "convent culture" and oppose sanskritization in the same breath. The fact remains that all technical education in India has to be in English, or one cannot get a technical education. Opposing Macaulay-uncle's English comes easy for those of us who have already made our lives and our children's lives using that English.
But for those who are on the wrong side of that "English boundary" in India - their only future is becoming drivers, "ayahs", "domestics" and low paid laborers working for the English speakers of India. It is strange that those English speaking Indians should oppose the entry of more Indians into benefits of a wider education and currently the ONLY route for an Indian to make a decent living.
Already an entire generation of Indian has utilsed his knowledge of English to go and settle in anglophone lands and make a handsome living in comparison to his parents and peers in India. No Indian of my generation or later who has emigrated to the US has ever failed to encourage his family and peers to follow his path as an ideal route to permanent wealth and happiness. Indians who live in India may find life difficult, but no Indian living abroad ever complains of a tough life. Cursing India and what happens here in India is the common denominator for both the phoren returned person as well as the Indian resident. Little wonder that parents in India who missed that route themselves want their children to go down that path. And learning English is a first step in that direction - to the extent that admission to primary schools is sometimes based on an English "interview" of a 4 year old.
And it doesn't end there. I have friend who is a senior manager in a division of WIPRO who related the story of a young man (incidentally a Telugu speaker) who came after six months in WIPRO and asked why he had not been sent to the US. He was informed that his English was not good enough for the job. Upon hearing this the young man was nearly in tears saying that unless he was able to prove that he had been to the US he would not be able to get married.
This is the way society s heading in India. It may not please some people - but then it seems to be pleasing thousands of others.
I have always wondered how they impart technical education in China were English penetration is so low ? And English much more difficult to learn for a mandarin-speaker.
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->I have friend who is a senior manager in a division of WIPRO who related the story of a young man (incidentally a Telugu speaker) who came after six months in WIPRO and asked why he had not been sent to the US. He was informed that his English was not good enough for the job. Upon hearing this the young man was nearly in tears saying that unless he was able to prove that he had been to the US he would not be able to get married.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
sengotuvel, I have heard of stories far worse than this one. In fact, I know of one guy(Telugu) already in the US, whose parents told every prospective bride that he would eventually settle in India in the next five years. <b>He was serially rejected by every girl he saw</b>. This happened in 2000.
So we are well aware of the reality in India today. We are also aware of the contradictions that our lives and careers personify. But being aware of reality is one thing, persuading oneself that this is desirable is another thing altogether.
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->....
Opposing Macaulay-uncle's English comes easy for those of us who have already made our lives and our children's lives using that English.
....
It is strange that those English speaking Indians should oppose the entry of more Indians into benefits of a wider education and currently the ONLY route for an Indian to make a decent living.
....
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This is an ad hominem argument. In any case, no one has said in this thread that English should not be taught at all. Did you even read the previous posts properly?
05-04-2007, 01:09 PM (This post was last modified: 05-04-2007, 01:12 PM by Husky.)
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->daycare centers in Andhra Pradesh admonish the parents and ask them to stop teaching Telugu at home, if they want their children to succeed in kindergarten! If you spoke Telugu, you have to wash your mouth with soap! <!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->Like the poor Irish and Welsh. The English had tried to wipe out the Celtic languages to such an extent that even Irish and Welsh teachers in their own regions were enforcing English and attacking little children if in excitement they spoke to each other in their own tongues. My Welsh classmate told me how she and others were beaten for it, made to forget their own language. But now their languages are being brought back from the brink of extinction and their local schools are teaching them - to what extent they can ever be completely successful in reinstating and reviving their languages, I don't know. But they have some success at least.
Indians ought to learn from others' mistakes.
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Now Tenglish people just have to get rid of their script and adopt roman script. Thanks to Internet, it is already happening!<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->When I was in India last (around mid 2006), I saw the funniest thing. A number of TV adverts where Tamil characters were written in Arabic or Persian style. Similarly, some islami stores also had boards and signs with what took me a while to recognise as Tamil. Strange that the DMK has not pounced on them for the very real act of subverting the Tamil script. But then, the DMK will be the first to abandon Tamil if enough people in the state had converted to christoterrorism. Tamil is just a ruse they hide behind. Whatever cause can get and keep them in power is what they'll represent. It may well be English tomorrow.
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->In fact, I know of one guy(Telugu) already in the US, whose parents told every prospective bride that he would eventually settle in India in the next five years. He was serially rejected by every girl he saw. This happened in 2000.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->I don't think there's a hard and fast rule of what Indians want.
In my family, most of the marriageable girls <i>who had grown up in India</i> insisted on finding spouses who intended to either (1) stay in India; (2) return to India (sooner the better). One cousin married the first prospective who said he'd never move to the US. She had refused all the others, precisely for saying that if the opportunity ever arose they might consider moving there.
So there's all sorts in India.
Then again, one can't blame people for wanting to leave when the terrorist government is in power.
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin--><!--QuoteBegin--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->It is strange that those English speaking Indians should oppose the entry of more Indians into benefits of a wider education and currently the ONLY route for an Indian to make a decent living.
....<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->This is an ad hominem argument. In any case, no one has said in this thread that English should not be taught at all. Did you even read the previous posts properly?<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->Second that.
"ONLY route"
Defeatist attitude. Betrays belief in inevitability of English in (1) overpowering all Indian languages; (2) being the lingua franca of India already; (3) marginalising non-English speaking communities in India itself.
None holds true yet, nor is (2) likely to be anytime soon. (3) has not happened in any other British colonies as far as I'm aware. Extinction was only gradual.
Not denying that English has definitely become a highly aggressive language, as everyone in mainland Europe, at least NW, will agree. This inferior-for-technical-purposes language ousted German from its far more deserved spot as language for technical fields in the early 90s or late 80s. Change to English has not been an improvement.
Even in America, the significant usage of German until start of 20th century, I think it was, has been utterly wiped out by English. (Will post example links if necessary.)
But its aggression depends entirely on consent. India has been the battleground for many ideas that have been successful elsewhere:
(1) indefatigability and unstoppability of islam (disproved);
(2) irresistability of christianity (disproved);
(3) third world countries cannot of themselves break free from colonialism (disproved);
(4) inevitability of communist revolution and its success (disproved);
and more.
Let's see this battle take place first, before writing it off. No sense in surrendering before the challenge has even been given.
<!--QuoteBegin-vishwas+May 4 2007, 12:05 PM-->QUOTE(vishwas @ May 4 2007, 12:05 PM)<!--QuoteEBegin-->
Opposing Macaulay-uncle's English comes easy for those of us who have already made our lives and our children's lives using that English.
....
It is strange that those English speaking Indians should oppose the entry of more Indians into benefits of a wider education and currently the ONLY route for an Indian to make a decent living.
....
This is an ad hominem argument. In any case, no one has said in this thread that English should not be taught at all. Did you even read the previous posts properly?
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I may be wrong - but the way I see things moving is something that has little to do with this thread except peripherally.
India is probably going to end up having the biggest absolute number of English speakers outside the US which would probably make Macaulay squirm because the anglophone media could (if nurtured appropriately by Indian English speakers) be relatively dominated by India. I see great potential in this - because Indian ideas (and yes, Indian narratives too) can be rammed down throats of Western anglophone unbelievers with a huge body of people calling themselves "Indian" and sharing their experiences and knowledge in the very English that was originally forced down their ancestors throats as a marketing ploy by Macaulay.
If the waters are rising, it makes sense to utilize the flood to drown some people out - and I believe the pessimism lies in believing that Indian languages are going to die out. The choice of what to drown out will lie in Indian hands though.
I see the flood of English speakers as an opportunity. Fluently bilingual people in India are common, but those who use that bilingual ability to translate from one language to another are rare. A great rise in the number of fluently bilingual people would be an opportunity to use translation skills to convert and make accessible unique knowledge from one language to unlingual speakers of one of those languages.
English skills can be an opportunity if we are ready to recognize those opportunities.
How about an onslaught of indefatigable and undefeatable <i>anglophone</i> India? That will come anyway as a side effect of what is going on over here. Might as well put it to good use.
05-04-2007, 06:08 PM (This post was last modified: 05-04-2007, 06:16 PM by Bharatvarsh.)
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->I see the flood of English speakers as an opportunity. Fluently bilingual people in India are common, but hose who use that bilingual ability to translate from one language to another are rare. A great rise in the number of fluently bilingual people would be an opportunity to use translation skills to convert and make accessible unique knowledge from one language to unlingual speakers of one of those languages.
English skills can be an opportunity if we are ready to recognize those opportunities. <!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Not really, from what I saw many Indians know neither their mother tongue nor English properly and they mix the two into some kind of kichdi, a bilingual Hindi person is one who can speak shudh Hindi without hesitation but at the same time can speak in English without stopping with an English audience, not someone who speaks "Hinglidu" (Hindi+English+Urdu) which is what a lot of Indians I see do, PVN was an example of a real Polygot.
Those don't indicate English skills but on the contrary indicate that they have no skills in either language.
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Opposing Macaulay-uncle's English comes easy for those of us who have already made our lives and our children's lives using that English.
....
It is strange that those English speaking Indians should oppose the entry of more Indians into benefits of a wider education and currently the ONLY route for an Indian to make a decent living.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Who here asked anyone to stop teaching English?
But no here wants to hear "Tenglish" and "Kanglish" which display blatant ignorance of both languages.
All these posers I see can't carry on a normal convo wid a gora but act like they are english pandits by mixing it with Telugu even when there is no need for it.
<!--QuoteBegin-Bharatvarsh+May 4 2007, 06:08 PM-->QUOTE(Bharatvarsh @ May 4 2007, 06:08 PM)<!--QuoteEBegin-->Who here asked anyone to stop teaching English?
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Not on this forum, but please read the link I have given above. That news is pretty much a current topic where I live
<!--QuoteBegin-Bharatvarsh+May 4 2007, 06:08 PM-->QUOTE(Bharatvarsh @ May 4 2007, 06:08 PM)<!--QuoteEBegin-->But no here wants to hear "Tenglish" and "Kanglish" which display blatant ignorance of both languages.
All these posers I see can't carry on a normal convo wid a gora but act like they are english pandits by mixing it with Telugu even when there is no need for it.
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I don't know. I tend to see these things differently and I will post my thoughts as two separate points in this regard.
1) As a rough guesstimate. for every 10 or 20 "Tenglish/Kanglish" people that are created there is usually one person who is really good in two languages who can be of use as a bilinguist. One sees them all over the place, at least in India. Secondly, many people whose English is poor early in their lives are good by the time they retire - which is when they get motivated to do something useful, and with increasing lifespans it is not uncommon to find people who have 20 years of life or more after retirement.
2) The hinglish, tenglish, kanglish etc have a utility of their own because they are melding into a hotch-potch "ind-glish". The one thing that used to irritate me no end was our "Indian" fawning for a BBC type "good accent". Little pipsqueak countries use accents of their own and don't worry - so there is no real need for Indians to worry about thick accents. Accents in the UK for example like Scouse, Cockney, Welsh, Scottish or Yorkshire are virtually unintelligible to anyone who has not been exposed to them for a while. These accents sound as good or as bad as tenglish or kanglish and the speakers are a lot more cocky impolite bustards who don't even know one language properly, compared to the decent tenglish speaker who probably is a sensitive and intelligent speaker of at least two languages.
It will be good to have the world rushing to figure out Indian English rather than Indians copying firangi accents. In fact that is already happening right now - with BPOs shifting from making their employees speak pretend accents to using neutral Indian accents.
Ages ago - I was visiting Rome with my wife and we were doing the usual touristi circuit and went to see the catacombs. There were certain set times for tour guides and when we went there a German speaking guide had just left with a group and a Norwegian speaking guide was about to leave. We waited for the English speaking guide and to our surprise it was a typical Kerala Christian girl complete with skirt that started with belt below the breasts and ended just below the knees. Apart from that she had a complete and unbelievably rich Malayalam accent to her English which was amusing to us, but seemed to have no effect whatsoever on the motley group of goras who were with us on the tour.
The Vatican of course, the clever politicians that they are - see no problem with this sort of thing and allow Catholics with all sorts of accents to serve the massa Pope.
<!--QuoteBegin-Bodhi+May 4 2007, 03:34 AM-->QUOTE(Bodhi @ May 4 2007, 03:34 AM)<!--QuoteEBegin-->An easy to use and helpful comparative alphabet chart of the modern descendants of the ancient Brahmi script. Side by side, the chart shows the alphabets of these scripts: Devanagari, Gujarati, Punjabi(Gurmukhi), Bengali, Assamese, Oriya, Tibetan, Telugu, Kannada, Tamil, Malayalam, Sinhala, Burmese, Lao, Thai, Khmer, Javanese, Balinese, Tagolog, Batak, and Bugis (Buginese).
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->So from the tables urdu and sindhi have devnagari alphabets but in Arabic script. <!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Sindhi can also be written in the Devnagari script and it is used to write it in India but not as much as Arabic, it's kinda like the Shahmukhi and Gurmukhi thing for Panjabi with Hindus and Sikhs mostly using Gurmukhi while in Pakistan they use Shahmukhi.
The numbers are currently not in use and have been abandoned and replaced by arabic numerals, I was never taught them along with the alphabets nor did my mother learn them, wonder why that is, surely learning 10 extra symbols will not bring down this world, this is also ironic considering the fact that it was Bharat that gave Europe the numerals.
My uncle taught me those numbers. Quite a few educated people of his time knew them. But he would be much older than your mother, about 80 years old now. Notice, the numbers are very similar to those in devanagari.
Laws in Karnataka mandate that vehicle number plates can be either in Kannada or English. However, it was recently reported that "sons of the soil" Kannadiga policemen were often unable to read Kannada numerals and traffic offenders got away as a result.
However - some of these things are a gain in some ways and a loss in other ways. I have never seen a school maths textbook that uses Kannada (or Hindi) alphabet/numerals to say
(a+b)^2=a^2+2ab =b^2.
I suspect that an attempt to change from this would require a complete retraining of teachers and students. No parent would tolerate a loss of performance because of this and only Islamic zeal ("Do this or else...") would be able to force this into the Indian education system. besides - the dilemma is always "Should one attempt to change the system to use regional languages and change the 30% who are currently getting an education, or should one attempt to include the remaining 70% into the existing system?"
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->However - some of these things are a gain in some ways and a loss in other ways. I have never seen a school maths textbook that uses Kannada (or Hindi) alphabet/numerals to say
(a+b)^2=a^2+2ab =b^2.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Please clarify what you wanted to say in the above extract.
Is it that the particular formula could not have been translated into Kannada letters and numerals, because Kannada is somehow deficient in these things? Perhaps it does not have the digit for 9, say?
Or is it merely that no school maths text does it that way right now? which is a truism, and was Bharatvarsh's point to begin with. Then, how did you count it as a gain or loss, anyway?
05-05-2007, 06:51 AM (This post was last modified: 05-05-2007, 07:23 AM by Bharatvarsh.)
Well the idiots should have thought of these things before they decided to abandon the Telugu script, anyway its just 10 symbols that could be learnt in an hour and I plan to learn them and use them, as for the question of reintroduction, well you can introduce them but include roman ones along until everyone is able to master them.
How hard is it to learn 10 symbols, won't take me more than an hour and unless you are really dumb it won't be impossible.
<!--QuoteBegin-vishwas+May 5 2007, 06:51 AM-->QUOTE(vishwas @ May 5 2007, 06:51 AM)<!--QuoteEBegin--><!--QuoteBegin--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->However - some of these things are a gain in some ways and a loss in other ways. I have never seen a school maths textbook that uses Kannada (or Hindi) alphabet/numerals to say
(a+b)^2=a^2+2ab =b^2.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Please clarify what you wanted to say in the above extract.
Is it that the particular formula could not have been translated into Kannada letters and numerals, because Kannada is somehow deficient in these things? Perhaps it does not have the digit for 9, say?
Or is it merely that no school maths text does it that way right now? which is a truism, and was Bharatvarsh's point to begin with. Then, how did you count it as a gain or loss, anyway?
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"Extracts" and selective quotes or partial reading always cause a deficit in cognition. No wonder education is such a vexing subject. People (such as sons of the soil policemen) in Karnataka are unable to recognize Kannada numerals because they have not been taught that in school.
In a system where people are unable to even recognise numerals, changing the education system to perform algebra in a local language will be an uphill task because even the teachers will require retraining and the textbooks will require changing.
When you have a huge population that has virtually no education, it would be an advantage to use the existing education system to educate more people rather than try and change the education system to include regional language numerals. So any sentiment (that anyone may feel) that there is a loss in terms of use of regional language tends to play second fiddle to the more urgent need to churn out kids with some education, even if their math happens to be in Roman numerals and alphabet.
If there is no sentiment that there is some kind of "loss" in not using regional language numerals there is no issue to be discussed.
But if there is any feeling that Indian regional languages are "losing out" - then changing that is not going to be easy because those languages are already at a disadvantage in the existing system. That disadvantage (I repeat for clarity) is the fact that teachers are themselves not familiar with math in regional language numerals, an will require large scale re training, and textbooks will require reprinting in regional languages.
There may be other methods to bring about a gradual change in perception but I don't think these are being applied to the use of regional languages in areas higher than primary school education. One fact is that Vedic methods of calculation are being taught in CBSE schools as a matter of course and it makes sense because some methods are elegant and easy to use. There is a graphical Vedic maths method of multiplying long numbers that children find easy to use. But the numerals are Roman numerals and I see no easy way of implementing math education using regional language numerals AND alphabet such as would be required for the simplest algebra.
<!--QuoteBegin-Bharatvarsh+May 5 2007, 06:51 AM-->QUOTE(Bharatvarsh @ May 5 2007, 06:51 AM)<!--QuoteEBegin--> its just 10 symbols that could be learnt in an hour and I plan to learn them and use them, as for the question of reintroduction, well you can introduce them but include roman ones along until everyone is able to master them.
How hard is it to learn 10 symbols, won't take me more than an hour and unless you are really dumb it won't be impossible.
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With respect, may I point out that this is exactly what I said in an earlier post in a sentence that was judged as "ad hominem".
You have gone past your school and college education and perhaps postgraduate education as well without having been burdened by the need to do your math in two sets of numerals, and without having been burdened by less than competent teachers who are themselves unable to master these things "in an hour".
It probably does not make sense to think that your ability to master these in an hour will be the same for a 22 year old training to be a school teacher. This teacher may spend months or years making mistakes in correcting children's school books written by little kids. At the best of times, in one language, children's books and exam papers require correction with sympathy and care. If you create a confused teacher - it will have an immediate effect on the performance of children that parents will not tolerate.
So an ability to implement something on the basis of its alleged simplicity and your ability to master it in an hour are of no practical value in planned implemention of theuse of regional languages in general education.
