Progress Of Indic Languages Vs English

Bodhi · (This post was last modified: 07-09-2007, 07:26 PM by Bodhi.)

--><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/biggrin.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='biggrin.gif' />

07-09-2007, 08:57 PM

QUOTEThey are proposing to make Urdu the first language in Kendriya Vidyalaya and Navodaya Vidyalayas!!!
Next they will propse Verse from Koran as a prayer in place of "Asto Ma sad gamaya".

Bharatvarsh · (This post was last modified: 07-16-2007, 02:38 AM by Bharatvarsh.)

QUOTEAll the speeches were excellent. Our director speech was so impressive. He was using some english words in the speech. Students caught this and started shouting to have the speech in pure telugu. He explained that he started with telugu medium and changed to english medium after 10th and now he neither belongs to telugu nor to english. That was too impressive. Another impressive speech was given by niranjan babu gaaru. He said that student life is precious and we can achieve anything that we want in this life. Never step back in this age, he added.

http://sumanknr.blogspot.com/search/label/TTCA
Thank God there are still some people with some pride left in AP, these being students is even better.
QUOTEBesides, Sanskrit words are imbedded into the language. Urdu and Turk languages, as the court language during Mogul domination (especially in Hyderabad) have left their imprint on its vocabulary. It was only much later, when the movement began to âcleanseâ Telugu language that use of pure Telugu and sanskritised words began to be used.
http://telugustreet.blogspot.com/search/la...lugu%20Language
I never heard of any such movement in Telugu so I don't know what he is talking about.

Bharatvarsh · 07-16-2007, 02:52 AM

QUOTEA Language rant

A long time ago, language meant English or Hindi or French or whatever and had absolutely nothing to do with C, Java or ML. Children spoke their mother tongue at home and English was drilled into their head at school. Although they finally managed to get a grasp on English, their thinking was still in their mother tongue.

But nowadays, I am witnessing a strange phenomena. Possibly such things were happening earlier too, but I am sure I was not exposed to it. On the streets, in the airport, in the malls and parks, you can see young parents with little kids. And invariably, they are conversing in English with their kids. For some reason, I am repulsed by the sight of a small Indian child talking to his parents in English. Mind you, this is Bangalore I am talking about, not some US city with NRIs. The parents converse freely in their mother tongue, but for the child, English is the only language.

I am unable to understand why parents would deliberately alienate the child from his own culture and country. Has the craze for English reached such heights that we are willing to make Englishmen out of our children, who look down upon their vernacular brethen and be unable to communicate with them ? I, like most of the people from the plains speak, understand and write only Hindi and English. Many of my friends from other states are able to speak their non-Hindi mother tongue fluently. The same might not be true a few years hence.

Here in Karnataka, people are protesting and fighting to preserve the Kannada language. It is compulsory for all shops to display the signboard in Kannada too. But these protesters must realise that their fight is not against migrants from other states. The real threat is from those upwardly mobile parents who consider it too "common-place" to talk to their children in Kannada. The Hindi or Tamil speaking people will not lead to the marginalization of Kannada, the obsession with English would. And what goes for Kannada would probably hold true for any other Indian language.

When people make a noise about such issues, it is very easy to dismiss them as chauvinistic and give examples from the past to show that it is a natural process, but one must not forget that language defines the people and their culture. There are many things which are a part of our lives, but we would be hard pressed to explain them in an alien language. When you are in an extremely stressful situation, do you think and speak in English or some other language ? How does on translate a muhavara ? Dhobi ka kutta .... will English ever express what a dhobi is and what a ghat is ?

There are many arguements put forth that knowledge of English is a passport to success in today's world, but shine of gold should not make one forget his identity. People adopt various extreme emotive positions on the issue of language. May it be Hindi vs others or English vs Hindi or Tamil vs Kannada, a balanced approach is needed. Junking English in favour of the mother tongue, as was the case recently in Bengal is short sighted, but the reverse too is not the solution.

http://khabri.blogspot.com/2007/02/language-rant.html

07-16-2007, 10:21 AM

QUOTE(Bharatvarsh @ Jul 16 2007, 02:29 AM)<div class='quotetop'>QUOTEBesides, Sanskrit words are imbedded into the language. Urdu and Turk languages, as the court language during Mogul domination (especially in Hyderabad) have left their imprint on its vocabulary. It was only much later, when the movement began to âcleanseâ Telugu language that use of pure Telugu and sanskritised words began to be used.
http://telugustreet.blogspot.com/search/la...lugu%20Language
I never heard of any such movement in Telugu so I don't know what he is talking about.[right][snapback]71232[/snapback][/right]</div>
BV, This might be because of the enduring influence of Paravastu Chinnayya Suri. I am not quite familiar with his works. But, I remember that he was reviled by the foaming-at-the-mouth leftists on soc.culture.india.telugu. His main opponent was Gidugu Rama Murthy. However, I think both would be disheartened at the state of Telugu and other vernacular languages today.

08-01-2007, 01:54 AM

<img src='http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/ew/2007/07/30/images/2007073050010101.jpg' border='0' alt='user posted image' />

Computer se dosti karo 

A feel of the Hindi/English keyboard invented by Dr Mahesh Jayachandra.
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Kalibonca plans to introduce kits for other Indian languages (Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Malayalam, Bengali, Oriya, Punjabi/Gurmukhi) and computing devices for the Indic Computing market soon.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
G.R.N. Somashekar

The pink plastic letters stuck on the top-left of each key of the keyboard stand bright against the factory cream colour. Colleagues passing by the cabin walk over to admire the Hindi lettering. "Why didn't anybody think of this before?" say many.

This is a Hindi/English keyboard invented by Bangalorean scientist Dr Mahesh Jayachandra. He designed it for children who needed an easy Indian language keyboard.

"Hindi is a mandatory school subject for a majority of Indian children. Computer makers consult computer-savvy Indians (both in India and outside) who live in an English-centric, Sand Hill Road universe and are unaware of the practical usage of Indic computing. First-time PC users will find this a boon," he says.

The keyboard is licensed by the US-based Kalibonca LLC, which expects it to be a huge hit with NRI children.

"The NRI community is about 2.5 to 3million strong in the US. The NRI population in the rest of the world is about 30 million.

Here in the US, many NRIs want their American children to learn Indian languages. We are confident that NRI families will see the utility of our product. They will be able to easily communicate with relatives in India with e-mail and instant messaging in Hindi.

It has been evaluated by the Hindi language department of a US University and received positive reviews. In India, we estimate a pent-up demand for 44 million units," says a Kalibonca spokesperson.

Kalibonca plans to introduce kits for other Indian languages (Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Malayalam, Bengali, Oriya, Punjabi/Gurmukhi, etc) and computing devices for the Indic Computing market soon.

Mallya Aditi International School in Bangalore will be receiving it for testing shortly. Chintan Bakshi (COO) of United Villages, India, says he took the keyboard to villages in Orissa, but since the primary language there is Oriya and not Hindi, he could not judge its effect. He is planning to take it to Rajasthan.

coming alive at the touch

When you open up a document and start typing, English letters of the alphabet flow onto the screen. But with a simple tap of the Caps Lock button, the Hindi keyboard comes alive. The pink letters pasted below each letter of the alphabet on the keyboard can now be used. Arranged in the Hindi alphabetical order (k, kh,ga, gha..), the keyboard is instinctively simple to use and easy to learn. Numbers are placed on the right hand corner.

The keyboard comes with a Linux-based CD and can be installed within minutes. You plug the keyboard in, pop it into the CD drive and restart the PC. The PC must be made to run from the CDROM. It immediately loads a Linux KDE desktop (quite plain and simple, similar to the Windows desktop screen, with a simple blue background and basic icons.

All the icons pop up a Hindi name when you point the cursor to them. The CD doesn't perform any installation and the user is immediately transported into a Hindi OS.

The applications were chosen to suit a country where being computer-savvy is a shortcut to a steady income.

Proficiency in 'Office' kind of programs is in demand here. Simple programs such as Open Office (similar to Microsoft's Office suite), and a calculator have been included, along with a basic notebook application called K-Write.

The desktop has two panels or toolbars at the top and bottom with a total of 18 icons for various programs â including a world clock, Internet browser and a planetarium. The file explorer is called 'ghar' or home. This lets you save to the CDROM as well as to the PC you are working on. You can 'nakal' (copy) text just like on any other PC, and hit 'baahar jayiye' to exit applications.

The Internet browser opens to a default Wiki search engine. Instant messaging is also offered â more popularly called 'chatting', the Hindi name becomes a smile inducing 'gupshup window.'

"Besides food, India is known for its highly skilled IT workers. The fact that Indians do not have a way to easily compute in their languages is truly astounding and unbelievable to us," says the Kalibonca spokesperson.

LOGO has been included to introduce the user to basics of programming . "Computers are very poweful tools and for the most part, are under-utilised as there are no such keyboards," she says. The keyboard is minimal and manufactured by GE. It requires a PC with a CDROM drive and a minimum of 256 MB RAM (memory), though 512 MB is recommended. It is available for purchase at Kalibonca's Web site for $99.99 (Rs 4000).

preethij@thehindu.co.in

http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/ew/200...73050010100.htm

ramana · 08-01-2007, 02:26 AM

While growing up I spent a lot of time from ist standard to 11th standard learning Hindi-the national language. Only after graduating from college and living in US and interacting with people from UP and Bihar I came to know that the Hindi I learnt in school was a corrupt version Khadi Bholi that has a mixture of Urdu words written in Devnagari script and that there are two other dialects-Bhojpuri and Maithili that do not have the admixture of Urdu/wurdu. I have mixed feelings and feel quite let down that this was rammed down our unsuspecting minds as a way of syncretization.
What could happen in two three hundred years when the population decides to switch to these dialects and leave the official language high and dry? Will the speakers be the non_Hindi belt dwellers who were brought up on this official dialect?

08-01-2007, 02:32 AM

ramana, what state are you from?

08-01-2007, 04:18 AM

Ramana, you touched upon an old debate of the Hindi literary circles of 50s. When government decided to 'officially' declare and promote Hindi as the state language of GOI - they needed to define WHAT Hindi is - since a Hindi speaker of Mewatiyan in Rajasthan would find it hard to understand, much less speak, the Hindi spoken by a native of Mithila in Northern Bihar, like wise from Himachal or Vidarbha.

So, after very interesting and much heated debates, they agreed upon a language of less 'deshaj' content and dialectic tone - called Khadi Boli. For Khadi Boli too, there were two variants - that of Delhi/Punjab/West_UP or that of Varanasi/East_UP. The latter draws from Sanskrit vocabulary as the primary source, and the former from Farsi/Urdu. For different reasons, the former was chosen.

Then a talented young poet and professor, also having clout with Nehrus was picked up as the GOI's ambassador to promote this language as the national language, and formulate govt's policies. Dr. Harivansha Rai Bachchan. However, much of the literature as well as Doordarshan's Hindi continued to be Khadi Boli of Sanskrit leanings, until recently.

Now, our 24/7's and balle-wood have supplanted the development of that true national language of indigenous origins, to replace its original and popular words by poor borrowings from English, Farsi, and Arabic. including the character of the language, the flow of words and so on.

Bharatvarsh · 08-01-2007, 04:58 AM

Bodhiji can you tell me what dialect was used in the movie "Omkara" (Othello set in UP), now that you mentioned I think it made use of West UP Khadi Boli since I saw a few words that I don't think are used in other Sanskrit heavy Hindi dialects like Bhojpuri:

khoobsurat - sundar
saal - varas
shaadi - viah
galti/misteek - aparaadh/bhul

But it also used stuff like "prasan" instead of "sawal".

Here is a clip of the movie I found online:

http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseacti...videoid=7000392

08-01-2007, 09:00 AM

Bharatvarshji, Omkara is a confusing case, to the extreme. A GOOD experimentation in language, and successful too, but certainly far from any real dialect spoken REALLY by any single set of people in UP.

They tried to represent a village of Eastern UP, to begin with. The entire background and location is truely a typical East UP village. (In fact the place where they shot a large part of the movie is not very far from my original village) Some of the locations that I can mention about the movie... The student hostel that they showed in the earlier part of the movie... that is Lucknow University's real hostel. A temple they showed where Naseer-ud-deen Shah is shown worshipping in a Shiva temple on a river Bank - that place is close to Prayag/Allahabad. The fight scene at a Brick-Bhatta - that is typical of East of Lucknow... Then they showed the city which is Lucknow... there are some very narrow streets as well as the dance sequences - that in fact does not look like UP but Bihar - Gaya or nearabouts.

So overall, the idea was to show east UP touching Bihar.

But dialect? I think different characters spoke different languages 'artificially' influenced by one or the other "real" dialects.

e.g. Saif Ali and his wife spoke more of Eastern dialect - mix of Awadhi with Khadi Boli. something close to what you would hear in the rural surroundings of Lucknow/Unnao/Kanpur. Some of the worlds they used, and idioms, are real, and typical of the region.

Some other characters spoke what can be said to be a rather good representation of East UP's urban Hindi, for sure. Examples would be what Kareena Kapur, her father, and Naseer-ud-deen Shah spoke. This type of Hindi would be heard in small towns of east UP.

HOWEVER, by and large the whole film and most of its characters spoke what I would say is influenced by WESTERN UP, bordering Haryana, in the rural areas of the districts like Muzaffar-Nagar/Modi-Nagar etc. Some characters including Ajay Devgan spoke a heavy Haryana-influenced accent with UP-influenced words. E.g. "Kathor!" and also the curse-words and abuses are typical of east UP, but not accent.

Dialect in the songs - both the words and accent - is east-UP influenced - largely Awadhi, sometimes Bhojpuri. 'Beedi Jala-ile' has typical awadhi accent with urdu-imported words of course. "jigar-maan badi aag hai..." could have been "jiyaa-maan badi aag hai...".

ramana · 08-17-2007, 07:38 AM

Very long article on evolution of languages in India due to colonial encounter both Muslim and British.

http://www.epwijnants-lectures.com/sl1.html

Bharatvarsh · 08-19-2007, 05:14 AM

Any of the Telugu forumites here know the meanings of these old Telugu names (from Palnati Yuddham):

1) Malideva (One meaning for Mali could be evening, but is it the same in this name?)
2) Nalagaama
3) Maanchaala (She is Veera Balachandra's wife)
4) Ala Raja
5) Peramma (amma is mother, i have heard Peraasa meaning greed, but here Per seems to mean something else)

And also the name Gona Ganna Reddy.

If anyone has any idea, please share it.

08-19-2007, 06:33 AM

QUOTE(Bharatvarsh @ Aug 19 2007, 05:14 AM)Any of the Telugu forumites here know the meanings of these old Telugu names (from Palnati Yuddham)[right][snapback]72224[/snapback][/right]

I also have heard these names mentioned only in that context. Gona Ganna Reddy, I have heard mentioned as one of the works of a major classical writer in the last century.

Could it be that they are mostly the names of local gods, specifically the gramadevatas?
The reason I ask is: Potana calls himself Potharaju in the Bhagavatam. Even today, in Telangana, Potharaju is the name of a local God.

Bharatvarsh · 08-19-2007, 07:07 AM

QUOTECould it be that they are mostly the names of local gods, specifically the gramadevatas?
The reason I ask is: Potana calls himself Potharaju in the Bhagavatam. Even today, in Telangana, Potharaju is the name of a local God. 
That could indeed be the case, but I think at that time these names must have been more widely used and later went out of use, Molla is another name, she wrote the famous Molla Ramayanam and her name is from the Molla flower, the name is not used anymore now.

I did not know Pothana called himself Potharaju, i always wondered when Potharaju worship originated in Telangana, certainly seems to be pretty old.

The reason I am asking about these is cuz i ain't a fan of current names used among Hindus, i want to be able to explain the name meanings if i use them in future, though I already picked some names that I like (but when i suggest them to people I know, they prefer to follow the trend).

anyway some of the names are:

1) Samarasimha
2) Indrasena
3) Pulideva (Puli is tiger in Telugu)
4) Ilasingham (name i made up, ila is earth in Telugu, singham is lion, so lion of earth)
5) Puliraju

08-19-2007, 11:11 AM

QUOTE(Bharatvarsh @ Aug 19 2007, 07:07 AM)i ain't a fan of current names used among Hindus[right][snapback]72226[/snapback][/right]

We both must have been brothers in a previous janma. Today, the favorite names are getting to be:
Akhil, Nihal, Vipul, Adwait ....
For girls: Alekhya, Ananya, Shreya, Sanjana ....

They are actually asking the Mexican/Caucasian nurses in the delivery room if they can pronounce a prospective name, before actually naming the newborn, in the US. Time to leave this country...

Bharatvarsh · (This post was last modified: 08-30-2007, 12:04 AM by Bharatvarsh.)

http://www.maganti.org/index1.html

Has Telugu folk songs and other stuff connected to Telugu literature.

Anyone here read the Epic of Katamaraju and recommend any book on it (from what I know it is a Ballad, but even if it was put down in written form, I wouldn't understand it in 12th century Telugu).

09-15-2007, 03:23 AM

What is the meaning of the word "nonbu"? I have heard it usually like "varalakshmi nonbu", "karadayan nonbu" etc. Also heard Muslims use it too.

ramana · 09-15-2007, 04:27 AM

It 'nomu' in Telugu. Means 'vratham' or 'vrat' or pooja.

Husky · (This post was last modified: 09-15-2007, 10:15 AM by Husky.)

QUOTE(Bharatvarsh @ Aug 19 2007, 05:14 AM)Any of the Telugu forumites here know the meanings of these old Telugu names (from Palnati Yuddham):
5) Peramma (amma is mother, i have heard Peraasa meaning greed, but here Per seems to mean something else)
[right][snapback]72224[/snapback][/right]Since Tamil words Puli = tiger and Singham = lion, and the same appears to be true for Telegu, will tell you what I guess Peramma might possibly mean. Of course, I am not sure and I could just be totally wrong.
Periamma in Tamil literally means great mother - shortened to Perimma it means older sister of your mum. (Different word used for older sister of your dad.)

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