01-11-2008, 08:21 AM
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->however as you heard it in a song, it probably is 'bajar-iya', bhojpuri adaptation of 'bazar' (market). In bhojpuri and generally in awadhi too, a noun of femanine gender is generally appended with 'iya', and of musculine with 'ava', and of ubhaya-lin^ga with either of the two as the rhyme of the sentance would suit. ('vajra' in awadhi becomes 'bajjar' :-) )<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Yeah that would make sense, i heard it in a song of "the rising" about mangal pandey which was set in UP.
Meanwhile some article i found:
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Factors behind Hindiâs downfall
by P. D. Shastri
THE Millenniumâs Grand All-World Conference on Hindi was held in New Delhi from September 14 to 23. It is hoped the event would give a great fillip to the cause of Hindi to emerge not only as the sole dominant language of India but also as one of the major languages of the world. After all, it is the official language of a country with over a billion people.
Why September 14? For on that date in 1949 the Constituent Assembly designated Hindi as the national language of India. High hopes were raised that soon Hindi would be all in all, as English was during British rule.
But things did not shape according to peopleâs wishful thinking. In the first flush, the people of UP and Bihar felt that the future belonged to them as they were Godâs chosen people, speaking the constitutionally chosen language. This tongue, they thought, was their birthright. Their argument was that they were born with it while others took years to achieve that standard. This attitude did not make Hindi more popular with the people in the western and eastern parts of India. Non-Hindi-speaking people constitute the majority in India. The Hindi belt remained the place having the poorest strata of society in India. Also with time, non-Hindi-speaking peopleâs opposition to Hindi progressively evaporated.
The other day a staunch supporter of Hindi lamented that with time the importance of English was getting higher and higher while Hindi was losing its ground bit by bit. Hindi had a much greater status in 1949, with high hopes of its monopoly in the future. Today, said the enthusiast, it is on the downward slant. The fact remains that English is the predominant language in the discussions in Parliament, conferences and meetings â national and international â while Hindi has to remain content with its official status. It seems as if English is our de facto national language.
Even the DAV people, who once fanatically swore by Hindi, have opened over 500 English-medium schools all over the country. Before Independence, the number of well-known English-medium schools could be counted on the finger tips. Today they are spread all over the place, even in small towns and villages.
Press views mean opinions expressed in the English language papers. The vernacular readers (though constituting a majority among newspaper readers) do not catch the headlines. Hindi papers are read and Hindi speeches and writings generally are restricted to those whose knowledge of English is inadequate. Prestige and intellectual superiority go with the foreign language, whether we like it or not.
What are the causes for this slow progress, rather non-progress of Hindi? The chief reason is the inadequacy of our language. Due to the fault of the sponsors, it has not risen to the excellence and worldview of English.
The original Hindi was so Sanskritised that common people could not understand it. There was no use of exchanging a half understood national language with English, more popularly understood by the intelligentsia. Even Nehru said he could not understand Hindi on the signboards at UPâs railway stations (e.g. niramish bhojanalaya). It was not the peopleâs language. It did not have behind it the power of the heart-beats of Indiaâs countless millions. Even today, with all corrections being made, often we cannot understand an item in official Hindi on the T.V.; we will know what it means only when we hear the news in English.
Under the compulsion of circumstances, the much-maligned cinema popularised peopleâs Hindi, that gave the films welcome in all parts of our vast land. The newspaper world is changing for a more acceptable Hindi, though the government-controlled media (electronic) continues in the same old way. In place of serving the sons of the soil, the scholarâs hobby is to show off their deep learning.
All languages in the world have been shaped by great men of letters; famous poets and writers whose sentences found an echo in the heart of the millions. For instance, in our case too, lines of poetry, maxims and other quotable quotes of Tulsidas, Kabir, Surdas and many others live to this day and are often sung or stated. Can this be said of our present-day authors and poets whose writings constitute the literature of the hour, not literature for all times to come. We have touched Himalayan heights in quantity, but where is the quality? The governments â state and central â every year award prizes of lakhs of rupees, but no one reads those works. These are dumped in stores where they provide a feast to white ants and termites. An occasional work of merit or purple patch passes without much notice.
It is not generally remembered and that our official Hindi was created by the babus sitting in government offices. The government gave them lists of thousands of the current English words and terms, and they were to supply their Hindi equivalent. They were the employees of the Language Department, no geniuses or men of letters. They invented a whole set of new vocabulary to substitute for English terms. Those clerks could not work wonders in coining new words. They represented the commonest mediocrity. Those new coinages were printed in the shape of dictionaries and the people were ordained to adopt them. The official media did adopt them, making their Hindi as another Esperanto. This was a grotesque situation.
In all cases, a language is evolved by degrees and later lexicographers come and compile them in the shape of a dictionary. Take the English language. Chaucer (1340-1400 A.D.) is said to be its father. But the first English dictionary came 400 years after its birth â Dr Johnsonâs Dictionary in the 18th century.
We put the cart before the horse; the dictionary first and the evolution of the language later on. This is the crux of the problem. At the start a wrong direction was given. A language invented by petty clerks was supposed to be great Indiaâs official language. With the best will in the world, it could not come on the top. The little corrections made during the last half a century have not been able to lift todayâs Hindi to be on a par with other great languages of the world. The partisans put the blame on the anglicised intellectual aristocrats for being English-minded and not having that patriotic love for our own Hindi. The truth is that the languageâs own inadequacy is the cause.
Indiaâs national language cannot be the local tongue of Bihar or UP. It must borrow enough words from other Indian languages (each has a wonderful store of words worthy of all-India adoption) to make a composite language for the whole of India.
http://www.tribuneindia.com/2000/20000928/edit.htm<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
nehru was an ignorant lout who could get neither Hindi nor Urdu right, how the hell would he understand anything, that it was incomprehensible is nonsense, if one were to listen to Bhojpuri or any of the dialects spoken one would understand how sanskritised they are compared to Bollywood "Hindi", nextly even assuming that common speech had a lot of farsi/arabic that still wouldn't answer how these Hindus suddenly couldn't understand shudh Hindi because at least the religious literature was in highly shudh Hindi and religious preachers do tend to speak more shudh Hindi (eg: the Ramcharitmanas which is highly popular has very few farsi/arabic words and yet it is very popular in the Hindi belt). This is not restricted to Hindi, anyone who has heard sikh gyanis preach in Punjabi could see that their speech makes use of much more sanskrit terminology and is understood by common sikhs, if one wants to check, they will just have to listen to akash radio online when the preacher is on.
And if Hindi is not the peoples language, English fares even worse on that count (at least for now).
And the last suggestion is even more crackpot, borrow from all over Bharat, what is there to borrow, most of the other North Indian languages share a common vocabulary with Hindi, borrowing "puttar" from Punjabi will not make any difference, it's already there in Hindi as putr, if he means borrow from southern languages, instead of making the language comprehensible, it will make a hotch potch out of the whole thing and won't be understood by Hindi speakers themselves.
Also notice that he never mentions the heavy Persianation of Bollywood "Hindi", to give an example the word "aarop" will almost never figure in Bollywood vocabulary even though it's the most widely used word for accuse, instead it will always be "ilzaam", then they have the audacity to go call it "Hindi".
Yeah that would make sense, i heard it in a song of "the rising" about mangal pandey which was set in UP.
Meanwhile some article i found:
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Factors behind Hindiâs downfall
by P. D. Shastri
THE Millenniumâs Grand All-World Conference on Hindi was held in New Delhi from September 14 to 23. It is hoped the event would give a great fillip to the cause of Hindi to emerge not only as the sole dominant language of India but also as one of the major languages of the world. After all, it is the official language of a country with over a billion people.
Why September 14? For on that date in 1949 the Constituent Assembly designated Hindi as the national language of India. High hopes were raised that soon Hindi would be all in all, as English was during British rule.
But things did not shape according to peopleâs wishful thinking. In the first flush, the people of UP and Bihar felt that the future belonged to them as they were Godâs chosen people, speaking the constitutionally chosen language. This tongue, they thought, was their birthright. Their argument was that they were born with it while others took years to achieve that standard. This attitude did not make Hindi more popular with the people in the western and eastern parts of India. Non-Hindi-speaking people constitute the majority in India. The Hindi belt remained the place having the poorest strata of society in India. Also with time, non-Hindi-speaking peopleâs opposition to Hindi progressively evaporated.
The other day a staunch supporter of Hindi lamented that with time the importance of English was getting higher and higher while Hindi was losing its ground bit by bit. Hindi had a much greater status in 1949, with high hopes of its monopoly in the future. Today, said the enthusiast, it is on the downward slant. The fact remains that English is the predominant language in the discussions in Parliament, conferences and meetings â national and international â while Hindi has to remain content with its official status. It seems as if English is our de facto national language.
Even the DAV people, who once fanatically swore by Hindi, have opened over 500 English-medium schools all over the country. Before Independence, the number of well-known English-medium schools could be counted on the finger tips. Today they are spread all over the place, even in small towns and villages.
Press views mean opinions expressed in the English language papers. The vernacular readers (though constituting a majority among newspaper readers) do not catch the headlines. Hindi papers are read and Hindi speeches and writings generally are restricted to those whose knowledge of English is inadequate. Prestige and intellectual superiority go with the foreign language, whether we like it or not.
What are the causes for this slow progress, rather non-progress of Hindi? The chief reason is the inadequacy of our language. Due to the fault of the sponsors, it has not risen to the excellence and worldview of English.
The original Hindi was so Sanskritised that common people could not understand it. There was no use of exchanging a half understood national language with English, more popularly understood by the intelligentsia. Even Nehru said he could not understand Hindi on the signboards at UPâs railway stations (e.g. niramish bhojanalaya). It was not the peopleâs language. It did not have behind it the power of the heart-beats of Indiaâs countless millions. Even today, with all corrections being made, often we cannot understand an item in official Hindi on the T.V.; we will know what it means only when we hear the news in English.
Under the compulsion of circumstances, the much-maligned cinema popularised peopleâs Hindi, that gave the films welcome in all parts of our vast land. The newspaper world is changing for a more acceptable Hindi, though the government-controlled media (electronic) continues in the same old way. In place of serving the sons of the soil, the scholarâs hobby is to show off their deep learning.
All languages in the world have been shaped by great men of letters; famous poets and writers whose sentences found an echo in the heart of the millions. For instance, in our case too, lines of poetry, maxims and other quotable quotes of Tulsidas, Kabir, Surdas and many others live to this day and are often sung or stated. Can this be said of our present-day authors and poets whose writings constitute the literature of the hour, not literature for all times to come. We have touched Himalayan heights in quantity, but where is the quality? The governments â state and central â every year award prizes of lakhs of rupees, but no one reads those works. These are dumped in stores where they provide a feast to white ants and termites. An occasional work of merit or purple patch passes without much notice.
It is not generally remembered and that our official Hindi was created by the babus sitting in government offices. The government gave them lists of thousands of the current English words and terms, and they were to supply their Hindi equivalent. They were the employees of the Language Department, no geniuses or men of letters. They invented a whole set of new vocabulary to substitute for English terms. Those clerks could not work wonders in coining new words. They represented the commonest mediocrity. Those new coinages were printed in the shape of dictionaries and the people were ordained to adopt them. The official media did adopt them, making their Hindi as another Esperanto. This was a grotesque situation.
In all cases, a language is evolved by degrees and later lexicographers come and compile them in the shape of a dictionary. Take the English language. Chaucer (1340-1400 A.D.) is said to be its father. But the first English dictionary came 400 years after its birth â Dr Johnsonâs Dictionary in the 18th century.
We put the cart before the horse; the dictionary first and the evolution of the language later on. This is the crux of the problem. At the start a wrong direction was given. A language invented by petty clerks was supposed to be great Indiaâs official language. With the best will in the world, it could not come on the top. The little corrections made during the last half a century have not been able to lift todayâs Hindi to be on a par with other great languages of the world. The partisans put the blame on the anglicised intellectual aristocrats for being English-minded and not having that patriotic love for our own Hindi. The truth is that the languageâs own inadequacy is the cause.
Indiaâs national language cannot be the local tongue of Bihar or UP. It must borrow enough words from other Indian languages (each has a wonderful store of words worthy of all-India adoption) to make a composite language for the whole of India.
http://www.tribuneindia.com/2000/20000928/edit.htm<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
nehru was an ignorant lout who could get neither Hindi nor Urdu right, how the hell would he understand anything, that it was incomprehensible is nonsense, if one were to listen to Bhojpuri or any of the dialects spoken one would understand how sanskritised they are compared to Bollywood "Hindi", nextly even assuming that common speech had a lot of farsi/arabic that still wouldn't answer how these Hindus suddenly couldn't understand shudh Hindi because at least the religious literature was in highly shudh Hindi and religious preachers do tend to speak more shudh Hindi (eg: the Ramcharitmanas which is highly popular has very few farsi/arabic words and yet it is very popular in the Hindi belt). This is not restricted to Hindi, anyone who has heard sikh gyanis preach in Punjabi could see that their speech makes use of much more sanskrit terminology and is understood by common sikhs, if one wants to check, they will just have to listen to akash radio online when the preacher is on.
And if Hindi is not the peoples language, English fares even worse on that count (at least for now).
And the last suggestion is even more crackpot, borrow from all over Bharat, what is there to borrow, most of the other North Indian languages share a common vocabulary with Hindi, borrowing "puttar" from Punjabi will not make any difference, it's already there in Hindi as putr, if he means borrow from southern languages, instead of making the language comprehensible, it will make a hotch potch out of the whole thing and won't be understood by Hindi speakers themselves.
Also notice that he never mentions the heavy Persianation of Bollywood "Hindi", to give an example the word "aarop" will almost never figure in Bollywood vocabulary even though it's the most widely used word for accuse, instead it will always be "ilzaam", then they have the audacity to go call it "Hindi".