Correction: by Dravidian language in Pakistan I suppose you meant Brahui, which has a couple of million speakers. Doesn't appear to be much writing in the language though. We will have to find out more.
And one more comment on your suggestion about using 'Indic-Dravidian': do remember that we have several languages in the north-east which are part of neither of these groupings, since they are from the Tibeto-Burman family of languages! This is what I meant by the problem of using philological classifications and terminology.
TN
On 13 February 2013 18:38, Tejaswini Niranjana teju@cscs.res.in wrote:
Hi Niraj, Thanks for engaging with this difficult question. I think we may have to look at sizeable populations speaking a certain language while deciding how to classify where it is spoken. I was surprised to see your remark that Dravidian languages are spoken in Pakistan. I was not aware of this fact, and would like to know if it is the odd speaker who happens to live or work there, or there are good-sized populations speaking Kannada or Telugu for example.
As for your suggestion about a combination name like Indic-Dravidian, that still falls into the philological problems that using 'Indic' alone does,and doesn't necessarily make the term more inclusive.
So I think we will have to keep discussing this issue for some more time!
Tejaswini
On 11 February 2013 13:59, Niraj Suryawanshi niraj.suryawanshi@gmail.comwrote:
Dear Mam,
I understand & appreciate the depth of thought process and inputs put behind this question about use of words "*Indian*" or "*Indic*". I'm very much convinced since all the languages we are considering belong to different classes and categories, geographically and origin wise too, and needs to be labeled under a common name!
But if we consider the label Indian languages, which specifies the origin and use of the same in India, there are many languages which are predominantly used not only in India but also in the other surrounding counties eg. Bangla (Indic Language, Indo-Aryan) which is used in India, Bangladesh & Burma. And many other Dravidian Languages which are thought to be specifically South Indian languages are used in neighboring eastern countries like Pakistan too.
This question will arise every time when we have to specify "Indian Language" or "Indic Languages" for any given reason.
How about the combination of names of both different language families so that the language set wont be distributed with respect to the current territorial boundaries but with regards to their origin and a proper classification depending upon the origin/birth. viz "*Indic - Dravidian Languages*"
This was my personal view over the query, you can always correct me if I'm misleading.
Regards & Thanks,
Niraj Suryawanshi on behalf of Wikipedia Club Pune
+91 814 992 0120 | niraj.suryawanshi@gmail.com
View this message in context: http://wikimedia.7.n6.nabble.com/Indian-Languages-question-tp4996015p4996021... Sent from the WikiMedia India mailing list archive at Nabble.com.
Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
-- Tejaswini Niranjana, PhD Lead Researcher - Higher Education Innovation and Research Applications (HEIRA) Senior Fellow - Centre for the Study of Culture and Society (CSCS) Visiting Professor - Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS) Visiting Faculty - Centre for Contemporary Studies, Indian Institute of Science (CCS-IISc)
t: 91-80-26730476, 26730967, 26730268
f: 91-80-26730722 http://heira.in www.cscs.res.in
Dear Tejaswini and Friends,
It is an interesting and pertinent issue. I do completely concur with Tejaswini on the problem of 'using philological classifications and terminology'. However, it will be interesting to track the history of how we have ended up with the term 'Indic', in the computing context. Do friends on the list know of any history of computing terms and how 'Indic' has come to be used?
Would be useful if any body can shed light on this and let us also put this up on Wikipedia.
The Wiktionary entry for 'Indic' is here https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Indic
Look forward to more conversations on this.
Regards, Vishnu
On 14 February 2013 09:34, Tejaswini Niranjana teju@cscs.res.in wrote:
Correction: by Dravidian language in Pakistan I suppose you meant Brahui, which has a couple of million speakers. Doesn't appear to be much writing in the language though. We will have to find out more.
And one more comment on your suggestion about using 'Indic-Dravidian': do remember that we have several languages in the north-east which are part of neither of these groupings, since they are from the Tibeto-Burman family of languages! This is what I meant by the problem of using philological classifications and terminology.
TN
On 13 February 2013 18:38, Tejaswini Niranjana teju@cscs.res.in wrote:
Hi Niraj, Thanks for engaging with this difficult question. I think we may have to look at sizeable populations speaking a certain language while deciding how to classify where it is spoken. I was surprised to see your remark that Dravidian languages are spoken in Pakistan. I was not aware of this fact, and would like to know if it is the odd speaker who happens to live or work there, or there are good-sized populations speaking Kannada or Telugu for example.
As for your suggestion about a combination name like Indic-Dravidian, that still falls into the philological problems that using 'Indic' alone does,and doesn't necessarily make the term more inclusive.
So I think we will have to keep discussing this issue for some more time!
Tejaswini
On 11 February 2013 13:59, Niraj Suryawanshi <niraj.suryawanshi@gmail.com
wrote:
Dear Mam,
I understand & appreciate the depth of thought process and inputs put behind this question about use of words "*Indian*" or "*Indic*". I'm very much convinced since all the languages we are considering belong to different classes and categories, geographically and origin wise too, and needs to be labeled under a common name!
But if we consider the label Indian languages, which specifies the origin and use of the same in India, there are many languages which are predominantly used not only in India but also in the other surrounding counties eg. Bangla (Indic Language, Indo-Aryan) which is used in India, Bangladesh & Burma. And many other Dravidian Languages which are thought to be specifically South Indian languages are used in neighboring eastern countries like Pakistan too.
This question will arise every time when we have to specify "Indian Language" or "Indic Languages" for any given reason.
How about the combination of names of both different language families so that the language set wont be distributed with respect to the current territorial boundaries but with regards to their origin and a proper classification depending upon the origin/birth. viz "*Indic - Dravidian Languages*"
This was my personal view over the query, you can always correct me if I'm misleading.
Regards & Thanks,
Niraj Suryawanshi on behalf of Wikipedia Club Pune
+91 814 992 0120 | niraj.suryawanshi@gmail.com
View this message in context: http://wikimedia.7.n6.nabble.com/Indian-Languages-question-tp4996015p4996021... Sent from the WikiMedia India mailing list archive at Nabble.com.
Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
-- Tejaswini Niranjana, PhD Lead Researcher - Higher Education Innovation and Research Applications (HEIRA) Senior Fellow - Centre for the Study of Culture and Society (CSCS) Visiting Professor - Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS) Visiting Faculty - Centre for Contemporary Studies, Indian Institute of Science (CCS-IISc)
t: 91-80-26730476, 26730967, 26730268
f: 91-80-26730722 http://heira.in www.cscs.res.in
-- Tejaswini Niranjana, PhD Lead Researcher - Higher Education Innovation and Research Applications (HEIRA) Senior Fellow - Centre for the Study of Culture and Society (CSCS) Visiting Professor - Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS) Visiting Faculty - Centre for Contemporary Studies, Indian Institute of Science (CCS-IISc)
t: 91-80-26730476, 26730967, 26730268 f: 91-80-26730722 http://heira.in www.cscs.res.in _______________________________________________ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
It is by 1877 that the Europeans started studying and classifying the scripts of oriental languages especially, South Asian and East Asian.
Probably Holle did the first attempt of cataloging the Sanskrit and its apparently descending languages within the Indian subcontinent and beyond.
Please see this informative document which also points to the changes that may have occurred to these scripts due to social reasons.
http://home.gwu.edu/~kuipers/kuipers%20insular%20seasia%20scripts.pdf
-Viswam
On Thu, Feb 14, 2013 at 2:14 PM, Vishnu t visdaviva@gmail.com wrote:
Dear Tejaswini and Friends,
It is an interesting and pertinent issue. I do completely concur with Tejaswini on the problem of 'using philological classifications and terminology'. However, it will be interesting to track the history of how we have ended up with the term 'Indic', in the computing context. Do friends on the list know of any history of computing terms and how 'Indic' has come to be used?
Would be useful if any body can shed light on this and let us also put this up on Wikipedia.
The Wiktionary entry for 'Indic' is here https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Indic
Look forward to more conversations on this.
Regards, Vishnu
On 14 February 2013 09:34, Tejaswini Niranjana teju@cscs.res.in wrote:
Correction: by Dravidian language in Pakistan I suppose you meant Brahui, which has a couple of million speakers. Doesn't appear to be much writing in the language though. We will have to find out more.
And one more comment on your suggestion about using 'Indic-Dravidian': do remember that we have several languages in the north-east which are part of neither of these groupings, since they are from the Tibeto-Burman family of languages! This is what I meant by the problem of using philological classifications and terminology.
TN
On Thu, Feb 14, 2013 at 2:14 PM, Vishnu t visdaviva@gmail.com wrote:
However, it will be interesting to track the history of how we have ended up with the term 'Indic',
Why will this be an interesting activity ?
I don't know the actual history of the term 'Indic'. However, I know pieces of it and why it's a bad idea to use the term.
1. The languages spoken in India are from very diverse language families with very different origins. The biggest group as of now is the Indo-Aryan subfamily of Indo-European. Dravidian languages are the next most spoken family of languages. Other languages belong to Austro-asiatic and Tibeto-Burman families. Some languages are language isolates.
2. The reasons why the term Indic would have been applied are the following (I speculate here):
a) due to a number of cognates that exist due to centuries of substratum and ad stratum influence or false cognates that exist in any two languages, people mistakenly think of them as one family.
b) there's a prevalent mistaken belief about Sanskrit as a mother language of all languages (in India and elsewhere!). Saying Bengali came from Sanskrit is like saying chicken came out of crocodiles. Saying Konkani came out of Sanskrit is like saying whales evolved from sharks.
c) there's one genuine reason, which is that, aside from the evolution of the languages themselves, scripts evolved in a more convergent fashion (not 100%).
3. Why is it not good to refer to all languages spoken in India as Indic languages?
a) The term Indic specifically referred to a certain sub family of languages. b) People then tend lump together tools. The biggest casualty so far is the way unicode inherited inscript and messed up Tamil and Malayalam scripts for once.
4) Wherever possible, the accurate and unambiguous phrase "languages spoken in India" shall be used.
- Sundar
"That language is an instrument of human reason, and not merely a medium for the expression of thought, is a truth generally admitted." - George Boole, quoted in Iverson's Turing Award Lecture
From: Vishnu t visdaviva@gmail.com To: Wikimedia India Community list wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Sent: Thursday, February 14, 2013 2:14 PM Subject: Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] additions - Indian Languages question
Dear Tejaswini and Friends,
It is an interesting and pertinent issue. I do completely concur with Tejaswini on the problem of 'using philological classifications and terminology'. However, it will be interesting to track the history of how we have ended up with the term 'Indic', in the computing context. Do friends on the list know of any history of computing terms and how 'Indic' has come to be used?
Would be useful if any body can shed light on this and let us also put this up on Wikipedia.
The Wiktionary entry for 'Indic' is here https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Indic
Look forward to more conversations on this.
Regards, Vishnu
On 14 February 2013 09:34, Tejaswini Niranjana teju@cscs.res.in wrote:
Correction: by Dravidian language in Pakistan I suppose you meant Brahui, which has a couple of million speakers. Doesn't appear to be much writing in the language though. We will have to find out more.
And one more comment on your suggestion about using 'Indic-Dravidian': do remember that we have several languages in the north-east which are part of neither of these groupings, since they are from the Tibeto-Burman family of languages! This is what I meant by the problem of using philological classifications and terminology.
TN
On 13 February 2013 18:38, Tejaswini Niranjana teju@cscs.res.in wrote:
Hi Niraj,
Thanks for engaging with this difficult question. I think we may have to look at sizeable populations speaking a certain language while deciding how to classify where it is spoken. I was surprised to see your remark that Dravidian languages are spoken in Pakistan. I was not aware of this fact, and would like to know if it is the odd speaker who happens to live or work there, or there are good-sized populations speaking Kannada or Telugu for example.
As for your suggestion about a combination name like Indic-Dravidian, that still falls into the philological problems that using 'Indic' alone does,and doesn't necessarily make the term more inclusive.
So I think we will have to keep discussing this issue for some more time!
Tejaswini
On 11 February 2013 13:59, Niraj Suryawanshi niraj.suryawanshi@gmail.com wrote:
Dear Mam,
I understand & appreciate the depth of thought process and inputs put behind this question about use of words "*Indian*" or "*Indic*". I'm very much convinced since all the languages we are considering belong to different classes and categories, geographically and origin wise too, and needs to be labeled under a common name!
But if we consider the label Indian languages, which specifies the origin and use of the same in India, there are many languages which are predominantly used not only in India but also in the other surrounding counties eg. Bangla (Indic Language, Indo-Aryan) which is used in India, Bangladesh & Burma. And many other Dravidian Languages which are thought to be specifically South Indian languages are used in neighboring eastern countries like Pakistan too.
This question will arise every time when we have to specify "Indian Language" or "Indic Languages" for any given reason.
How about the combination of names of both different language families so that the language set wont be distributed with respect to the current territorial boundaries but with regards to their origin and a proper classification depending upon the origin/birth. viz "*Indic - Dravidian Languages*"
This was my personal view over the query, you can always correct me if I'm misleading.
Regards & Thanks,
Niraj Suryawanshi on behalf of Wikipedia Club Pune
+91 814 992 0120 | niraj.suryawanshi@gmail.com
View this message in context: http://wikimedia.7.n6.nabble.com/Indian-Languages-question-tp4996015p4996021... Sent from the WikiMedia India mailing list archive at Nabble.com.
Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
-- Tejaswini Niranjana, PhD Lead Researcher - Higher Education Innovation and Research Applications (HEIRA) Senior Fellow - Centre for the Study of Culture and Society (CSCS) Visiting Professor - Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS) Visiting Faculty - Centre for Contemporary Studies, Indian Institute of Science (CCS-IISc)
t: 91-80-26730476, 26730967, 26730268
f: 91-80-26730722 http://heira.in www.cscs.res.in
-- Tejaswini Niranjana, PhD Lead Researcher - Higher Education Innovation and Research Applications (HEIRA) Senior Fellow - Centre for the Study of Culture and Society (CSCS) Visiting Professor - Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS) Visiting Faculty - Centre for Contemporary Studies, Indian Institute of Science (CCS-IISc)
t: 91-80-26730476, 26730967, 26730268 f: 91-80-26730722 http://heira.in www.cscs.res.in _______________________________________________ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
I just notice that Tejaswini's original email addresses these points. Sorry for coming late to the party and posting on this thread. Excuse me as I'm unable to follow the discussions here regularly.
- Sundar "That language is an instrument of human reason, and not merely a medium for the expression of thought, is a truth generally admitted." - George Boole, quoted in Iverson's Turing Award Lecture
From: BalaSundaraRaman sundarbecse@yahoo.com To: Wikimedia India Community list wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Sent: Thursday, February 14, 2013 3:56 PM Subject: Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] additions - Indian Languages question
I don't know the actual history of the term 'Indic'. However, I know pieces of it and why it's a bad idea to use the term.
The languages spoken in India are from very diverse language families with very different origins. The biggest group as of now is the Indo-Aryan subfamily of Indo-European. Dravidian languages are the next most spoken family of languages. Other languages belong to Austro-asiatic and Tibeto-Burman families. Some languages are language isolates.
The reasons why the term Indic would have been applied are the following (I speculate here):
a) due to a number of cognates that exist due to centuries of substratum and ad stratum influence or false cognates that exist in any two languages, people mistakenly think of them as one family.
b) there's a prevalent mistaken belief about Sanskrit as a mother language of all languages (in India and elsewhere!). Saying Bengali came from Sanskrit is like saying chicken came out of crocodiles. Saying Konkani came out of Sanskrit is like saying whales evolved from sharks.
c) there's one genuine reason, which is that, aside from the evolution of the languages themselves, scripts evolved in a more convergent fashion (not 100%).
- Why is it not good to refer to all languages spoken in India as Indic languages?
a) The term Indic specifically referred to a certain sub family of languages. b) People then tend lump together tools. The biggest casualty so far is the way unicode inherited inscript and messed up Tamil and Malayalam scripts for once.
- Wherever possible, the accurate and unambiguous phrase "languages spoken in India" shall be used.
- Sundar
"That language is an instrument of human reason, and not merely a medium for the expression of thought, is a truth generally admitted."
- George Boole, quoted in Iverson's Turing Award Lecture
From: Vishnu t visdaviva@gmail.com To: Wikimedia India Community list wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Sent: Thursday, February 14, 2013 2:14 PM Subject: Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] additions - Indian Languages question
Dear Tejaswini and Friends,
It is an interesting and pertinent issue. I do completely concur with Tejaswini on the problem of 'using philological classifications and terminology'. However, it will be interesting to track the history of how we have ended up with the term 'Indic', in the computing context. Do friends on the list know of any history of computing terms and how 'Indic' has come to be used?
Would be useful if any body can shed light on this and let us also put this up on Wikipedia.
The Wiktionary entry for 'Indic' is here https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Indic
Look forward to more conversations on this.
Regards, Vishnu
On 14 February 2013 09:34, Tejaswini Niranjana teju@cscs.res.in wrote:
Correction: by Dravidian language in Pakistan I suppose you meant Brahui, which has a couple of million speakers. Doesn't appear to be much writing in the language though. We will have to find out more.
And one more comment on your suggestion about using 'Indic-Dravidian': do remember that we have several languages in the north-east which are part of neither of these groupings, since they are from the Tibeto-Burman family of languages! This is what I meant by the problem of using philological classifications and terminology.
TN
On 13 February 2013 18:38, Tejaswini Niranjana teju@cscs.res.in wrote:
Hi Niraj,
Thanks for engaging with this difficult question. I think we may have to look at sizeable populations speaking a certain language while deciding how to classify where it is spoken. I was surprised to see your remark that Dravidian languages are spoken in Pakistan. I was not aware of this fact, and would like to know if it is the odd speaker who happens to live or work there, or there are good-sized populations speaking Kannada or Telugu for example.
As for your suggestion about a combination name like Indic-Dravidian, that still falls into the philological problems that using 'Indic' alone does,and doesn't necessarily make the term more inclusive.
So I think we will have to keep discussing this issue for some more time!
Tejaswini
On 11 February 2013 13:59, Niraj Suryawanshi niraj.suryawanshi@gmail.com wrote:
Dear Mam,
I understand & appreciate the depth of thought process and inputs put behind this question about use of words "*Indian*" or "*Indic*". I'm very much convinced since all the languages we are considering belong to different classes and categories, geographically and origin wise too, and needs to be labeled under a common name!
But if we consider the label Indian languages, which specifies the origin and use of the same in India, there are many languages which are predominantly used not only in India but also in the other surrounding counties eg. Bangla (Indic Language, Indo-Aryan) which is used in India, Bangladesh & Burma. And many other Dravidian Languages which are thought to be specifically South Indian languages are used in neighboring eastern countries like Pakistan too.
This question will arise every time when we have to specify "Indian Language" or "Indic Languages" for any given reason.
How about the combination of names of both different language families so that the language set wont be distributed with respect to the current territorial boundaries but with regards to their origin and a proper classification depending upon the origin/birth. viz "*Indic - Dravidian Languages*"
This was my personal view over the query, you can always correct me if I'm misleading.
Regards & Thanks,
Niraj Suryawanshi on behalf of Wikipedia Club Pune
+91 814 992 0120 | niraj.suryawanshi@gmail.com
View this message in context: http://wikimedia.7.n6.nabble.com/Indian-Languages-question-tp4996015p4996021... Sent from the WikiMedia India mailing list archive at Nabble.com.
Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
-- Tejaswini Niranjana, PhD Lead Researcher - Higher Education Innovation and Research Applications (HEIRA) Senior Fellow - Centre for the Study of Culture and Society (CSCS) Visiting Professor - Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS) Visiting Faculty - Centre for Contemporary Studies, Indian Institute of Science (CCS-IISc)
t: 91-80-26730476, 26730967, 26730268
f: 91-80-26730722 http://heira.in www.cscs.res.in
-- Tejaswini Niranjana, PhD Lead Researcher - Higher Education Innovation and Research Applications (HEIRA) Senior Fellow - Centre for the Study of Culture and Society (CSCS) Visiting Professor - Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS) Visiting Faculty - Centre for Contemporary Studies, Indian Institute of Science (CCS-IISc)
t: 91-80-26730476, 26730967, 26730268 f: 91-80-26730722 http://heira.in www.cscs.res.in _______________________________________________ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
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I completely agree with the points Tejaswini and Sundar and all others. I'm only worried about the technical problems. If someone could show some light on how the keyword "Indic" would redirect someone to content having "South Asian". If that's not possible South Asian (Indic) could be used alternatively (which is painful!).
On 14-Feb-2013, at 5:24 PM, BalaSundaraRaman sundarbecse@yahoo.com wrote:
I just notice that Tejaswini's original email addresses these points. Sorry for coming late to the party and posting on this thread. Excuse me as I'm unable to follow the discussions here regularly.
- Sundar
"That language is an instrument of human reason, and not merely a medium for the expression of thought, is a truth generally admitted."
- George Boole, quoted in Iverson's Turing Award Lecture
From: BalaSundaraRaman sundarbecse@yahoo.com To: Wikimedia India Community list wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Sent: Thursday, February 14, 2013 3:56 PM Subject: Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] additions - Indian Languages question
I don't know the actual history of the term 'Indic'. However, I know pieces of it and why it's a bad idea to use the term.
The languages spoken in India are from very diverse language families with very different origins. The biggest group as of now is the Indo-Aryan subfamily of Indo-European. Dravidian languages are the next most spoken family of languages. Other languages belong to Austro-asiatic and Tibeto-Burman families. Some languages are language isolates.
The reasons why the term Indic would have been applied are the following (I speculate here):
a) due to a number of cognates that exist due to centuries of substratum and ad stratum influence or false cognates that exist in any two languages, people mistakenly think of them as one family.
b) there's a prevalent mistaken belief about Sanskrit as a mother language of all languages (in India and elsewhere!). Saying Bengali came from Sanskrit is like saying chicken came out of crocodiles. Saying Konkani came out of Sanskrit is like saying whales evolved from sharks.
c) there's one genuine reason, which is that, aside from the evolution of the languages themselves, scripts evolved in a more convergent fashion (not 100%).
- Why is it not good to refer to all languages spoken in India as Indic languages?
a) The term Indic specifically referred to a certain sub family of languages. b) People then tend lump together tools. The biggest casualty so far is the way unicode inherited inscript and messed up Tamil and Malayalam scripts for once.
- Wherever possible, the accurate and unambiguous phrase "languages spoken in India" shall be used.
- Sundar
"That language is an instrument of human reason, and not merely a medium for the expression of thought, is a truth generally admitted."
- George Boole, quoted in Iverson's Turing Award Lecture
From: Vishnu t visdaviva@gmail.com To: Wikimedia India Community list wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Sent: Thursday, February 14, 2013 2:14 PM Subject: Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] additions - Indian Languages question
Dear Tejaswini and Friends,
It is an interesting and pertinent issue. I do completely concur with Tejaswini on the problem of 'using philological classifications and terminology'. However, it will be interesting to track the history of how we have ended up with the term 'Indic', in the computing context. Do friends on the list know of any history of computing terms and how 'Indic' has come to be used?
Would be useful if any body can shed light on this and let us also put this up on Wikipedia.
The Wiktionary entry for 'Indic' is here https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Indic
Look forward to more conversations on this.
Regards, Vishnu
On 14 February 2013 09:34, Tejaswini Niranjana teju@cscs.res.in wrote: Correction: by Dravidian language in Pakistan I suppose you meant Brahui, which has a couple of million speakers. Doesn't appear to be much writing in the language though. We will have to find out more.
And one more comment on your suggestion about using 'Indic-Dravidian': do remember that we have several languages in the north-east which are part of neither of these groupings, since they are from the Tibeto-Burman family of languages! This is what I meant by the problem of using philological classifications and terminology.
TN
On 13 February 2013 18:38, Tejaswini Niranjana teju@cscs.res.in wrote: Hi Niraj, Thanks for engaging with this difficult question. I think we may have to look at sizeable populations speaking a certain language while deciding how to classify where it is spoken. I was surprised to see your remark that Dravidian languages are spoken in Pakistan. I was not aware of this fact, and would like to know if it is the odd speaker who happens to live or work there, or there are good-sized populations speaking Kannada or Telugu for example.
As for your suggestion about a combination name like Indic-Dravidian, that still falls into the philological problems that using 'Indic' alone does,and doesn't necessarily make the term more inclusive.
So I think we will have to keep discussing this issue for some more time!
Tejaswini
On 11 February 2013 13:59, Niraj Suryawanshi niraj.suryawanshi@gmail.com wrote: Dear Mam,
I understand & appreciate the depth of thought process and inputs put behind this question about use of words "*Indian*" or "*Indic*". I'm very much convinced since all the languages we are considering belong to different classes and categories, geographically and origin wise too, and needs to be labeled under a common name!
But if we consider the label Indian languages, which specifies the origin and use of the same in India, there are many languages which are predominantly used not only in India but also in the other surrounding counties eg. Bangla (Indic Language, Indo-Aryan) which is used in India, Bangladesh & Burma. And many other Dravidian Languages which are thought to be specifically South Indian languages are used in neighboring eastern countries like Pakistan too.
This question will arise every time when we have to specify "Indian Language" or "Indic Languages" for any given reason.
How about the combination of names of both different language families so that the language set wont be distributed with respect to the current territorial boundaries but with regards to their origin and a proper classification depending upon the origin/birth. viz "*Indic - Dravidian Languages*"
This was my personal view over the query, you can always correct me if I'm misleading.
Regards & Thanks,
Niraj Suryawanshi on behalf of Wikipedia Club Pune
+91 814 992 0120 | niraj.suryawanshi@gmail.com
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-- Tejaswini Niranjana, PhD Lead Researcher - Higher Education Innovation and Research Applications (HEIRA) Senior Fellow - Centre for the Study of Culture and Society (CSCS) Visiting Professor - Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS) Visiting Faculty - Centre for Contemporary Studies, Indian Institute of Science (CCS-IISc)
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-- Tejaswini Niranjana, PhD Lead Researcher - Higher Education Innovation and Research Applications (HEIRA) Senior Fellow - Centre for the Study of Culture and Society (CSCS) Visiting Professor - Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS) Visiting Faculty - Centre for Contemporary Studies, Indian Institute of Science (CCS-IISc)
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Tejaswini Mam, I do agree. Yes Brahui it is. had a reference in The Dravidian Languages - Bhadriraju Krishnamurtihttp://catdir.loc.gov/catdir/samples/cam041/2003282070.pdf Pg: 3 Para: 5/ Pg:4/ Pg:18 but we need to explore and research how much it is being used lately. and yes the north eastern languages need to be taken care of! maybe we could find out a way to club and generalize all the languages.
Subhashish, it is painfull!
Regards & Thanks,
Niraj Suryawanshi http://www.facebook.com/niraj12 Pune Institute of Computer Technology | Wikipedia Club Punehttps://www.facebook.com/WikipediaClubPune 8149920120 | niraj.suryawanshi@gmail.com
On Thu, Feb 14, 2013 at 5:50 PM, Subhashish Panigrahi-4 [via Wikimedia] < ml-node+s7n4996419h94@n6.nabble.com> wrote:
I completely agree with the points Tejaswini and Sundar and all others. I'm only worried about the technical problems. If someone could show some light on how the keyword "Indic" would redirect someone to content having "South Asian". If that's not possible South Asian (Indic) could be used alternatively (which is painful!).
On 14-Feb-2013, at 5:24 PM, BalaSundaraRaman <[hidden email]http://user/SendEmail.jtp?type=node&node=4996419&i=0> wrote:
I just notice that Tejaswini's original email addresses these points. Sorry for coming late to the party and posting on this thread. Excuse me as I'm unable to follow the discussions here regularly.
- Sundar
"That language is an instrument of human reason, and not merely a medium for the expression of thought, is a truth generally admitted."
George Boole, quoted in Iverson's Turing Award Lecture
*From:* BalaSundaraRaman <[hidden email]http://user/SendEmail.jtp?type=node&node=4996419&i=1
*To:* Wikimedia India Community list <[hidden email]http://user/SendEmail.jtp?type=node&node=4996419&i=2>
*Sent:* Thursday, February 14, 2013 3:56 PM *Subject:* Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] additions - Indian Languages question
I don't know the actual history of the term 'Indic'. However, I know pieces of it and why it's a bad idea to use the term.
- The languages spoken in India are from very diverse language families
with very different origins. The biggest group as of now is the Indo-Aryan subfamily of Indo-European. Dravidian languages are the next most spoken family of languages. Other languages belong to Austro-asiatic and Tibeto-Burman families. Some languages are language isolates.
- The reasons why the term Indic would have been applied are the
following (I speculate here):
a) due to a number of cognates that exist due to centuries of substratum and ad stratum influence or false cognates that exist in any two languages, people mistakenly think of them as one family.
b) there's a prevalent mistaken belief about Sanskrit as a mother language of all languages (in India and elsewhere!). Saying Bengali came from Sanskrit is like saying chicken came out of crocodiles. Saying Konkani came out of Sanskrit is like saying whales evolved from sharks.
c) there's one genuine reason, which is that, aside from the evolution of the languages themselves, scripts evolved in a more convergent fashion (not 100%).
- Why is it not good to refer to all languages spoken in India as Indic
languages?
a) The term Indic specifically referred to a certain sub family of languages. b) People then tend lump together tools. The biggest casualty so far is the way unicode inherited inscript and messed up Tamil and Malayalam scripts for once.
- Wherever possible, the accurate and unambiguous phrase "languages
spoken in India" shall be used.
- Sundar
"That language is an instrument of human reason, and not merely a medium for the expression of thought, is a truth generally admitted."
George Boole, quoted in Iverson's Turing Award Lecture
*From:* Vishnu t <[hidden email]http://user/SendEmail.jtp?type=node&node=4996419&i=3
*To:* Wikimedia India Community list <[hidden email]http://user/SendEmail.jtp?type=node&node=4996419&i=4>
*Sent:* Thursday, February 14, 2013 2:14 PM *Subject:* Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] additions - Indian Languages question
Dear Tejaswini and Friends,
It is an interesting and pertinent issue. I do completely concur with Tejaswini on the problem of 'using philological classifications and terminology'. However, it will be interesting to track the history of how we have ended up with the term 'Indic', in the computing context. Do friends on the list know of any history of computing terms and how 'Indic' has come to be used?
Would be useful if any body can shed light on this and let us also put this up on Wikipedia.
The Wiktionary entry for 'Indic' is here https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Indic
Look forward to more conversations on this.
Regards, Vishnu
On 14 February 2013 09:34, Tejaswini Niranjana <[hidden email]http://user/SendEmail.jtp?type=node&node=4996419&i=5
wrote:
Correction: by Dravidian language in Pakistan I suppose you meant Brahui, which has a couple of million speakers. Doesn't appear to be much writing in the language though. We will have to find out more.
And one more comment on your suggestion about using 'Indic-Dravidian': do remember that we have several languages in the north-east which are part of neither of these groupings, since they are from the Tibeto-Burman family of languages! This is what I meant by the problem of using philological classifications and terminology.
TN
On 13 February 2013 18:38, Tejaswini Niranjana <[hidden email]http://user/SendEmail.jtp?type=node&node=4996419&i=6
wrote:
Hi Niraj, Thanks for engaging with this difficult question. I think we may have to look at sizeable populations speaking a certain language while deciding how to classify where it is spoken. I was surprised to see your remark that Dravidian languages are spoken in Pakistan. I was not aware of this fact, and would like to know if it is the odd speaker who happens to live or work there, or there are good-sized populations speaking Kannada or Telugu for example.
As for your suggestion about a combination name like Indic-Dravidian, that still falls into the philological problems that using 'Indic' alone does,and doesn't necessarily make the term more inclusive.
So I think we will have to keep discussing this issue for some more time!
Tejaswini
On 11 February 2013 13:59, Niraj Suryawanshi <[hidden email]http://user/SendEmail.jtp?type=node&node=4996419&i=7
wrote:
Dear Mam,
I understand & appreciate the depth of thought process and inputs put behind this question about use of words "*Indian*" or "*Indic*". I'm very much convinced since all the languages we are considering belong to different classes and categories, geographically and origin wise too, and needs to be labeled under a common name!
But if we consider the label Indian languages, which specifies the origin and use of the same in India, there are many languages which are predominantly used not only in India but also in the other surrounding counties eg. Bangla (Indic Language, Indo-Aryan) which is used in India, Bangladesh & Burma. And many other Dravidian Languages which are thought to be specifically South Indian languages are used in neighboring eastern countries like Pakistan too.
This question will arise every time when we have to specify "Indian Language" or "Indic Languages" for any given reason.
How about the combination of names of both different language families so that the language set wont be distributed with respect to the current territorial boundaries but with regards to their origin and a proper classification depending upon the origin/birth. viz "*Indic - Dravidian Languages*"
This was my personal view over the query, you can always correct me if I'm misleading.
Regards & Thanks,
Niraj Suryawanshi on behalf of Wikipedia Club Pune
+91 814 992 0120 | [hidden email]http://user/SendEmail.jtp?type=node&node=4996419&i=8
View this message in context: http://wikimedia.7.n6.nabble.com/Indian-Languages-question-tp4996015p4996021... Sent from the WikiMedia India mailing list archive at Nabble.comhttp://nabble.com/ .
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-- Tejaswini Niranjana, PhD Lead Researcher - Higher Education Innovation and Research Applications (HEIRA) Senior Fellow - Centre for the Study of Culture and Society (CSCS) Visiting Professor - Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS) Visiting Faculty - Centre for Contemporary Studies, Indian Institute of Science (CCS-IISc)
t: 91-80-26730476, 26730967, 26730268
f: 91-80-26730722 http://heira.in www.cscs.res.in
-- Tejaswini Niranjana, PhD Lead Researcher - Higher Education Innovation and Research Applications (HEIRA) Senior Fellow - Centre for the Study of Culture and Society (CSCS) Visiting Professor - Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS) Visiting Faculty - Centre for Contemporary Studies, Indian Institute of Science (CCS-IISc)
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