regarding Indian languages...

Shreyan Peter   Sun Jun 22, 2008 1:41 pm GMT
I read an old thread where one asked regarding the indian languages and he similarity between them. The person also asked why it was common for an Indian (from India) to speak more than one language.

Indian languages can simply be classified based on the 4 different regions:
1) North - Punjabi, Sindhi, Hindi, Kashmiri
2) South - Tamil, Kannada, Telugu, Malyalam
3) East - Assamese, Manipuri, Naga, Bengali, Oriya and other indigenous langauges
4) West - Konkani, Gujurati, and Marathi.

In reality there tons of other languages which are nationally recognized but I don't know them to be honest. The Northern, Eastern and Western languages are all indo-european in nature and are very similar to hindi in terms of a generalized structure and the vocabulary but they are also very different in many aspects. That being said, learning Hindi will get you a discount in learning other related languages).

These languages are NOT dialects. Each one of these languages has tons of other dialects...so you can imagine how many languages are spoken in India.

The only regions in India where pure European languages are spoken are in the former colonies (ie. Pondicherry - french colony; goa - portugues, parsi and dutch colony; dadra and nager haveli - portuguese colony)

In fact these places have incoporated tons and tons of foreign words. For eg. I speak a dialect known as Kiristave (similar to Varli) and they come under the Konkani language group. However it's very different from konkani, in that the word-structure follows that of other romance languages (but there are also sentences which also don't do that). This can be very frustrating for a person who is learning it (in fact even for other indians). Also kiristave uses so many cases, and it's vocabulary is so diversified (farsi/persian and portuguese loan words).

The language in fact sounds so exotic to Indians themselves, because it sounds like a hybrid of persian, portuguese, konkani and hindi (and indeed it is).

Here's an example of how different the languages and even dialects can be:

I am going there:
Main udhar jaa rahaa hun (hindi)
Mozhui allyi vaybo (kiristave)
Maze akkai jaiza (varli)
Nenu akkada vel tunna nu (telugu)

I am going to go to the shop tomorrow and buy some groceries.
Main kal shop ko jake sabzi kharidunga. (or) kal main shop ko jaunga, sabzi kharidne keyliye (or) main kal sabzi kharidunga (hindi)

Amza manyane shop kiz vayzau azh sheheban comprisho. (or) Mazhui shop kiz manyane bis vayzish men sheheban comprisho sulat. (kiristave)

Amza kal shop kai jaiza aur sabzi karideza (varli)

Nenu repu shop ki velli gorceries kontanu (telugu)

So as you can see how different the languages can be and how different their dialects can sound.
Shreyan Peter   Sun Jun 22, 2008 1:42 pm GMT
Also I forgot to add why Indian people can speak so many languages. English is the working language in India. Hindi is the national language of India. And each state has it's own language (except for some which use Hindi as the state language too). This is the reason why Indians are often exposed to several languages (and also why many indians find it easy to learn languages).
K. T.   Sun Jun 22, 2008 9:25 pm GMT
That was helpful and interesting. Thank-you.
K. T.   Sun Jun 22, 2008 10:15 pm GMT
It would be interesting to see those sentences with a word for word translation into English. This is probably asking too much, though.
Still, it would be a nice change from the usual threads we get here, a window into other languages. I have some very basic introductory materials for some of those languages, but have thought, "Why bother?
Indians speak English!" Now I think, "Maybe there is some richness I've missed."
Shreyan Peter   Mon Jun 23, 2008 8:01 pm GMT
Main udhar jaa rahaa hun (hindi) - literally - "I there going am"
Mozhui allyi vaybo (kiristave) - literally - "I there go/going"
Maze akkai jaiza (varli) - literally - "I there go/going"
Nenu akkada vel tunna nu (telugu) - I there go-ing am"

I am going to go to the shop tomorrow and buy some groceries.
Main kal shop ko jake sabzi kharidunga. (or) kal main shop ko jaunga, sabzi kharidne keyliye (or) main kal sabzi kharidunga (hindi) - literally "I tomorrow shop to will go [and] vegetables will buy"

Amza manyane shop kiz vayzau azh sheheban comprisho. (or) Mazhui shop kiz manyane bis vayzish men sheheban comprisho sulat. (kiristave) - literally "I tomorrow shop to will go and groceries buy" (1st sentence) 2nd sentence - I shop to tomorrow for going (men has no translation) groceries will buy (sulat again is just a word always used with the future tense)

Amza kal shop kai jaiza aur sabzi karideza (varli) - literally "I tomorrow shop to will go and vegetables will be buying"

Nenu repu shop ki velli gorceries kontanu (telugu) - literally "I tomorrow shop to will go [and] groceries will buy"

As you can see, the word order can be very flexible. Out of all the different indian languages, Hindi seems to be the easiest. The other languages like kiristave and varli and too hard (even though they have tons of european aspects resembling closest to the Romance group of languages, specifically Portuguese). Also Kiristave has recently been latinized so they don't use the authentic devanagri script (mainly because some of the letters don't exist in the script - those are the farsi/persian and portuguese words).

Just to give you a few verbs and nouns very similar to Portuguese and Kiristave and Farsi and Kiristave:

Portuguese - cachorro
Kiristave - cachorria

Portguese - Falar (to speak; I speak - Eu falo))
Kiristave - Falat-are (I speak - Mozhui falbo)

Portuguese - Feliz Natal! (Merry Christmas)
Kiristave - Falish Netil ('' '')

Farsi - Ketab (book)
Kiristave - Khitabh or Libri (from portuguese)

Farsi - Mashinha (cars)
Kiristave - Mashinu or autyi

As you can see, the resemblance is very close and spoken kiristave sounds more like farsi and portuguese rather than Hindi. Of course you can always stick to good old English in India to save all the trouble. Or if you know portuguese, you will definitely get by in Goa without a problem :)
K. T.   Tue Jun 24, 2008 12:05 am GMT
Thank-you for an extremely interesting post. I don't speak Farsi at all, but I am familiar with Portuguese. I noticed "Ketab" as very similar to "Kitab" (The word for book in Arabic) and "Mashinu" from a couple of other languages.

What do Indians try first in another area? Hindi or English?

I am going to see if I can find a sample of Kiristave on youtube.
SJF   Tue Jun 24, 2008 3:16 am GMT
In old English "Book" is "kitaba",very interesting.
KC   Tue Jun 24, 2008 6:06 am GMT
Indians will use Hindi as the common denominator language when they go to another part of India (away from their home state). Except from some areas in South India (where its better to try with English), Hindi will get you by everywhere. Except South Indian languages, all other Indian languages were derived from Sanskrit, so they are in fact, quite similar to each other. Having said that, just knowing one North Indian language will not enable you to understand another North Indian language.
K. T.   Wed Jun 25, 2008 1:50 am GMT
All interesting comments. Thanks.

Are there Indians who don't know Hindi then?
Shreyan Peter   Wed Jun 25, 2008 9:15 am GMT
I don't know if you can really get any clips on youtube regarding Kiristave (or Kiristav). It's very rare as it's spoke by a very small group of people (who are of portuguese origin). In fact I can't speak very good kiristave myself as I'm not really in touch with my roots (only my grandfather who was half-portuguese taught it to me when I was a kid). Unfortunately, I don't think you can get any learning material online for such a dialect.

Most of the Indians do know Hindi and it's true that you can get by anywhere with Hindi. Although like a previous poster mentioned, the South Indians prefer to speak in English (and their native languages are completely unrelated to Hindi).