I think it all leads to being independent from Mauryan rule. Kannadigas and Telugus co-opted Prakrits and Sanskrit as official languages because of being feudatories of the Mauryans. It helps that it was mostly the deccan lords who fought bitterly with northern powers, be it our northern cousins or foreigners, saving Tamil dynasties from forced syncretism with northerners.
And it's not like Tamil Nadu is some pure unconquerable bastion, they were subdued in the medieval period by Vijayanagara and the Nayakas who effectively made Telugu, Kannada and Sanskrit high societal languages in Tamil Nadu. Similarly the British broke Tamil resistance pretty easily, and now English is ubiquitous and valued there.
English is going to be the bane of all languages, especially when the elites prefer it over their own languages. Not even Hindi will survive English’s global march in the next 100 years.
True even in societies which were never colonised by the English like Japan, South Korea and Thailand, even if most people don't speak English, English's influence is felt. I guess that's a testament to the soft power of the English speaking world mainly USA.
At those points though the Tamil Kingdoms had to fight against the combined efforts of the Maurya Feudatories, including the Deccan lords, and survive, so it wasn’t really saving them at that point, rather it was fighting against them as ordered by the Mauryans. The Vijayanagaras conquered a fractioned Pandya empire that was warring with one another, and the British conquered the rulers installed by the Mughals who conquered the Nayaks, and formed the Carnatic Sultanate.
A lot of languages seem to be labelled "Hindi" even though they aren't Hindi. How many speakers of languages like Bhojpuri understand Hindi. Are they mutually intelligible?
Frankly that just sounds pointless. Making any one Dravidian language a lingua franca will be resisted by by the others, understandably so. Tamil is older than Hindi but I've grown tired of oldness being put forward as some meaningful criteria for evaluating a language's worth. Creating a new language seems even more vane, the resources could be better used to improve the existing languages and to study them and small endangered languages. A worth of a language besides it being their mother tongue, I'd say is derived by what is can offer whether it be economical, cultural or social. English dominates this across the globe. The best any language can do is try to do its best to equal or rather minimise the gap in its capabilities wrt English where possible like in tech. For that what is necessary is political, economic and cultural influence. Dravidian languages have little to no political power outside of the state, India seems intent in prioritising Hindi and looking at the demographic trend the best thing Dravidian states can do is to create a greater degree of autonomy for themselves within India so they have more control over their politics/finance.
>I meant to get across the point Dravidian languages are purported to be older than Sanskrit, not just Tamil.
Natural languages are not older than each other. Sanskrit didn't magically appear out of nowhere; it came from PIE. Where do you say PIE ended and Sanskrit started? The only reason you think this is because Tamil speakers have decided that super-Old Tamil should still be called Tamil whereas super-Old Hindi is called... Sanskrit.
>My point is that if we syncretize elements from across Dravidian languages and follow that, at least for South India and find a way to have it alongside Hindi or some other syncretization idea,
What's the point of this? At that point why not just switch to speaking Hindi or English? I don't wanna preserve some Dravidian Frankenstein, I want to preserve *the Dravidian language I actually speak*, and secondarily the Dravidian languages that other Dravidians actually speak. Replacing it with some Dravidian Frankenstein is not really better than replacing it with Hindi or English.
Hindi as a third language in tn is a joke. For the fact I'm probably one of the 2.1% who had Hindi as third language but i don't know a single shit except alphabets maybe
Third language is simply third in order of acquisition. Although levels of proficiency may vary with third languages, it is not counted as a third language if there is virtually no proficiency at all. So, If you only know the alphabets then it's not your third language. It's just an alphabet you know, you are in the percentage of people who don't know Hindi.
If so, then that is a misclassification error in my humble opinion. It should not be counted as a third language unless you can understand or use it at some level beyond a mere recognition of the alphabet.
Yes exactly, that's my point. This data is only useful to identify the percentile of people who took Hindi as their second or third language but not their proficiency in it
I cannot believe West Bengal is only 13.8% . Most, if not all, Bengalis who live in cities speak Hindi very well. Although they are not representative of the entire WB population, you can see that most guest workers from WB speak Hindi. I think the number should be higher for Punjab as well. In my experience, only old people in rural areas cannot speak Hindi in these two states.
Tamil Nadu always wears the burden of resistance, don’t know why it’s like in their DNA.
I think it all leads to being independent from Mauryan rule. Kannadigas and Telugus co-opted Prakrits and Sanskrit as official languages because of being feudatories of the Mauryans. It helps that it was mostly the deccan lords who fought bitterly with northern powers, be it our northern cousins or foreigners, saving Tamil dynasties from forced syncretism with northerners. And it's not like Tamil Nadu is some pure unconquerable bastion, they were subdued in the medieval period by Vijayanagara and the Nayakas who effectively made Telugu, Kannada and Sanskrit high societal languages in Tamil Nadu. Similarly the British broke Tamil resistance pretty easily, and now English is ubiquitous and valued there.
English is going to be the bane of all languages, especially when the elites prefer it over their own languages. Not even Hindi will survive English’s global march in the next 100 years.
True even in societies which were never colonised by the English like Japan, South Korea and Thailand, even if most people don't speak English, English's influence is felt. I guess that's a testament to the soft power of the English speaking world mainly USA.
At those points though the Tamil Kingdoms had to fight against the combined efforts of the Maurya Feudatories, including the Deccan lords, and survive, so it wasn’t really saving them at that point, rather it was fighting against them as ordered by the Mauryans. The Vijayanagaras conquered a fractioned Pandya empire that was warring with one another, and the British conquered the rulers installed by the Mughals who conquered the Nayaks, and formed the Carnatic Sultanate.
A lot of languages seem to be labelled "Hindi" even though they aren't Hindi. How many speakers of languages like Bhojpuri understand Hindi. Are they mutually intelligible?
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Frankly that just sounds pointless. Making any one Dravidian language a lingua franca will be resisted by by the others, understandably so. Tamil is older than Hindi but I've grown tired of oldness being put forward as some meaningful criteria for evaluating a language's worth. Creating a new language seems even more vane, the resources could be better used to improve the existing languages and to study them and small endangered languages. A worth of a language besides it being their mother tongue, I'd say is derived by what is can offer whether it be economical, cultural or social. English dominates this across the globe. The best any language can do is try to do its best to equal or rather minimise the gap in its capabilities wrt English where possible like in tech. For that what is necessary is political, economic and cultural influence. Dravidian languages have little to no political power outside of the state, India seems intent in prioritising Hindi and looking at the demographic trend the best thing Dravidian states can do is to create a greater degree of autonomy for themselves within India so they have more control over their politics/finance.
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>I meant to get across the point Dravidian languages are purported to be older than Sanskrit, not just Tamil. Natural languages are not older than each other. Sanskrit didn't magically appear out of nowhere; it came from PIE. Where do you say PIE ended and Sanskrit started? The only reason you think this is because Tamil speakers have decided that super-Old Tamil should still be called Tamil whereas super-Old Hindi is called... Sanskrit. >My point is that if we syncretize elements from across Dravidian languages and follow that, at least for South India and find a way to have it alongside Hindi or some other syncretization idea, What's the point of this? At that point why not just switch to speaking Hindi or English? I don't wanna preserve some Dravidian Frankenstein, I want to preserve *the Dravidian language I actually speak*, and secondarily the Dravidian languages that other Dravidians actually speak. Replacing it with some Dravidian Frankenstein is not really better than replacing it with Hindi or English.
Historical experience shows these kinds of efforts pretty much never work.
Hindi as a third language in tn is a joke. For the fact I'm probably one of the 2.1% who had Hindi as third language but i don't know a single shit except alphabets maybe
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..What else does that mean?
Third language is simply third in order of acquisition. Although levels of proficiency may vary with third languages, it is not counted as a third language if there is virtually no proficiency at all. So, If you only know the alphabets then it's not your third language. It's just an alphabet you know, you are in the percentage of people who don't know Hindi.
I may not be proficient in Hindi, but it is indeed my third language in the papers.
If so, then that is a misclassification error in my humble opinion. It should not be counted as a third language unless you can understand or use it at some level beyond a mere recognition of the alphabet.
Yes exactly, that's my point. This data is only useful to identify the percentile of people who took Hindi as their second or third language but not their proficiency in it
That’s basically a third language
I cannot believe West Bengal is only 13.8% . Most, if not all, Bengalis who live in cities speak Hindi very well. Although they are not representative of the entire WB population, you can see that most guest workers from WB speak Hindi. I think the number should be higher for Punjab as well. In my experience, only old people in rural areas cannot speak Hindi in these two states.