India's Language Story - Looking For The Missing Links I Dr. Peggy Mohan
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 7 ก.ย. 2024
- Part 1: Bharat Ki Bhashaein - The Indian Language Project
भारत की भाषाईन - भारतीय भाषा परियोजना, भारत की भाषाएँ - भारतीय भाषा परियोजना, ਭਾਰਤ ਕੀ ਭਾਸ਼ਾਈਂ - ਭਾਰਤੀ ਭਾਸ਼ਾ ਪ੍ਰੋਜੈਕਟ, ভাৰত কি ভাষায়েন - ভাৰতীয় ভাষা প্ৰকল্প, ভারত কি ভাষাইন - ভারতীয় ভাষা প্রকল্প, ڀارت جي ڀاشاين - هندستاني ٻولي پروجيڪٽ,, பாரத் கி பாஷெய்ன் - இந்திய மொழி திட்டம், భారత్ కీ భాషేయిన్ - ది ఇండియన్ లాంగ్వేజ్ ప్రాజెక్ట్ഭാ, രത് കി ഭാഷാഇൻ - ഇന്ത്യൻ ഭാഷാ പദ്ധതി, بھارت کی بھاشاین - ہندوستانی زبان کا پروجیکٹ,, ભારત કી ભાષા - ભારતીય ભાષા પ્રોજેક્ટ, ଭରତ କି ଭ ha ଶାଇନ୍ - ଭାରତୀୟ ଭାଷା ପ୍ରକଳ୍ପ |
SPEAKER:
Peggy Mohan earned a PhD in linguistics from the University of Michigan. She has taught at Jawaharlal Nehru University and Jamia Millia Islamia, among other prestigious centres. She is currently Visiting Professor of Linguistics at Ashoka University. She is the author of the acclaimed book 'Wanderers, kings, merchants: The story of India through its languages'. penguin.co.in/...
SYNOPSIS:
As a union of not just states, but of several linguistically diverse peoples, it is unsurprising that disputes over #languages have a long #history in India. Mass protests and brutal riots were witnessed during the decades after the independence as states were slowly reorganised on linguistic lines. While some languages initially overlooked by the #constitution won their battle for official recognition, others gave up and perished, and some still continue to fight.
BJP, the Hindu-nationalist party, currently in power at the centre, is accused of pushing for Hindi-imperialism. However, the debate over #nationallanguage predates them by over a century. Many of India’s leading independence leaders including #mahatmagandhi Gandhi were in favour of #linguistic unification and ending the dominance of English, the language of the colonisers.
The unified language Mahatma Gandhi had endorsed was not Hindi, but #hindustani , the language of #indiannationalism and freedom struggle. He believed it would be a more secular choice, fusing #urdu and #hindi into one. Secular it may have been, but it surely wasn’t inclusive of vast swathes of Indians in the South and the East. And now the case for Hindustani is all but dead, with many Indians coming to see Urdu as a non-Indian language.
On the other hand, English has gone from success to success. While understood by a tiny portion of the urban elite at the time of the independence and limited to official use only, in the past 75 years English has penetrated into almost all spheres of Indian life, and percolated down to its remote towns and villages.
After seeing its economic value, most Indians are now loath to give up English, but a small faction still hopes for a national “Link Language” of Indian origin. But any discussion on it rapidly descends into repugnant language chauvinism. “#tamil is the oldest language.” “#bengali is the sweetest language.” “Those who don’t know Hindi cannot be Indians”… and more such trite statements are commonly thrown around.
Away from all this noise, we decided to explore the very origins and the evolution of Indian languages. Is Sanskrit truly the mother of Indian languages as we are told? At what point did Indian languages break away from Sanskrit and acquire their own distinct identities of Bengali, Marathi and Punjabi?
Why some languages such as Tamil survived over millennia while others like #sanskrit died. Should dying languages be protected? And can a dead language such as Sanskrit be brought back to life?
What makes a language Indian or non-Indian? Is it the origins of its vocabulary or the number of speakers or the volume of #literature ?
And finally looking forward, should we expect a re-emergence of long suppressed #regional tongues such as #bhojpuri , #tulu and #haryanvi Or a gradual supplantation of even the larger languages such as #gujrati and #kannada by the ever expanding #hinglish ?
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This was so so good! Learnt so many things and now I feel like I should’ve spent more time on languages to learn about the world around me, and the one that went by.
Please do continue to make more and more videos. There’s dearth of good informative videos like this online 🙌
This is an incredible video!
Very Engaging and enriching conversation.. Tamil and Punjabi has more in common.. That's something
Yajur Arora's accent and pronunciations are quite unusual. Also he interrupts too often
This discussion takes it for granted that the oddly assembled bits of geographical area left behind by the British is somehow a nation. Compare it to Europe. Norway and Italy have more in common than do Gujarat and Maharashtra. Europe has cultural unity, and is not a nation but a civilization. So is India. Nation is at best, to use Anderson's phrase, an imagined community. Language on the other hand is real in every sense of the word. In any political entity a common platform of discussion is needed if people are to have a say in their affairs. Neither India nor Europe has such a common platform. Europeans are sensible and don't seek to combine all of Europe into a single political entity. The idea of India as a nation exists only in the prejudiced mind of the ruling anglophone elite. English is the language of everything in india that has to do with India as a whole. Columns written in English are often published in vernacular languages and the editors don't bother to inform their readers of their anglograph provenance. I have never come across in any english language newspaper in India a column written originally in any indian vernacular. More books on indian history are written in Korean or Russian than in all Indian vernaculars put together. In the bibliography of any book or academic article on indian history, i have never come across references to anything written in any indian vernacular except in infrequent instances when a primary source is cited.
Access to English is cruelly restricted by the ruling elite because the only way that Indians learn English is by attending exorbitantly priced English medium schools. Public libraries in most big cities in the US make a wide range of resources available to anyone who wants to learn English. In contrast, it's impossible to learn English as an adult in india,, aa most entities that promise to teach English to adults are run by crooks far from fluent in English.
I am sure m'am is a scholar. But is she serious when she wonders why people didn't "write" things down in 500BC ? I'm i'm sure she knows the vastness of the Vedas? It's not as if it's 10 commandments and hence write/etched in a tablet.
It's also about the sound (and I'm sure she knows as a scholar). How exactly would they have represented it? Even today, in the Indian tradition music is taught in person / orally / aurally. So not everything needs to be looked at from a "Brahminical" control perspective. It's kinda ridiculous to frame the world in that lens.
If they were writing things down in 3000 & 2000BC, they should have been doing so in 500BC,
if not the Vedas, then at least something else related to commerce.
I agree with the guest we can not force any language without big political upheaval. Economic power will decide future of our languages in near terms. Before globalization's decline will we reach some sort of one global language?
But all her academic thought in first half are quite abstract for me.
The Mme seems to have taken for granted that ARYANS are the outside migrants inwards in India ~ Multi0le Hiatorians have lately refuted & discarded this Theory ~
Also, There seems some misunderstanding in EVOLUTION of The Languages ~ These theories will continue till the Perfect Decipher of the Indus Saraswati Scripts on Harappan , Moenjodaro, &c, artifactcs ~
As regards the Languages of Bharat, Mme has very good knowlegde for Linguistics Researchers~
Everything is good and fine, but a discussion on Indian language is going on and no importance is given to the way caption is written in Odia and we are talking about underdog languages.
Indus valley script is yet to be decoded. Please note this before making any conclusions.
India’s One and Only Language which was in Ancient times Medieval times and in Current times is tamil and Tamil and TAMIL ❤❤❤.. Every Indian should know this..
why?
@@nirvanabliss73why not?
@@Mksmoodi how is the language of the Andaman tribes related to Tamil? And how is it more recent than Tamil?
5 minutes long introduction! Pretty tiring.
Unforrunate to see the same old narrative being propogated.
Thank you Dr Peggy Mohan for the excellent talk.
I learnt a lot about Indian languages.
But I think you are getting a lot wrong about languages in India.
BJP is committed to making Hindi the National Link language and
also to encouraging the respective state language in each state.
Text books in Indian languages are now becoming available.
Some Central Govt recruitment exams are being conducted in all languages.
You classification of Sanskrit as language of the ruling class since it was the language of outsiders who invaded or migrated into India is wrong.
Sanskrit was the language of the Vedic Bronze Age Saraswathi Sabhyata [ IVC ].
The leaders of this civilization were the Puru group of people based in the Sapta Sindhu area.
This Civilization collapsed and was succeeded the Iskvaku led civilization in the Ganga basin and they composed the Upanishads, etc.
After the end of this civilization the Sanskrit language declined and remained the language of worship and Brahmins and others developed many languages based on Sanskrit.
Your views on Dravidian influence on Sanskrit appears to be based on a misunderstanding of the chronology of the Rig Veda. You mentioned Dravidian influence in the very 1st Suktam of Rig Veda, I think you were referring to the 1st Suktam of 1st Mandala.
The point is that the 1st Mandala of RV is NOT the oldest, the 6th Mandala is the oldest.
The Chronological order is 6, 3, 7, 4, 2, 5, 1, 8, 9, 10
So Mandala 1 is the 7th in Chronological order.
Only Mandalas 5 onwards have Dravidian language influence.
It will be good if you can use your knowledge of Linguistics and reevaluate history of Indian language based on the Out of India theory.
What if Sanskrit is fully indigenous to India? &
It started developing around 4,000 BCE in India and Vedas were composed starting 3,000 BCE.
Rig Veda mentions many groups of people - Puru were the composers, they fought a battle with others - Anu, Brighu, Dhruyu, etc. Who were these others, what languages did they speak.
What if they all spoke different dialects of Vedic Sanskrit & were the people who migrated out of India, some around 3,000 BCE and others around 2,000 BCE and these were the people responsible for the Sanskrit words in European languages and Mittani and Avestan.
It will be very helpful if you can debate these issues with Dr Koenraad Elst and Shri Shrikant Talageri.
I resonate with all that you said.
But it's BJP really pushing to make hindi the link language? I am interested in some proof on this argument.
We are talking science, dna & linguistics here.
Religious texts are written by elites & kings to colonize your mind.
Pls de-colonise.
I have a few questions
1. Why should hindi be a link language? Just because it has the largest number of speakers in India?
2. On what basis do you say that Sanskrit was the language of the IVC? Whats the proof?
3. Why is the ‘Out of India theory’ having no broad academic support across the various global experts in linguistics, archaeology, genetics etc.?
4. Have Dr Koenraad Elst and Shri Shrikant Talageri published any papers, journals, books which have been peer reviewed?
@@nirvanabliss73
1. Yes. Hindi is spoken by the largest number of people in India, including most Non Hindi states in North India.
2. It is very obvious that Sanskrit is the language spoken in IVC. There is no evidence of any other language having been used in this area at any point in time, in the Bronze Age and anytime thereafter.
The logic and structure of Sanskrit and Vedas and the material culture of IVC match.
So they were by he same group of people.
IVC language did not have a full script. Sanskrit did not have a script till ~500 BCE.
It can't be a coincidence that there were two different languages spoken in the same area but at different points in time by two different set of people and both did not have a script.
Mittani worshiped Indra, etc. ~1450 BCE.
There is no evidence of similar god names anywhere else except India.
So either Mittani came to India or Indians went to Mittani.
Mittani had Sanskrit and a script ~1450 BCE.
But Aryan theory supporters say that Sanskrit came to India ~1500 BCE without a script.
Sanskrit did not have a script in India until ~500 BCE.
So obviously Sanskrit and worship of Indra, etc., started in India much earlier and Sanskrit speaking Indians migrated out to Mittani and picked up a local script.
3 I can't answer for others. I will NOT accept a wrong theory just because some support it.
Siddhartha / Buddha had said 'Never believe something, just because everyone else believes it'. [ para phrasing the actual quote ]
4 I can share the videos of Prof Kazanas, Prof Semenenko, Dr Niraj Rai, books by Dr B B Lal and many others. So it is just not Dr Elst and Shri Talageri. I don't give any importance to peer reviewed papers. Many peer reviewed papers are wrong.
@@DiatomAlgae 1. So are you saying that just because Hindi is the language with the largest number of speakers in India, therefore every Indian should mandatorily learn Hindi? Coincidently that’s what Sri Lanka tried to do by imposing Sinhala language on Tamils. And it was one of the reasons for the bloody civil war which went on for decades over there
2. As I understand, to date no serious expert of IVC has any idea about the language spoken there. But you have absolute confidence about it being Sanskrit, I don’t know how. Even the Government of India departments would not attempt to say such things with so much confidence
“logic and structure of Sanskrit and Vedas and the material culture of IVC match” > am quite shocked by this statement since we haven’t even deciphered the symbols (language? Script?) of IVC and have very little idea about their lives. We don’t even know whether they had very close links to Vedic Hindus.
“IVC language did not have a full script” > on what basis do you say that?
3. Worldwide there is a current understanding amongst hundreds of scholars across multiple disciplines, multiple countries that the Vedic people seems to have migrated from Southern Russia, then later split into Iranians and the Vedic Aryans. Wrt the OIT, do we even have a good set of papers, books which are peer reviewed? On what basis is this projected as a serious theory?
4. Ok, so you don’t give any importance to somebody’s work being reviewed by peers and experts in the field. I do give it much much importance
Dr Peggy Mohan, I have a query regarding the Brahui language where the speakers pronounce the aspirated consonants fluently but the languages surrounding it like Pashto, Balochi, Sindhi & Punjabi face difficulty in pronouncing the aspirated Consonants bcz these form part of the Indo- European family whereas Brahui is supposed to be connected to the Dravidian family 🤔🙏🙏