More people speak Malay than Hindi?

[Harold F. Schiffman]

VYAKARAN: South Asian Languages and Linguistics Net
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          John Peterson, University of Osnabrueck, Germany
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Looks like I started something I can't finish.

I'm not on any Malay lists so I don't know how to contact people there,
but I did send this also to Anthea Gupta, who usually has opinions
about these things.  The Malays are often chauvinistic about their
language, so claims like the ones they made can't possibly be verified;
but obviously it's true that there are more Hindi and/or Hindustani (add
Urdu to this, too?) speakers than Malay/Indonesian speakers.

On the other hand, the claim that "everybody" in India "speaks" Hindi can
also not be substantiated. Many S. Indians understand the kind of Hindi
spoken in Bollywood movies (but so do I, and my Hindi is very weak), but
they don't actually activelys SPEAK Hindi.

Hal Schiffman

On Sat, 28 May 2005, D.K. Agencies (P) Ltd. wrote:

> VYAKARAN: South Asian Languages and Linguistics Net
> Editors:  Tej K. Bhatia, Syracuse University, New York
>           John Peterson, University of Osnabrueck, Germany
> Details:  Send email to listserv at listserv.syr.edu and say: INFO VYAKARAN
> Subscribe:Send email to listserv at listserv.syr.edu and say:
>           SUBSCRIBE VYAKARAN FIRST_NAME LAST_NAME
>           (Substitute your real name for first_name last_name)
> Archives: http://listserv.syr.edu
>
> Are these messages reaching the people who initiated this conference
> which claimed Malay to be the 4th largest spoken language of the world.
> Is there anybody on Vyakaran from that group as well.
>
> Surya
>
> Greg Cooper wrote:
>
> > VYAKARAN: South Asian Languages and Linguistics Net
> > Editors:  Tej K. Bhatia, Syracuse University, New York
> >           John Peterson, University of Osnabrueck, Germany
> > Details:  Send email to listserv at listserv.syr.edu and say: INFO VYAKARAN
> > Subscribe:Send email to listserv at listserv.syr.edu and say:
> >           SUBSCRIBE VYAKARAN FIRST_NAME LAST_NAME
> >           (Substitute your real name for first_name last_name)
> > Archives: http://listserv.syr.edu
> >
> > By saying that Chinese is the most widely spoken language in the world we mean just Mandarin Chinese. There are more than 200 other indigenous languages in China, most of them having several dialects.
>  >>
> >>> http://www.brudirect.com/DailyInfo/News/Archive/May05/200505/nite25.htm
>