Survey request

[D.G.Damle]

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

Peter,
Indeed!  You might hink they are offensive.  I thought the survey formulator was quite ignorant.  Even ith modern versions of most of these languages are several centuries old and have large populations (far larger than, say of many european languages and vertainly Hebrew).  Even if there are large percentages of illiteracy, there are very large absolute numbers of litrate speakers and as with mosr languages, there are normal H speakers and there are those L speakers that also speak and write H.  As to  why, the languages survie, that is a very large question.  Often to preserve the culture, sometimes for nationalistic reasons, but mostly because mothertongues are so comfortable.
 
Sad thing is, that over the last couple of decades education trends in India are such that many children from an early stage learn in English for economic reasons.  This is leading to a declining number of younger people who are fully competent  in their mothertongues, particularly the H versions.  Still, the abosulte numbers are such that the danger of exnction for the m,ajor languages at least does nt appear anything like imminent.  If the world evolves to prefer some languages over others, so be it!  That's just evolution.
 
Dileep Damle
Open University, Milton Keynes, UK

________________________________

From: South Asian Linguists on behalf of Peter Slomanson
Sent: Mon 2/4/2008 2:48 PM
To: VYAKARAN at LISTSERV.SYR.EDU
Subject: Re: Survey request



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 <http://listserv.syr.edu/> 

The relationship between diglossia and literacy is obviously an interesting
question, however I assume that I am not the only subscriber to this list
who finds the comments quoted below to be offensive.

Peter Slomanson
City University of New York

> Outside of the Indian subcontinent, the only languages which do this are Arabic > (literacy rate 72%) and Persian (literacy rate 80%). In Arabic there's a
> combination of religious fanaticism (they think that the H language was dictated > by God) and nationalist fanaticism (they want to try to create a maximally
> large `Arab people' united by a standard language), while for Persian they
> are using an older language because it's associated with the multinational
> empire they're trying to hold together (vs. Azeris and Kurds).