Hindi

[Samar Abbas]

On Tue, 13 Feb 2001, Shailendra Raj Mehta wrote:
> Sanskrit has been written in more than 4 scripts. At least a dozen.

  When I wrote that Hindee is the only language having four scripts, I
meant SPOKEN language. Since Sanskrit is not a spoken language, it has the
liberty to use any script it so desires.
  Sanskrit did not have any script when it spread across India, and as a
result, adopted the scripts of the pre-Sanskritic languages. In fact, many
Pundits oppose the writing down of Sanskrit words as they feel it
"degrades the language of the gods". For this reason, Sanskrit technically
does not have any script. Once again, there is no SPOKEN language anywhere
in the world which has a whole FOUR scripts.

> If so, Samar, then you set up such an impossibly high standard for the
> definition of a language that, all dialects too become, in your definition,
> separate languages.

 Just because German and English use the same script does not make them
the same language. Also, what about Dutch and German ?

> Did Shakespeare not write in English? Would you argue that
> "Elizabethan" was a separate language?

  Because Beowulf was written in a dialect of old Germanic does not make
English a dialect of German, which is something the official Sanghi
historians are trying to do to Hindee for the last fifty years. Somehow,
Magahi (its very name proves it is descended from Magadhi / Pali),
Rajasthani (obviously of Hunnic origin) etc. are portrayed as mere
dialects of Hindee. No mention is made of how the Sakas did not influence
this Hindee (or is it supposed to be Apabrahmsa ?).

 Shakespeare wrote in Middle English. English is in turn derived from
Anglo-Saxon, which is in turn derived from Germanic. Still then, English
is not a dialect of German.

  However, it is almost universally recognised that different
predominant scripts implies different languages. So only a few claim that
Tamil is a `dialect' of Hindee.

> Linguistic name calling, (calling Hindi, Hindee, or a farce, just because
> some English pamphleteer did so) is neither accurate nor justified.

 The "English pamphleteer" in question is Mr. Sushil Srivastava.
(http://www.epw.org.in/35-4344/disc.htm). Wonder, does that sound like an
English name ? Also, Hindoostanee/Hindee is the spelling given to Hindi by
its English inventors. Since the very fathers of the language spelled it
like this, and since Hindee is also known as Hinglish because of this,
surely there can be nothing wrong in this spelling?

 Likewise, the enforcement of Hindee is the cause of the Hindi-Cow-Belt
being "the most backward region in the Indian subcontinent"
[Mr.Srivastava, EPW, ibid.]. While Tamil Nadu, Andhra and Karnataka are
heading for an IT revolution, Hindi-Cow-Belt still uses bullock-carts
instead of cars to travel. Time to think about the sociological
implications of 100 years of blind Hindee enforcement by Sanghis.

Samar