This is a really great application. I can't wait for it to be available in google talk, too. My productivity will surely increase 5-fold.

And that's not to mention how good it feels to suddenly be able to speak 4 dravidian langauges at the click of a button. :)

But more seriously, it might be unfair, but it sometimes bothers me that groups specializing in developing Indian computing consistently ignore Urdu. I know its much easier to develop software for related scripts (hence bhashaindia's gujarati, hindi, panjabi, etc), but at the same time, it seems that part of the point is to make technology and information accessible to all the people of India, including those that do not speak English. If we concede that, then there is hardly a group that needs more attention than Urdu speakers (and Kashmiri, Sindhi, and so on). The vast majority of India's official languages can be conveniently typed using microsoft bhasha, and now google, software, but it doesnt look like anyone is even thinking about TRYING to extend their reach to Urdu, even if its number greatly outstrip those of say, konkani. Or am I being unfair?

It will only take a few weeks to touch type using the default utf layout (vowels on the left, consonants on the right), but it has the virtue of not having to guess the how to spell and you can type in multiple languages (the keyboard layout for kannada is the same for telugu/mallu/hindi etc.).

The fried potato dish is spelled

F R E N C H F R Y

I've used variations of these tools but the Malayalam alphabet has never lent itself to easy transliteration. Given there are 4 variants in each of the ka, cha, da, tha and pa sounds it's difficult to figure out which combination of English letters to use.
But I was pleasantly surprised to see that nja converted to the first sound in the Malayalam word for "I" and nga to the last sound in mango. Can't quite get the alternate spellings drop down to work on a reliable basis- seems to show up when I try to backspace.

btw, anna, you've spelt potato the tamil (thamizh) way- it's urulakizhangu (note the missing i before the k). Of course the pronunciation is different too- no native tamil speaker can pronounce the 'nga' (or the 'nja') sound in Malayalam ;-)

Just tried it this yesterday. So exciting!

Oh, if only there were some way for me to type Malayalam words the way they sound in English to me…and have GMail (or anything else, for that matter) automatically convert them to the correct Malayalam-in-English spelling equivalent.

Rediffmail supports this features in 11 regional languages including Malayalam
http://support.rediff.com/cgi-bin/support/printdetail.cgi?id=newmail_502.htm

sorry i'm mistaken it will not convert it into malyalam in english but malayalam.

Malayalam blogroll

Oooh, I wonder if we can implement something like this on SM!

Of course the pronunciation is different too- no native tamil speaker can pronounce the 'nga' (or the 'nja') sound in Malayalam ;-)

anna, i couldn't help but notice the fact that all 4 main south languages were included. but i guess that was bound to happen, given the high IT representation..

replying to 10 ak
Well, as I said, the malayalam word for "I" written in English as njaan is the first stumbling block. Tamil simplifies this to naan. Words like manjal (yellow/turmeric), manju (mist/fog) etc are pronounced by Tamil speakers as if the "j" was actually the English j sound. Well manju doesn't exist in Tamil, they say 'pani' instead.

Maanga, I've already spoken about...The rhyming word thenga, where the 'g' is pronounced by Tamilians like a hard 'g' is another example.

Responding to 9, SM can implement this feature in Malayalam for sure, because a lot of the transliteration code is open source. It was developed by Cibu, who is now with Google. He is very helpful, get in touch if you want to fiddle around with this.

On 11, another Malayalam sound people find difficult it "zha" as in kozhikode, it is pronounced with the tongue position similar to "sha", but making the tongue go kinda drunken.

urulakizhangu mezhukkupuratti pic is mouth watering Anna...add to that the malayalam from google..makes a good dinner.

This Google transliterator has been around for a while, but not integrated with GMail until now. (http://www.google.com/transliterate/indic)

They should have labelled it as HINDI/NEPALI/PUNJABI or just DEVANGARI SCRIPT because these north Indian languages are all written in the same way.

@Chaitan #9: Wouldn't that defeat the purpose of having *one* forum for everyone to discuss stuff?

@15: the algorithm for suggesting Devnagari characters is more complex than just a simple mapping. For example, try typing "daal" and "danda" which produce दाल and डंडा. It is based on the language Hindi, not on Marathi or Nepali.

For searching, they have a Google Suggest in Hindi, Bengali, Gujarati, Kannada, Malayalam, Marathi, Tamil, and Telugu, which is linked from http://labs.google.co.in.

@1: They will eventually get to Urdu. Their newest one is Arabic http://www.google.com/transliterate/arabic

uralakizhangu mezhukupuratti

My father always said it’s not lady-like to gloat, but after seeing four Dravidian languages on a list of five total, I’m gloatin’. ;)

I guess the south indian techie stereotype is true.

//urulakizhangu mezhukkupuratti//

u ru La i kiza ng ku me zu k ku pu ra t ti in Malayalam = ഉ ര� ളൈ കിഴങ�ക� മെ ഴ�ക�ക�പ�രത�തി

u ru La i kiza ng ku me zu k ku pu ra t ti in thamiz = உ ர� ளை க� கிழங�க� மெழ�க� ப�ர ட� டி

( thanks to: http://www.higopi.com/ucedit/Tamil.html)

screwed up the previous comment, thanks to BBC (Boston B**r Co)

http://www.higopi.com/ucedit/Malayalam.html

transliteration examples:

anna - - a n nA

Malayalam - ma la yA La m

America - a me ri k kA

Obama - o bA maa (or) o baa maa

not a spam....I have always used this website http://www.quillpad.com for typing Indian languages. It is very easy to use, let's you choose different words and pronunciations, very good transliteration engine..shall I say better than the Gmail version...they have a mobile version too

Marathi is also available, as are Bengali, Gujrati, and Odiya.

Folks,

Just wanted to point out that you can integrate Google's phonetic typing technology on SM as well. There's a API available (no license or other fees needed). Check out
http://code.google.com/apis/ajaxlanguage/documentation/#Transliteration
for details.

sumithar - i was referring more to the statement you made that tamilians are incapable of pronouncing these sounds. agreed, these sounds do not appear in tamil for those particular words (although there are many similar words in tamil that use nja with a small 'n' instead of the large 'N') but of all desis, from what i've seen, it is the tamilians who manage the best when speaking in malayalam.

anna - those potatoes do look amazing - so good i might even make some today and eat it with some thayir sadham! but i was curious - is mezhukkupuratti a particular style of cooking vegetables like e.g. thoran?

@18: Thanks!! Thats incredible, even in my wildest dreams I didnt think they could come up with something that would put in the ain ع without having to type anything special!

They should have labelled it as HINDI/NEPALI/PUNJABI or just DEVANGARI SCRIPT because these north Indian languages are all written in the same way.

Punjabi is written in the Gurmukhi script (in India) or in the Shahmukhi script (a variant of the scipt used for Urdu) when written in Pakistan (although Punjabi is very rarely used as a written language in Pakistan in any case).

As for Urdu, Kabob Sahib, I'm sure Pakistani-based entities (both governmental and non-governmental) are working on Urdu software and computer applications and so forth? No?

@28: Punjabi is rarely used as a written language in Pakistan? What makes you so certain of this? I happen to know for a fact that there is a rich tradition of literature in Punjabi in Pakistan and literature is still being written in Punjabi.

Also, Urdu is just as much an Indian language as anything else. I don't understand why just because it's Pakistan's official language, that implies that when working on transliteration tools in Indic langauges, Urdu should be left out.

As for Panjabi literature in Pakistan...as I understand it, Panjabi writing in Pakistan is up and coming at the moment. Of course, there has always been poetry, story telling (قصہ گوئی), even television in Panjabi, but its hard to deny that it really isn't used for writing all that much in Pakistan. You aren't going to find any Panjabi newspapers, only a smattering of magazines, and not too many novels. but you are right, there are now plenty of works coming out in Panjabi, and this is sure to increase over time. But if you are going to the Panjab expecting to see it being widely written, you are in for some disappointment.

On the second point, Kabir, I agree with you, and was going to say the same thing to Amitabh. It is Urdu's terrible luck, and that of the Urdu speakers of India, that this has become such a convenient line for people who are not interested in investing in Urdu - or who have a political/ideological issue with it. The mutilation of Urdu is one of the saddest stories of partition and independence, and this kind of thinking only perpetuates that.
Amitabh, you are right, though, that Urdu is being developed in Pakistan. This Urdu dictionary (http://www.crulp.org/oud/default.aspx/) is just incredible, and there is nothing to rival it in ANY Indian language that I have seen. (Unfortunately, the site was left unfinished - it ran out of funding.)
But there are two issues here: firstly, when anti-Pakistani McCarthyism is still rampant in India, it is not that simple to ask India's Urdu speakers (and governmental employees in, say, Kashmir) to start downloading and relying on Pakistani produced software. Secondly, when there are HUGE corporations (I'm talking about Google and Microsoft here) working on "Indic languages," there is really no reason for Urdu to be so sidelined.

I found this out a couple of days ago in my GMail acct - its really really helpful. I can't write hindi but sending emails in hindi to family in india and to my parents is really useful! At first I thought you type in the english word and it would translate and write it properly.. but then i realized that you have to actually spell the hindi word out in english.

It is Urdu's terrible luck, and that of the Urdu speakers of India, that this has become such a convenient line for people who are not interested in investing in Urdu - or who have a political/ideological issue with it. The mutilation of Urdu is one of the saddest stories of partition and independence, and this kind of thinking only perpetuates that.

I am not shedding any tears for Urdu. Urdu speakers have been able to convince the whole of Pakistani Punjab (which has more people than native urdu speakers in India) to adopt Urdu as their national language. So Urdu will be just fine. Urdu would have always been the ugly cousin to Hindi in India anyway so its death is not a big deal especially as its flourishing in Pakistan.

As for India, Urdu will become as prevalent as Sanskrit in the next 40 years in India. Written Urdu will in fact completely die off before 2050. The under 30 generation of Muslims in North India cannot read or write Urdu. They dont learn Urdu in schools, dont read comic books or magazines in Urdu, dont read newspapers in Urdu so they are not going to learn written Urdu. Outside madrassas in UP/Bihar, Urdu is not taught in schools. With time (hopefully) the percentage of Muslims kids going to Madrassas will fall down below 1%. (I believe its around 5% right now).

I am much more interested in the status of spoken Urdu in India. Every time I go to India, more and more native Urdu speaking Muslims are usually more and more Hindi words. I think with the explosion of cheap cable tv and accessibility to Hindi newspapers, the lingo is changing from Urdu/Hindustani to Hindustani/Hindi. I think it will be interesting to see how long will it take for Urdu to completely die off as a spoken language in India.

when anti-Pakistani McCarthyism is still rampant in India, it is not that simple to ask India's Urdu speakers (and governmental employees in, say, Kashmir) to start downloading and relying on Pakistani produced software

There is no nefarious conspiracy to keep Urdu down in India. The market place is speaking on Urdu and its really as simple as that. Btw, the Kashmiris in the Valley dont speak Urdu. They speak Kashmiri. If they live outside the valley, they will speak Punjabi.

I don't understand this constant identification of Urdu as a "Muslim" language. Languages don't belong to any one religion. Urdu has a long history in India and during its heyday both Muslim and Hindu poets wrote some great poetry in the language. Firaq Gorakhpuri is one hindu poet that comes to mind. Muslim poets also used the imagery of Radha/Krishna in their poetry. In fact this whole division of one language (Urdu/Hindustani) into two (Urdu and Hindi) only occured under the British at Fort William College. Of course, then partition and independence led to a greater seperation. Urdu in Pakistan became more Arabicized and Hindi in India became more Sanskritized.

And if Urdu is dying in India, how do you explain the continuing popularity of ghazals and poets like Ghalib (Jagjit and Chitra sing Ghalib comes to mind). I take lessons in Hindustani music and have often met Indian people who like singing Ghazals and who ask my parents the meaning of words in Urdu.

Urdu is just as much an Indian language as anything else. It's not a "Muslim" langauge. It's this kind of political thinking that will unfortunately lead India to lose a valuable and beautiful part of its cultural heritage.

Urdu is just as much an Indian language as anything else. It's not a "Muslim" langauge. It's this kind of political thinking that will unfortunately lead India to lose a valuable and beautiful part of its cultural heritage.

I am not suggesting that Urdu is a Muslim language. However, the people in India who write in Urdu and read Urdu are almost all Muslims. Of course there are Hindus who read/write Urdu in India just like there are Hindus in India who read/write French or German.

For Urdu to be a viable language in India, you would need either schools where the medium of instruction is Urdu or where Urdu is taught as a second language in otherwise English/Hindi schools. There is no demand for that from Urdu speakers in India. In the end as I said before the market place will speak. Urdu will always remain an option for the enthusiasts as will be German or Chinese but to sustain Urdu at any other level will require governments in states like U.P. to mandate the teaching of Urdu in schools. Most people want to send their kids to schools where the medium of instruction is English so the only places where that can happen is the Government run schools where the medium of instruction is Hindi. I guess you could offer Urdu as a second language there. It will be foolish to have schools where the medium of instruction is Urdu as the kids who come out of those schools will not be able to function in the society.

I think what you might be failing to realize is that the Urdu speakers in India dont really care about preserving Urdu. They want their kids to get educated and get good jobs. Teaching them Urdu will sure help them in reading Ghalib without translation but that doesnt help you buy a nano.

Kabir: Here is a Status Report on Urdu in India. Be careful that people who identify themselves as Urdu speakers does not translate into people who can actually read or write Urdu.

From the report: This deliberate and steady linguistic genocide has crated a situation when children of Urdu speaking families cannot communicate with or write to their parents and vice versa and reached a point where the younger generation cannot even speak its mother tongue at home or with the family.

Thus, Urdu faces the prospect of becoming an ethnic language as far as Hindi-speaking States are concerned. Soon it will be limited to those whose parents take special pains to teach Urdu by sending them to local Maktabs and Madrasas or by arranging private tuition at home.

Leaving aside the hyperbolic 'genocide', it mirrors what I have been saying.

Well part of the problem with Urdu was that the whole thing became very politicized. Urdu used to be a comprehensible language for hindi speakers. Try listening to the news in Urdu now. It's impossible to understand because it is so arabized. Of course hindus went down the same road and totally sanskritized their news. But as pafd notes, the market will speak. Aaj Tak emerged a few years ago and it is purely market driven and does not bother to conform to any ideology with respect to how sanskritized their hindi should be. The only problem with market driven forces is that they end up catering to the lowest common denominator and do not care about other standards. So it is not enough to just use urdu words without the rest of the attitude. My ideal is the language as spoken by say Begum Nawazish Ali (which is the only Pakistani tv I've seen).

Paagal,

I agree with you that Urdu speakers in India generally don't care about preserving Urdu. They want their kids to get good jobs, which means achieving fluency in English. The same situation exists in Pakistan as well. The children of the elite go to English-medium schools and then hopefully abroad for college. In fact, I probably know more about and show more interest in Urdu poets like Ghalib and Faiz than my cousins who grew up in Pakistan do. But, market forces aren't everything, and I feel perhaps government or some cultural entity needs to take some action to make sure that part of India's heritage does not die simply because there is no market demand for it.

Divya (# 36) is right to point out that part of the problem is the politicization of the languages. The Urdu used on PTV now is much more arabicized than it used to be and Hindi on Doordarshan is probably much more sanskritized. But then you have the Hindustani used in Bollywood which is a language understood by people in both India and Pakistan.

But then you have the Hindustani used in Bollywood which is a language understood by people in both India and Pakistan.

Majority of north Indians speak Hindustani - which is a mix of Hindi, and Urdu.

More so, Hinglish - a mixture of Hindi, Urdu, and English. You will surprised that people with no formal language use small english phrases, and lots of words in north India very often.

The written Urdu script in India maybe on decline, but the spoken language as a whole is quite strong.

For Urdu to be a viable language in India, you would need either schools where the medium of instruction is Urdu or where Urdu is taught as a second language in otherwise English/Hindi schools. There is no demand for that from Urdu speakers in India. In the end as I said before the market place will speak.

Nice thread. From what I've read, it--Urdu-- is the medium of instruction in the well-attended Deobandhi schools. As a matter of fact, the students have no other skills except Urdu, Persian and Arabic.

Urdu is alive and well in India--albeit in a bastardized fashion. For instance, I am trying to re-learn Hindi. I am doing this through Bollywood on Youtube and google news in Hindi. What I believe I am learning is Urdu not Hindi. If I wanted to learn Hindi sans Urdu, I would have to listen to the dialects--the Meera bhajans (in Braj bhasa), some Bhojpuri movie or something. Bollywood Hindi is more Urdu than Hindi with English thrown in here and there. The language wars on Youtube tell the story.

Kabir:

But then you have the Hindustani used in Bollywood which is a language understood by people in both India and Pakistan.

Ajeeb daastaan hai yeh Kahaan shuruu kahaan khatam Yeh manzilein hai kaun sii...

When I was going through the lyrics, I had
to look up daastaan, manzilein--the Urdu words that is.

I remember a conversation with a Lebanese. As is usual in Francophonia, he was exhorting me to learn French. He then said, everyone should know English, French, Arabic--that will cover the entire world. It was a unique perspective. What about Chinese? Hindi? Large numbers of people speak those languages too. What happens when you travel to China? Will you speak in Arabic? So when people say, oh yes, in India we do this or that--they mean they do this and that. I learned Hindi as a child. I never learned words like dastaan and manzilein. My mother's family settled in Lucknow and Delhi a long time ago (they're actually from the south) so Hindi could as well be my mother tongue. And I've never heard these words.

The written Urdu script in India maybe on decline, but the spoken language as a whole is quite strong.

I think that will change too. With every successive generation, the spoken Urdu will incorporate more and more Hindi/Sanskrit words reflecting the popular culture of Hindi newspapers, cable tv and comic books.

Aaj Tak emerged a few years ago and it is purely market driven and does not bother to conform to any ideology with respect to how sanskritized their hindi should be.

So what kind of Hindi do they use?

In fact, I probably know more about and show more interest in Urdu poets like Ghalib and Faiz than my cousins who grew up in Pakistan do

Thats an important point too. You are obviously the Pakistani version of Amitabh. (Amitabh the SM commenter).

Do they have comic books in Urdu in India?

blockquote>Urdu is alive and well in India--albeit in a bastardized fashion. For instance, I am trying to re-learn Hindi. I am doing this through Bollywood on Youtube and google news in Hindi. What I believe I am learning is Urdu not Hindi. If I wanted to learn Hindi sans Urdu, I would have to listen to the dialects--the Meera bhajans (in Braj bhasa), some Bhojpuri movie or something. Bollywood Hindi is more Urdu than Hindi with English thrown in here and there. The language wars on Youtube tell the story.

The language wars on Youtube are really funny and disturbing at the same time. Urdu speakers try to claim "Hindi" film songs as Urdu and Hindi speakers claim the opposite. In the end, why should it really matter? The song is beautiful in any case. And as we have been mentioning, those songs were written in Hindustani, so that a majority of people could understand them. If you are producing commerical cinema, you would want to appeal to as broad an audience as possible.

I'm suprised you were unfamiliar with words like "dastaan" and "manzil". I thought they were pretty common words.

If you read the Wikipedia article on Urdu, it tells you that Urdu and Hindi are standardized registers of Hindustani. Linguists classify them as basically the same language, sharing most of the same basic grammar and vocabulary. Wiki also says that both Standard Hindi and Urdu are standardized registers of Khariboli. To me, the main difference seems to be Hindi and Urdu are written using different scripts and the Hindi uses more Sanskrit vocabulary while Urdu uses more Arabic and Persian vocabulary. It's mostly a political move by certain sections of Indian and Pakistani society to deny the common heritage and basis of both languages.

Popular North Indian lingua franca ............an ad for Aaj Tak (cable channel)

It is Hindustani/ Hinglish - some examples in the ad, Awaz (voice in Urdu), Sorry (English)

The Urdu script which is not of Indian origin will die down. Urdu laguage which itself is Indian will survive. Now that urdu may not be same as Pakistani Urdu. It will have less number of persian/arabic word. And anyway there is no definitive line which separates Hindi with Urdu other than the script. Why cant the laguage North India speak loan some arabic words and still call itself Hindi?
Aajtak uses tons of words which are of persian/arbic origin as well of Hindi origin. And thats the language most north Indians speak at this time irrespective of their religion.

The Hindi/Urdu debate is quite interesting.
I think of Urdu/Hindi as the same language stretched across a spectrum. Somewhere in the middle is the street Hindustani spoken in North India, and that is the language used by the popular news channels and in films.
The extremes of the spectrum are pure Sanskrit at one end and Persian+Arabic on the other. I speak Hindi and Urdu quite well, and when speaking with Pakistanis, I just slide down the spectrum, and use more Persian words. With other people, say a pandit in Haridwar, I might have to Sanskritise my language.
Ghalib's poetry was heavily Persianised. Not so for others, eg. Meer and Nazir Akbarabadi.
As for the script, it is a political issue. One of my friends from Lucknow (incidentally a Brahmin) is an accomplished Urdu poet, but didn't know the Urdu script for a long time.
PAFD, don't worry, there is plenty of interest in Urdu in India, specially in the Awadh region. It is not likely to die out any more than Hindi. Just go to any railway station in UP, and look for Urdu pulp fiction.

I'm suprised you were unfamiliar with words like "dastaan" and "manzil". I thought they were pretty common words.

My folks are the last of the brown sahibs. What I know about India and Indian culture has come second hand--from books and now the internet. I'm trying to make amends. The hindi I leaned even then was textbook hindi. No one in our social circle would have been caught dead speaking a "vernacular". So I never really got the opportunity to learn the "street language".

Of course there are Hindus who read/write Urdu in India just like there are Hindus in India who read/write French or German.

Not the same experience at all, e.g., I can tell (without dwelling on it for a nanosecond) when I'm speaking what i believe is Hindi and when I'm speaking broken French, whereas I find that when I'm among Pakistani friends, they will tell me I'm speaking nothing but Urdu when I think I'm speaking totally in Hindustani.

My folks are the last of the brown sahibs. What I know about India and Indian culture has come second hand--from books and now the internet. I'm trying to make amends. The hindi I leaned even then was textbook hindi. No one in our social circle would have been caught dead speaking a "vernacular". So I never really got the opportunity to learn the "street language".

fyi - i just finished making both kaakarakaya/paavaka/karela fry and the mezhukkupuratti above. have not cooked desi food in ages, so thanks for the incentive, anna :)

fyi - i just finished making both kaakarakaya/paavaka/karela fry and the mezhukkupuratti above.

This deliberate and steady linguistic genocide has crated a situation when children of Urdu speaking families cannot communicate with or write to their parents and vice versa and reached a point where the younger generation cannot even speak its mother tongue at home or with the family.

This unfortunate situation prevails for some speakers of many if not all Indian languages. You can't buy a Nano with Hindi or Gujarati or Tamil alone either (there are some exceptions, specifically business people who don't know too much English but are still doing well - but you can be damn sure their kids will know English). It is market-driven, but it is also institutional and infrastructural. It's a social pathology, a policy pathology, and it's also the urban elite's turning its back on its mothertongues. I hate the term 'vernacular' with a passion (the term itself is neutral, since even English is the vernacular in England or America; but the connotations the term has in India are very negative).

As for Hindi-Urdu, unfortunately a small group of people have been left in charge with deciding how these things go, and then their actions impact all the other, much more numerous people who are affected. Modern 'shuddh' Hindi (hate that term too) was essentially formulated by a few, generally upper-caste Hindus who deliberately Sanskritized the hell out of it...removing not only all Perso-Arabic vocabulary (no matter how widely used on the street and in homes) but also a lot of real, indic, desi words (tadbhav words) and replacing then with dead Sanskrit terms that only their small coterie knew. Very short-sighted, as they essentially killed Hindi in the long run. Why would you learn this ridiculous, artifical, cumbersome Hindi when you could learn an international language like English, with immense economic and social appeal? Hindi should have been embraced AS SPOKEN, Perso-Arabic loanwords and all, and developed into a useful, modern tool for its speakers.

The English, upon being taken over by the Normans, basically turned their language from a logically spelled, easily conjugated, and intuitively constructed Germanic tongue into a messed up pseudo-romance stew that makes sense to no-one, not even to native English speakers but it caught on.

The decline of the local languages has more to do with India's shoddy education system than anything else. Once knowing English stops being a marker of being well educated the nouveau riche will no longer feel the need to show it off to highlight their "sophistication."

Modern 'shuddh' Hindi (hate that term too) was essentially formulated by a few, generally upper-caste Hindus who deliberately Sanskritized the hell out of it

There is plenty that could be commented on here, perhaps to much to even begin. But since the idea of the market place keeps coming up, I thought I would touch on it. Amitabh, you mention that "this unfortunate situation prevails for some speakers of many if not all Indian languages. You can't buy a Nano with Hindi or Gujarati or Tamil alone either." Its unfortunately much more than that, more even than a question of class. If Urdu is in the position that it can be written off as "economically unfeasible," that is ONLY due to the tireless efforts of many powerful and not so powerful people to make it a reality. Of course Urdu will be seen as the language of the Muslims when it is pitted against a newly invented language (now called Hindi, a term that used to refer to what we think of as Urdu) who's entire purpose was to reject a "foreign" script and vocabulary. Of course Urdu will become economically unviable when the new state (India) with leaders like Vallabhai Patel regularly refused to hire Muslims or anyone with an Urdu education. Of course, when, in a state where millions upon millions of Urdu speakers live, SANSKRIT stands in as a living language instead of Urdu in the education system, the language is going to decline. (note, though, that I would blame plenty of Urdu speakers for the current situation, too.)
To think that the language which was without a doubt the lingua franca across a huge swath of South Asia could suddenly succumb to "market forces" in the span of 100 years, is juts wishful thinking. Its certainly convenient, though, and that's why so many people can say things like "There is no nefarious conspiracy to keep Urdu down in India. The market place is speaking on Urdu and its really as simple as that." without having to really consider what happened. otherwise,why would the market care to go to the trouble of calling them "Hindi films" when they were usually written, songs and all, by the greats of Urdu literature?

A few more things, from PAFD:

" Btw, the Kashmiris in the Valley dont speak Urdu. " I am aware. But somehow, your "market forces" declared that Urdu would be the state language of Kashmir, which is why the example was relevant. Urdu had to be given something, but, khuda na khwasta that it shouldn't be sharing any space in the Hindi heartland, so they stuck it in Kashmir.

'Urdu speakers have been able to convince the whole of Pakistani Punjab (which has more people than native urdu speakers in India) to adopt Urdu as their national language." This statement is also plenty myopic. If you look at the numbers of people who speak Urdu, or study Urdu in Pakistan, they are quite low - lower than in many parts of Bihar, UP, MP. And there are plenty of people there who don't like Urdu at all. And, besides, what justice is this that Urdu has been relegated to a foreign country, cut off from its roots and its speakers. I'm not crying for the language as an abstract thing, but for its speakers! And that includes not just Muslims, but everyone who has been deprived of the chance to learn a language with 400 years of history, and especially those who have been taught to believe that the language is "evil, outdated, un-indian, anti-hindu, and so on and so forth." What a terrible situation, PAFD, when you can sound almost gleeful about the demise of an incredible language that you could grasp within only a few weeks work (assuming you know Hindi).

after reading this, I tried out the Hindi one, and it's great! It's really easy to use, but it might make me more lazy in remembering exact Hindi spelling.. (for example, I can type bahut and it will type it correctly, whether or not I remmeber if it is a long or short 'u' in Hindi).

Overall though, I think it is great and soo easy to use. I think it will make Hindi a lot more accessible as an internet language...

"In fact this whole division of one language (Urdu/Hindustani) into two (Urdu and Hindi) only occurred under the British at Fort William College."

Yes. Let's not forget that Urdu and Hindi are part of a false dichotomy. Both were originally "Hindustani" and could be written using either script. Even today, both have the same exact grammar and basic vocabulary. The different lies in where people choose to draw their vocabulary from. If they draw more from Arabic and Persian then it is called Urdu, and if it draws more on Sanskrit then it is called Hindi. But as a student of Hindi, I still learn a vast number of words that come from Arabic and Persian, and can communicate with an Urdu speaker on many topics.

Historically, I believe drawing more so on Arabic and especially Persian was seen more as an artistic choice, as people felt these words sounded more poetic...

Also, it is interesting that the institute where I studied Hindi in India almost created this strange Sanskrit-origin word preference-- teaching us Sanskrit versions of many words that are NOT commonly used in Hindi/Urdu in India, and insisting that this is 'real' or Shuddh Hindi though if I use these words in common conversation people will look strangely at me or may not even know the vocabulary word I am using.

Are the "z's" tranlisterated from the Dravidian languages into English in prounounced the same as the English zed?

Exactly how would urulakiZhangu meZhukkupuratti be pronounced?

If Urdu is being killed by the current power structures in India, then we should also remember that it owes its existence and development to earlier power structures that created and nurtured it. So one set of power structures favored it, and the most current set does not.

As for Pakistan, the fact is that Urdu has made huge, irreversible inroads into the lives of Pakistani Punjabis. It is the de facto mothertongue to many urban youth. There are many people, especially from Lahore, who know Urdu and not Punjabi. Especially as a written tongue, Urdu dominates in Punjab. They don't even teach Punjabi as a subject! Even the people who can speak Punjabi generally use Urdu as their written medium. It is very common to have the parents speak Punjabi to each other but Urdu to their kids. To say less people study Urdu in Pakistan than in India is ridiculous. Urdu and English are the main written languages and languages of education. I give huge props to the Sindhis there, who at least fought for and won an important place for their language in Sindh. And the Pashto people generally speak Pashto with pride. But Punjabi has taken huge hits in Pakistan. Just as the Bollywood award shows perversely take place mostly in English, the state assembly of Punjab in Pakistan takes place in Urdu...and from what I've read, it only became PERMISSIBLE to even make Punjabi speeches there rather recently, prior to that it was simply forbidden to do so.

Zha in UrulakiZHAngu is the sound that Malayalees use to test whether a person is really a malayalee. I do not know a similar sound in any other language. Does anyone know? I have not heard one non-mallu pronounce that sound clearly.

Older Malayalees thought that they can pronounce the sound 'Zha' because of the 'eerkil' from cocunut leaves as the tongue cleaner. If Ann can pronounce it, that myth is busted.

So it is a z sound then? Like za za gabor? where is the tongue placed when saying it?

59 LandBeyond7Zs:

Zha in UrulakiZHAngu is the sound that Malayalees use to test whether a person is really a malayalee. I do not know a similar sound in any other language. Does anyone know? I have not heard one non-mallu pronounce that sound clearly.

Tamizh.

Zha in UrulakiZHAngu is the sound that Malayalees use to test whether a person is really a malayalee. I do not know a similar sound in any other language. Does anyone know? I have not heard one non-mallu pronounce that sound clearly.

That's what Tamils think too. :-)

About the Hindi Urdu debate, as Amitabh remarked Urdu grew because it was patronised by the rulers of that period. No use fretting about the loss of patronage now. At least Pakistanis have been brainwashed to taking up Urdu as an Islamic language even though it is actually a native language of just the Mohajirs.

Zha in UrulakiZHAngu is the sound that Malayalees use to test whether a person is really a malayalee. I do not know a similar sound in any other language. Does anyone know? I have not heard one non-mallu pronounce that sound clearly.

sepiaaa - the z is neither as in zed or zha zha. to compare it to other indian languages, it is closest to the retroflective 'l' that comes across in the southern languages (incl. marathi). in linguistic terms, i don't know if e.g. the zh is palliative, retroflective etc. after you asked where the tongue is placed, i tried saying it, and interestingly, the tongue is placed nowhere - it is curled back - almost like a retroflective, but ends up touching no part of the mouth.

now that set me off -so bloody hungry. and it is only 9 AM here :)

On the Urdu debate, for me it is really very simple and Amitabh and Ponniyin vaguely touched on this. Urdu borrows heavily from foreign languages--Arabic and Persian. They might be nice languages but they are foreign. I am as comfortable speaking Urdu in India as I am Japanese or Swedish. For me of course, it is easier to expunge Urdu from my life since it is not a very big part of it.. It is perhaps more difficult for those who have adopted Islam and all its cultural baggage.
It is like if Syrian Christians started to speak heavily Aramaic infused Malayalee or even Aramaic itself and then insist that that is the lingua franca of Kerala. That everyone understands it. That everyone likes all those foreign words. That the original Malayalee words were not good enough, versatile enough, poetic enough. Persian is to Hindi as Aramaic is to Malayalee. Simple.

Now this is a heavily loaded issue. But really it shouldn't be. Afghans, Turks, Persians and Arabs are not Indians. They will be the first ones to declaim against such assertions. Their language too then is not Indian.

Now this is a heavily loaded issue. But really it shouldn't be. Afghans, Turks, Persians and Arabs are not Indians. They will be the first ones to declaim against such assertions. Their language too then is not Indian.

I don't think we can paint the issue in black and white. Britishers are not Indians either, but their language stuck. I think people take interest in languages that helps them progress. And that's where the government patronage helps. Like how the Indian government now spreads Hindi.

I guess, people (in north India) in the 1500-1700s would have been falling over themselves to get educated in Persian, that's the court language and language of power for the Mughals.

Well, I would say however that a huge number of Perso-Arabic vocabulary has entered EVERYDAY colloquial Hindi (at least urban Hindi) and should now be considered part of the Hindi language. There is no need to expunge commonly used Persian or Arabic words that everyone (Hindu and Muslim alike) uses and replace them with Sanskrit train-wrecks that no one organically uses or intuitively understands. I like the organic Hindustani that is spoken across northern India and Pakistan, whereas I think the two extremes (highly Persianized Urdu and highly Sanskritized Hindi) are abominations. Hindi has the capacity to be as rich and flexible as English...a language that never hesitated to borrow from all the other languages its speakers came across or historical processes they underwent, and incorporate them into its own lexicon, with no notions of purity, only utility. While still being capable of great beauty.

Amitabh, at some point people had to learn those Persianized/Arabized Hindi vocabulary too. Nobody organically used or intuitively understood those words then either. Why were the fruits of a prior alteration fine while the fruits of the current ones are now considered "abominable?"

I've never been much of a democrat when it comes to languages. I'd rather raise the bar on vocabulary and conversation than sink it to the lowest common denominator. Much of the richness and diversity you ascribe to English came not because Olde English speakers wanted to use the words that were native or intuitive to the man on the street, but because they wanted to make themselves more classy by Latinizing it.

BTW, the dish looks delicious. I've heard this name for the first time. seems like a malayali speciality.

I've just heard little "mezhuguvathis" that we use when power goes off. :-)

"I like the organic Hindustani that is spoken across northern India and Pakistan, whereas I think the two extremes (highly Persianized Urdu and highly Sanskritized Hindi) are abominations."

Agreed!

"for me it is really very simple and Amitabh and Ponniyin vaguely touched on this. Urdu borrows heavily from foreign languages--Arabic and Persian. They might be nice languages but they are foreign."

If that's really so, then who the hell cares? Why doesn't it bother you that the English post that you just made is filled to the brim with french loan-words and even french grammatical structures?? In all serious, Jagat, what is the standard for what is 'foreign' and what is not. If there have been Arabs in India for over a millennium, what makes them still foreign? And if Aryans have been there for three millennium, why aren't THEY foreign? I don't understand your standard, except that its convenient for you.

Standards are always based on what's convenient. Flip around your argument and try to answer it. What makes them not foreign?

One would think the fact that they call themselves "Arabs" would indicate some level of foreignness no?

And if English speakers decided they were going to make a concerted effort to start transitioning the language more like something out of BeoWulf would that necessarily be a terrible thing?
Difficult and expensive sure, but why would it be bad if that's what they want?

I'm just a little curious where this more is coming from. This idea that it was okay for Hindi to become what it became due to centuries of Persian and Arabic influence, but it is suddenly not okay for India's modern intelligencia to influence it another way perplexes me.

P.S. Arabs never really went past Sindh. The Delhi Sultanates and the Mughals that followed them all came from the Central Asian Steppes so they're a Turkic/Afghan/Mongol mix.

And if Aryans have been there for three millennium, why aren't THEY foreign?

What exactly are Aryans?

And if Aryans have been there for three millennium, why aren't THEY foreign?

What exactly are Aryans?

Is it the post hoc explanation that White people came up with to reconcile their belief in their own melanin deficient superiority with the historical fact that a bunch of darkies were able to construct a glorious civilization without them?

Amitabh, may I ask why these "purer" forms are abonimable to you? I suspect its because they have veered so far away from the spoken form, but I was still wondering. I'm acually a bit surprised on your take on this approval of organic change due to influences over the time - considering you are normally opposed to e.g. Indian culture being influenced by the west, this strikes me as curious.

In Tamil, like in Hindi, there is a huge difference between the spoken and written forms of the language. But, unlike in Hindi, the exposure of the literary version has never gone away - it is merely used in different contexts. As in Hindi, it is used when reading news and making speeches, but unlike in Hindi, it is also used in lyrics. Socially and culturally, there is also different view in Tamil when it comes to how people regard the formal version of the language - it is still highly revered - and I think much of this has to do with the fact that the words used in colloquial Tamil are, to a great extent, just a diluted form of the original, rather than replaced by a borrowed word. In the end, this results in people knowing what the literary form is, but just using a different manifestation/pronunciation of it. And this is just in India - Sri Lankan Tamil is still far closer to the literary form when it is spoken.

And if English speakers decided they were going to make a concerted effort to start transitioning the language more like something out of BeoWulf would that necessarily be a terrible thing?

Of course it would be terrible. It would be insecure, ahistorical, reactionary, regressive, and unneccessary. It would be trying to erase 1500 years of English's (and English speakers') history and experiences. It would force children to learn what would virtually be a foreign language. It would be a form of denial and a pathetic, futile attempt to change the past. All to satisfy a handful of presumably influential or powerful people who have the ability to effect such change if they want to, regardless what anyone else thinks about it.

I'm just a little curious where this more is coming from. This idea that it was okay for Hindi to become what it became due to centuries of Persian and Arabic influence, but it is suddenly not okay for India's modern intelligencia to influence it another way perplexes me.

This modern intelligentsia has done more to ensure Hindi's death and uselessness than anyone else has. And who the hell are they to determine what people should speak? This modern intelligentsia merely pushes its own agenda, has its own motives and prejudices and biases; why should THEY get to impose those on a helpless, largely illiterate population that has no choice but to try to adapt to whatever ridiculous and difficult circumstances the modern intelligentsia creates for it? And do the modern intelligentsia apply sound linguistic theories to what they do or is just pathetic nationalism, hyperreligiosity, and hatred toward the other? Of course this applies in equal measure to the jerks who have made Urdu into a ridiculous Persian wannabe that has no connection to the land it's spoken in.

I don't disagree that there should be a literati or dedicated people who work for the improvement of Hindi (or any other language); and there should be standards and a certain amount of prescriptive measures. But not merely trying to return to some glorious mythic age that never existed, or pretending that by substitutin Sanskrit terms everywhere they're returning Hindi to some pure form it allegedly was spoken in eons ago (which is not even factual).

Amitabh, may I ask why these "purer" forms are abonimable to you?

Because it's not 'purer'. They merely took Urdu (or Hindustani) and removed every foreign word and artificially substituted a Sanskrit word in its place. Voila! There was their new Hindi. They imagined they returned the language to some pristine form that people must have spoken it in before the Muslims came. But that is totally false.

What I AM against is the mindless use of Hinglish where perfectly good Hindi words exist. Why say "water drink karo" when you can say "paani piyo"? Or "chair mein sit karo" when you can say "kursi mein baitho"? To replace a Hinglish sentence with a Hindi sentence is a valid thing in my opinion. I have no problem with English words entering Hindi, in fact anything that didn't have a handy Hindi word already (computer, telephone, television, google, etc). should have just used the English word in my opinion. But replacing regular, common functional Hindi words with English equivalents seems lazy and negative in my opinion. This may not gel with what I've been saying about retaining commonly-used PersoArabic words in Hindi, but remember that one process took place over centuries and one is taking place over decades.

IF the zees in Malayalam are really ells, then why when they transliterate Malayalam into English is a zee used? That always confused me and made me think the langauage contained alot of words with zees in them, when it does not.

So are you saying that that form of Hindi is, in fact, not Hindi? I am not really understanding here. I learned Hindi in the standard way - with minimal/no Urdu, and then our Hindi classes were accompanied by Urdu classes such that finally when we were more conversational, we combined both for Hindustani, but still knew which words (for the most part) belonged to which language. But although that form of Hindi was not spoken colloquially and was, generally, relegated to specific fora, it did not sound odd, as Hindi in its original/literary form is heavily Sanskritized. Are you talking even about the standard written Hindi that is being taught in school? Perhaps we are not talking about the same "extreme." I guess I also have to ask whether you have learned Hindi formally - because that makes a HUGE difference. Most people who learn Hindi fomally will prob. not think the extreme (that I think you are talking about) is odd because they have been exposed to it far more than those who just speak colloquially Hindustani.

Water drink karo - what's the point?! It's already 2/3 English anyway. In fact, the 'karo' is pretty unnecessary. Yeah, but I do agree about the choice of using words in English when their Hindi counterparts are just as accessible and acceptable. I recently heard a woman say in Tamil "Naan idhai make pannen," which translates roughly into "I made made this." Tanglish also has this particular style of adding "-ify" to full Tamil words, in the middle of an otherwise fully Tamil sentence.

Is it the post hoc explanation that White people came up with to reconcile their belief

Well it's unfortunate these ideas are still perpetuated...

Valare upakaram meams "good work"? If so, I figured that out coz of it's Sanskritic bent. Interesting. If not, then my bad.

I'm not familiar with Malayalam but I do not that Tamil uses alot of Sanskrit words and I was wondering when this first started, or if it's always been like that. Or could it be that Sanskrit took several words from Tamil?

IF the zees in Malayalam are really ells, then why when they transliterate Malayalam into English is a zee used?

it is highly confusing. at least in tamil, people who are incapable of pronouncing 'zh' will substitute it with a palliative 'l.' though in many ways, the 'zh' sounds closest to e.g. a rolled 'r' to me. i stopped asking questions, mostly because it's an issue of transliteration, which in many cases will be off/inaccurate. since the words written in the actual script are quite clear, just know that the people actually speaking these language are able to tell the difference between them (even if they are not able to pronounce the differences between them!).

check out the second word of this song to hear the sound.

sepiaa sez

So it is a z sound then? Like za za gabor? where is the tongue placed when saying it?

I yumbly disagree. Turn your tongue backwards, like a chameleon's tail and let the tongue's bottom rest on the hard palate of the upper jaw. the tip of your tongue should be no more than 1.52cm from the soft palate. then you basically squeeze your belly inwards and let the air escape the random pipes into the buccal cavity and out. you'll produce a sound close to the 'ellll'. hope it verks for you.

72 · Yoga Fire

And if English speakers decided they were going to make a concerted effort to start transitioning the language more like something out of BeoWulf would that necessarily be a terrible thing?
Difficult and expensive sure, but why would it be bad if that's what they want?

Who is they, why do they want to do it, and what else is going on in the world around them when they decide to do it? What is the point of this discussion without asking and answering these questions?

81 · Sepiaaahhh:

I'm not familiar with Malayalam but I do not that Tamil uses alot of Sanskrit words and I was wondering when this first started, or if it's always been like that. Or could it be that Sanskrit took several words from Tamil?

You've just hit upon the linguistic purging which isn't being discussed in this thread.

82 · ak:

...though in many ways, the 'zh' sounds closest to e.g. a rolled 'r' to me.

I've found this to be the easiest way to teach Americans who are new to the language how to make the sound - to compare it to an American r. The problem is sometimes one can get confused, forget what r sounds like, and get totally tripped up.

anyvun been to a ceilidh. LOL

Nice video. Basically then the zh sound is the rolled "r" sound, which basically sounds closer to a "d".

Varun Gandhi will cut off the arms of anybody who speaks in Urdu.

Ponniyen:

I don't think we can paint the issue in black and white. Britishers are not Indians either, but their language stuck.

Kabob:

Why doesn't it bother you that the English post that you just made is filled to the brim with french loan-words and even french grammatical structures??

Kabob:

Aryans have been there for three millennium, why aren't THEY foreign?

sorry, md - but i thought of you while eating!

Most of what you said makes very little sense to me. Historically, I understand what you are talking about, but again, yours seems a narrative of convenience. Supposing that when you say Arabs (fyi, I chose the term arab just to demonstrate how long muslims have been in India, not becuase I think that all of them were Arab), you are referring to Persians, Turks (you mention anatolia), and Afghans, I don't think you can make the argument that they only came to plunder or because they were "out of work" and seriously claim to be impartial. These "foreigners" became entirely Indian and had no intentions of ever going back to where they came from any more than my (polish) family has any intention to leave the US for for Krakow. There are serious differences between the Mughal empire (not to mention any of the other Islamic dynasties...bijapur, hyderabad, etc...and the british empire. The latter were never there to say; the former were. The former contributed massively to Indian society, science, literature, everything, without taking any money out of the country. Though there has been so much inter-marriage that the point should really be moot: if I can marry an Indian woman and make her a US citizen, I'd like to think that 500 years of intermarrying would qualify one to be "Indian." But of course, some people think they can arrogate to themselves the right to decide just what Indian is.

'I don't see any reason why Indians, yes the very same Indians, the darkies who are looked down upon by Persians and Turks and Arabs should sustain said languages in India."

When you said 'darkies,' I thought you were talking about the Dravidians until I finished the sentence. But you don't want to sent the brahman's packing, of course, becuase their culture conforms to your definition of "settled in." At any rate, your statement reeks of bias. On what basis do you assume that all Persians, Turks, and Arabs have always, and do still, look down upon all indians, "darkies," as you like to say?

this reminds me of a conversation I had on a train once. If you haven't figure it out yet, I am white, and a lot of times, this means that people are quite candid when speaking to me in India, assuming that I must not have strong feelings in any direction, or worse, that I will sympathize with their complaints against Islam. At any rate, it was the middle of july, about 5 o'clock in the afernoon. I was in the sleeper class of the train - non-AC. In my section were two men from bombay in suits who saw me reading the urdu paper and began to talk to me. during the course of the conversation, they told me that all muslims were backwards. I asked why they would think that, and they said they could offer me proof...
They told me, look at these Muslims, they are still living in Arabia! They all wear shalwar kameez, like they think they are living in the deserts of arabia or something. If they were modern, they would give up all of their silly, backward traditions.
It was an incredible moment, an amazing thing to say. These men were sitting here, in the indian summer, in a train, WEARING SUITS suited for the british isles but not for a train to Bhopal, telling me that the Muslims were backward and fooling for wearing clothes that vaguely fit the climate they lived in. I tried to point this out to them, but they didnt get what I was saying...they coulnd't see their own contradictions, but would have defended to the death that Muslims weren't Indian...for what thats worth....

Varun Gandhi will cut off the arms of anybody who speaks in Urdu.

Don't worry.. Laloo will crush Varun Gandhi under a roller.

The word "arya" is used in the Bhagavad Gita in reference to Arjuna the warrior. So did "arya" refer to kshatriyas only?

That might change. For one thing realize that if English continues to be preeminent the world over, it will be because 1 billion Indians put their weight behind it. And what if I billion Indians don't? You know it's only been 60 years since the British left. And in that time, English became a world language so now every slum dog wants to learn English (and computers).

No, Actually Englsh was a world language even 60 years back. It was the language of the world's greates empire of that time soon to be replaced by another great power speaking the same language. That's the reason why English stuck in India inspite of some Hindi nutcases' desire to throw out English from India after 1965.

I don't see any threat to english in the immediate future for its global dominance.

So, can someone answer me, does valare upakaram mean "good job", "good work" or "well done"?

"The word "arya" is used in the Bhagavad Gita in reference to Arjuna the warrior. So did "arya" refer to kshatriyas only?"

No. In the Ramayana, Sugriva (the king of monkeys) was referred to as "arya."

Yeah but Sugriva was kshatriya by caste right? He wasn't fully animal but part human, so his human side would have a caste to it, naturally.

He wasn't fully animal but part human, so his human side would have a caste to it, naturally.

i think this is part myth that there were monkey warriors in the ramayana. there are fewer instances of humans born with tails [coincidentally, the longest tail for a human today is 16" and it's held by a bengali fellow per the viki.] but a few hundred or even a thousand years ago, the %ges must have been higher. i suspect the monkey warriors were merely humans who had visibly long tails.

The word arya means noble in sanskrit and is a common adjective. For example Buddha's 4 noble truths are called the "4 aryani satyani".

So, can someone answer me, does valare upakaram mean "good job", "good work" or "well done"?

It means "many thanks". link.

I'm not familiar with Malayalam but I do not that Tamil uses alot of Sanskrit words and I was wondering when this first started, or if it's always been like that. Or could it be that Sanskrit took several words from Tamil?

I was always told that Malayalam had more Sanskrit words than Tamil, (actually, what I was told is that Malayalam is a mix of Sanskrit and Tamil) so this thread is interesting.

Also, the "zha" in urulakizhangu mezhukkupuratti is pronounced like an "R" in this phrase, not an "L" or "jh", to be excessively simple about it. A hint of that is in the post itself:

the side dish I loved most as a small child: a fried, potato-y concoction which I’d spell “oorelkarunga merehkwerty or in a similarly butchered fashion.

OK so then valare means thanks and upakaram means I'm giving/doing. Sanskrit.

Kar, Karma, Karam - action, activity, doing.

I am fluent and proud of my Tamizh(read,write,speak). I studied 4 years in middle school in Madurai.I can tell the difference between a Madurai zha, Palghat zha, Nagercoil zha, Malayalam zha. Malayalam has a letter designated for zha.

BTW. Did you notice the place names of Kerala cities in Google map. They still use the tamil names used by the old tamil surveyors of east india company.

Malayalam has a letter designated for zha.

I'm not clear on what you mean by this - are you saying Tamil doesn't? As far as I understand, apart from the aspirated consonants in Malayalam, I thought it shared more or less the same alphabet with Tamil (or Tamizh, if you like), which includes all three L sounds (or two Ls and a zh, if you like). I don't know the Malayalam alphabet, but with Google's help and this chart I'm able to produce this:

മലയാളം = மலயாளம் = ma-la-yaa-Lam (where the first la is made with the tongue further front than the second, more palatal La) - although in Tamil it's spelled மலையாளம், right?

தமிழ் = തമിഴ് = tha-mi-zh

If you want to write in Malayam,Punjabi et all, just go to quillpad or follow link below. Quillpad can actually be used to send e-mails..

http://kaulonline.com/uninagari/gurumukhi/

Nine languages to choose from

if English continues to be preeminent the world over, it will be because 1 billion Indians put their weight behind it. And what if I billion Indians don't?

the newspaper with the widest circulation in the world is a hindi rag. vaat is its name?
two virtual jalebis for the right answer. and a virtual samosa for the person who can tell the circ.

Kabob

'darkies,' I thought you were talking about the Dravidians until I finished the sentence. But you don't want to sent the brahman's packing, of course, becuase their culture conforms to your definition of "settled in."

Kabob, I used the word "darkies" because someone else had used it a little before. Most people I have encountered the world over-- and I have lived in 4 continents since the 70's-- are contemptuous of Indians. The only people lower on the totem pole are perhaps Bangladeshis. If you know people who respect Indians as a collective group (individuals fare better, e.g. no one would call Aiswarya Rai ugly but they might say Indians are ugly), I'd like to meet them. From what you write, you appear to have little knowledge of India. Ghori was a plunderer and he didn't stay in India. Google him.
As for taking money out of India, google Nadir Shah, google Ghori--you know he waived all taxes because his Indian excursions took care of that.

I don't want to send anyone packing. Not the muslims nor the brahmins. Kabob, please learn a little about India before you (and many like you) get all so huffed up and self-righteous. You have made certain assumptions, and now you want to force a fit.

Someone said North Indians and Pakistanis could understand the same language. And I said I wasn't so sure. I then went on to say that Turks etc... were not Indian (it is a fairly obvious point but some people don't see it that way)
and I don't know why elements of their language have to be foisted on all north Indians. (It is, you know, through Bollywood--Bollywood is new to me which is why although I knew some Hindi, I had to look up these words).
I am not sure what that has to do with cultural contributions, Sending them packing etc... Your leaps of logic.
(PS: there weren't many scientific contributions that I know of during the Muslim period.)

About your little train episode, yes there is a lot of bias the hindu has for the muslim. There is also a lot of bias the muslim has for the hindu, the hindu for the christian, the christian for the hindu etc... I guess we don't send people to gas chambers. We just hold on to our biases. Now you can wag your finger all you want at Indians and bring up the caste system, Aryans (you did and yes that gave you away), brahmans (it is usually spelled "brahmin") etc...
but the ground truth is quite complex and finger wagging is what missionaries do. What is your agenda? To say muslims have it tough in India?

Most of what you said makes very little sense to me.

I'm catching a flight now. So no more feeding trolls.

My Dog Ji, although I am not disputing your experiences, in UK at least, Indian Sub Continent people are respected...well lets ignore the underclass, they hate all Darkies

To reply to 100 · Sepiaaahhh
Valare is Malayalam for "very". Upakaaram is of course "help". Literally "very helpful" but a better translation is "much obliged",

Jagat: Your response is not even worth replying to, but since you insist on insulting my repeatedly, I guess I will. Thanks for the tip on who to google, but I think I'll take a pass. I've already read most of the original Persian sources that discuss people like Ghori, Mahmood, and so on. You've found a few names that fit your argument, and you are going to throw them in my face as though I haven't heard all this before. I was speaking to general trends, and I reject your extremist attempt to center Ghori as though he proves that every since Turk was bent on plunder. Your own leaps of logic are pretty impressive.

Perhaps I didn't go to the trouble to be elegant (or perhaps even coherent), but you seem very unwilling to give the benefit of the doubt. As though I didn't understand what you intended when you used the term 'darkies.' To the contrary, I meant to comment on what I thought was a cheap shot where it was hardly called for.

What I do find interesting is that your exceedingly rude and presumptive post comes in the wake of my informing you that I'm not Indian. Who are you to tell me to "learn a little bit about India" - would you have said that before I told you my own ethnicity? Perhaps I could ask you to learn a few things before our next discussion. You dont know the meaning of the two simple words common to both Hindi and Urdu - manzil and and dastan - and yet you feel comfortable commenting on the linguistic situation that straddles India and Pakistan. Oh, of course, you're Indian, and that makes you qualified to explain everything to me, and tell me that I am grossly misinformed and need to go consult wikipedia. There are may be many things I don't know about India, but I do happen to be fluent in both Hindi and Urdu and have spent over five years living in BOTH India AND Pakistan, and I have no doubt that I'm more well fluent, and vastly more well-read, than you ever will be in both Hindi and Urdu. . But I refuse to discuss any of my own "credentials," or what I have learned and where. It seems its enough for you that I'm white, case closed.

As for being "puffed up and self-righteous" - it looks like I'm in good company.

thanks for the spelling lesson. If I want to transliterate it from Hindi, that's my prerogative.

'(PS: there weren't many scientific contributions that I know of during the Muslim period.)" - Do some googling yourself - or read a book.

" What is your agenda? To say muslims have it tough in India?"

Yeah, basically. Because of people like you.

Enjoy your flight.

Of course Urdu will be seen as the language of the Muslims when it is pitted against a newly invented language (now called Hindi, a term that used to refer to what we think of as Urdu)

Interesting. I always thought that urdu was hindi, just with persian words interspersed throughout instead of shudh hindi or katibholi hindi. Which came first, the chicken or the egg?

It never dawned on my that urdu could've been a separate and older language in it's own right.

I'd like to know the linguistic history if you could summarize it briefly here, Kabob Sahib.

I use Travultsoft Keyman 6.0 (Mozhi Keyman) to write in Malayalam. Once installed, I can type in Manglish, and it auto transliterates to Malayalam.
വളരെ ഉപകാരം ഗൂഗിള്‍!
http://varamozhi.wikia.com/wiki/Help:Contents/Beginner has all the necessary details.

Urdu is based on the khadi boli dialect of Hindi (which comes from Delhi region and western Uttar Pradesh).

Kabon Sahib, you make some good points but I do feel your comments are sort of an apology for Muslim invaders' (and their subsequent descendants') attitudes towards Hindus and Indian non-Muslims (and their culture) in general. They were not all a bunch of benign folks interested in becoming 'Indian' just like the locals.

The following text are from wikipedia entries for Hindi and Urdu, and Mughal:

History of Hindi
Like many other modern Indian languages, Hindi has evolved from Sanskrit, by way of the Middle Indo-Aryan Prakrit languages and Apabhramsha of the Middle Ages. Though there is no consensus for a specific time, Hindi originated as local dialects such as Braj, Awadhi and finally Khari Boli after the turn of tenth century.[9] In the span of nearly a thousand years of Muslim influence, such as when Muslim rulers controlled much of northern India during the Delhi Sultanate and the Mughal Empire, many Persian and Arabic words were absorbed into khari boli and was called Urdu. Since almost all Arabic words came via Persian, they do not preserve the original phonology of Arabic.

Hindi is contrasted with Urdu in the way both are written, and the use of Sanskrit vocabulary in higher registers. Urdu is the official language of Pakistan and also an official language in some parts of India. The primary differences between the two are the way Standard Hindi is written in Devanagari and draws its "vocabulary" with words from (Indo-Aryan) Sanskrit, while Urdu is written in Urdu script, a variant of the (Semitic) Perso-Arabic script, and draws heavily on Persian and Arabic "vocabulary."

Vocabulary is in quotes here since it is mostly the literary vocabulary that shows this visible distinction with the everyday vocabulary being essentially common between the two.

Hindi is spoken mainly in northern states of Rajasthan, Delhi, Haryana, Uttarakhand, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Chattisgarh, Himachal Pradesh, Jharkhand and Bihar, and is spoken alongside regional languages like Punjabi, Gujarati, Marathi or Bengali throughout north and central India. Hindi is also understood and spoken in other parts of India, Nepal and Bangladesh. Hindustani is spoken by all persons of Indian descent in Fiji. In Western Viti Levu and Northern Vanua Levu, it is a common spoken language and a link language spoken between Fijians of Indian descent and native Fijians. The latter are also the only race in the world of non Indian descent that includes majority hindi speakers.

History of Urdu
In general, the term "Urdu" can encompass dialects of Hindustani other than the standardised versions.The original language of the Mughals had been Turkish, but after their arrival in South Asia, they came to adopt Persian and later Urdu. The word Urdu is believed to be derived from the Turkish, word 'Ordu', which means army encampment.[7] It was initially called Zabān-e-Ordu-e-Mu'alla or language of the exalted army and later just Urdu. It obtained its name from Urdu Bazar, i.e. encampment (Urdu in Turkish) market, the market near the Red Fort in the walled city of Delhi.[8]

When did Mughals came to India?
The Mughal Empire(Urdu: Mughal Sultanat-e-Hind) was a Muslim imperial power of the Indian subcontinent which began in 1526, ruled most of the Indian Subcontinent by the late 17th and early 18th centuries, and ended in the mid-19th century.[1] The Mughal Emperors were Timurids of Turko-Mongol descent, and developed a highly sophisticated mixed Indo-Persian culture

Does this shed some light?

Kabob Sahib...........knowledge or just sophomoric babbling about India, whether the word "Manzil" common knowledge for a South Indian, Urdu is not the mother tongue of Kashmiris, there are Urdu newspapers widely circulated in cow belt........ arrogance or humility......who is to tell in these smattering, half-baked comments on a blog. However, someone who claims to be white on the internet, and uses "Sahib" as a handle on a South Asian blog is quite disquieting, as Sahib word is quite loaded to be used by someone not of South Asian race, and carries centuries of baggage and colonialisation. Bery, bery interesting.

My impression is that Kabob Sahib is a Muslim convert/revert who has spent time in Pakistan either for work, and perhaps converted/reverted there, or first converted/reverted in his own country but went to Pakistan as part of his religious experience. Or he very well could be a MFB, muslim from birth, who married an Indo-Pak girl.

Maybe in Pakistan and India he was referred to as "sahib"? It's not uncommon to address men as "sahib" in either of those countries.

Anyway, I still would like to hear from him regarding the origins of urdu.

Kabob Sahib, don't let "Jagat" scare you off. There are others on here who are interested in your point of view.

This is a fascinating discussion. I realize, though, what my mistake is. I entered the discussion almost on the fly, and didn't even think about slowly and coherently forming an argument. The comments above have make me think that I have just not come across the way I meant to, and that perhaps my examples needed to be more clearly elucidated. This must have been my error, otherwise, why would Khush Tandon believe that I think Urdu is the native language of kashmiris (reread my post and you will see I only mentioned kashmir and Urdu in the first place becuase I wanted to demonstrate that there are state employees that may want to utilize advancements in Urdu computing but may not be able to use pakistani software because of their affiliation with the state, despite the fact that urdu is the STATE language of kashmir). I will admit to being caught up in a flurry of arguments and perhaps not being clear. In the future, I will be more precise. At this point, there is not much more that I can do, as I'm really not in the mood to go back and defend every statement I made. I don't expect a South Indian to know what the word manzil means at all, but I do think that if that someone does not, they might be willing to concede that they are not omnipotent on linguistic minutiae of a potent political nature that exists in a place far from their own linguistic expertise.

Next, my handle. That's a pretty big critique there. I'm sorry it strikes you as disquieting. I see where the point is coming from with regards to baggage and colonialism, but I'm not sure how I should feel about it. I'll have to do some thinking. As a bit of history, I invented the name Kabob Sahib because I had written a silly poem about Lucknow in Urdu and needed a takhallus to round it off. I liked how the phrase rhymed, fit the meter, and referenced one of Lucknow's specialties. This was long before I knew much about South Asia (relatively), and the thought didn't even occur to me. Now, perhaps it would, but I've used it intermittently for so long I suppose I forgot to reevaluate. But really, I think you're being slightly unfair. Or do you suspect its my subconscious desire to recolonize India in my own mind by using the term? It probably has more to do with the fact that I've often been called "(my name) Sahib" by countless people, from professors own down, without, I think, the subtext you are reading into it. The same people, incidentally, would refer to females as ___ sahiba, as opposed to memsahib, if that makes things any clearer. On this issue, I think you can read whatever you want into it. If you really want to see it as a Freudian manifestation of my own orientalist fantasies, then go for it. But I hope you might give me a little more credit, or look into my own perspective and background a bit first.

Sepiaahhh, I'm not a Muslim, have never been one, and probably never will be. I just find this topic interesting. I'll try and talk about the linguistic question below.

Amitabh, thanks for the more serious response. As I said above, I'll be more organized next time. I don't want to come off as being apologetic in any way, for that's not really what I am trying to achieve. Rather, I don't think that there is much to be apologized for. What happened in the past is done and gone, and there isn't much reason to bring it up . if there have been Persians and Turks living in India for 500 years, intermarried and without any connections to their homelands (except, at max, maybe a family tree), then to my mind, they are Indian. What I am trying to question is the idea that to be Indian you have to be Hindu or any other such think. The same thing goes for imported words and phrases. Many Arabic words, for instance, have been so thoroughly Indianized that not only are the not pronounced as they originally were, they don{t even MEAN the same thing as they did in either Persian or Arabic. If its changed so much in its Indian environment, it can't possibly still be Arabic, but if its also not Indian, then what is it? I hope I am making sense.
I think these questions have become so wrapped up in political games and picked to shreds that its hard to think about them calmly and rationally. Why are these Urdu words, for instance, so tendentious to us now, when 150 years ago people of all religions were using them without the slightest hesitation. Just take the sikh phrase Wahe gujuji di fateh...is this phrase not Indian because fateh is an Arabic word?

Anyhow, why do I care so much? I think its absolutely to everyone's detriment to argue that certain people are foreign, or that a certain language is foreign, and that we can delight in watching it die out (see above.) This, to me, is incredible. In a world we we want to conserve everything, that someone can delight in the death not only of an abstract being, but in the death of an entire culture. This is what I am against, and what I am trying to argue against. At the end of the day, it doesn't really matter what Ghori did or what Mahmood did. It has little bearing on the life of a poor sayyid living out his life in Hyderabad, eating mangoes and suffering the heat and the floods with the rest of the city. It can't feel nice to do all that, and have people who don't even know you tell you you are a foreigner.

What I do find interesting, for my part, since Khush brings up the question of colonialism (whether he wants to implicate me in that or not), is that a lot of what I am reading here was first proposed by British historians themselves, who certainly had a vested interest in maintaining the idea that Muslims were only interested in rapping and pillaging the Hindus of India. It was these historians who would comb Persian chronicles for anything that sounded anti-Hindu in order to translate them and put them in readers and 'academic' articles. I don't think that the few examples given above really bear out the claim that "they were not all a bunch of benign folks interested in becoming 'Indian' just like the locals." Again, I am not interested in blaming anyone, or being apologetic for anyone, but in as far as I can tell, the presiding tone of the discussion above has not been nuanced, and wants to make broad statements based on convenient factoids.
Finally, I will never claim to be most-knowledgeable when it comes to India, but I do think I'm entitled to present my own opinion without my ethnicity being given TOO much weight.

Phew, after all that, I am not sure that I can type much in response to your question, Sepiahhh. At any rate, I am not intimidated by some of the comments above. I have spent a great amount of time reading and researching on the question of Urdu/Hindi, and if anyone wants to question my opinion, I hope that they do so not out based on my ethnic background, but on academic grounds.

The short answer to your question is that there were many dialects which were spoken around Delhi and in North India. One of which, Khadi Boli,eventually came to form the basis of what we now think of as Hindi/Urdu. Because of its longstanding interaction with speakers of Persian, Turkish, and so on, it eventually took on many words from those languages. At that time, the langauge was referred to by many terms: rekhti, gujari, hindi (which, in Arabic, just meant 'indian'). The language was used as a lingua franca, but was not systematized or formalized for centuries, and you could not look at a text and say that it belonged to either of the modern categories of "Hindi" or "Urdu." ... Eventually, the language came to be known as Urdu, and it had many registers, and was not considered a 'Muslim' language. It was extremely common, and was written in the nastaliq script.. In the 19th century, there was a movement to 'purify' it. The devanagri script was adapted/designed to fit it, and sammelans or committees were formed to start replacing 'foreign' words with sanskritized ones. This was all exacerbated by the politics of the day, and everyone is to blame for it. Including Muslims, who began to see Urdu as 'theirs' and started rewriting history themselves (erasing, for instance, the names of many great Hindu poets of Urdu). It was then argued that Hindi was the ancient language and Urdu the recent and foreign interloper. This, despite the fact that Hindi as it was then devised had never been spoken before. The literature is ample testament to this. While there is Urdu (in the modern sense) literature going back several centuries, Hindi literature is really grasping at straws (claiming Khusrau) for instance, until the 19th. There are plenty of other traditions - Braj, or Awadhi, for instance - but not in "Hindi." What we call Hindi today is a modern thing. Nothing wrong with it, but its just one of those interesting twists of fate that the sammelans were so successful that most Indians are convinced beyond a doubt that Hindi existed first, and that Urdu replaced Hindi words instead of the other way around. But this has been discussed so many times before. What I am writing here is a simplified version. I hope my fellow commentators won't find anthing abhorrent/colonialistic in it. :)

agg, I meant to say omniscient, not omnipotent...its late, cut me some slack this time around, guys. :)

Did I really write "wahe gujuji"!! Another lesson learned: spell checking.

na-chiz kabob,

peace, i think i over-reacted too, partly, hindi for a north Indian is not for someone who is south indian, and learns hindi (their vocabularly tend to be slighlty different as a more formal language, and their commonality with sanskrit) with their south indian mother tongue...........use na-chiz or sahib, as you wish.

You've just hit upon the linguistic purging which isn't being discussed in this thread.

The problem is sometimes one can get confused, forget what r sounds like, and get totally tripped up.

Kabob Sahib:

First of all let me make it clear your ethnicity does not matter to me. You obviously have a more educated and nuanced point of view than many a narrow-minded speaker of either Urdu or Hindi.

But, I disagree that Urdu is older than Hindi. Urdu IS indeed older than modern standard Hindi as used in India today. But that's it. It's not older than any other variety of Hindi. Hindi varieties such as Braj, Awadhi, Khari Boli etc. predate Urdu. You can not say that Braj is not Hindi. It is certainly part of the Hindi language family. So is Awadhi. So is Haryanvi. Admittedly there are other languages/dialects lumped under Hindi where the relationship is much less close (such as Marwari or Bhojpuri, which on linguistic grounds alone can be considered fairly distinct from Hindi). Punjabi is actually a lot closer to colloquial Hindi than Marwari is to colloquial Hindi for example.

In any case, khari boli's heartland, even more than Delhi, is in the districts of western Uttar Pradesh that are right next to Delhi (think Meerut, etc.) Hindu villagers living there were speaking rural forms of Khari boli for a long time before formal Urdu came to exist. You could say it was a rough, raw, rustic Urdu precursor, without the huge PersoArabic vocabulary that entered later. And it was most certainly a form of Hindi. It does not matter if it was labelled as such back then, but in retrospect that's waht it was. Of course it was unpolished and unwritten back then, just a spoken dialect.

My understanding is that both Urdu and Hindi evolved out of Khariboli. Wikipedia calls both Hindi and Urdu "standardized registers" of Khariboli. I'm not a linguist, so I'm not sure exactly what standardized registers means.

Wiki also makes the point that because Khari-boli was based around Delhi, it came to be seen as more urbane and sophisticated than other dialects of Hindi such as Avadi and Braj Bhasa.

About the word "sahib" having colonialist connotations, I don't really think so. When I was in Pakistan, I added Sahab to people's names (for example, university officials) out of politeness. I see it as being analgous to "Mr" or "Sir". That said, I can see that for some people when it comes to Indian-White relations, someone calling themselves by that title might make some people a little uncomfortable.

It also has to be realised that the Urdu culture, in its refined, courtly form, was quite oppressive and dismissive of local indigenous culture. Kabob Sahib, you love Urdu so much...let's take Lucknow, one of the main centers of Urdu, as an example...Lucknow is the heart of Awadh, home to the famous Awadhi dialect, which Tulsi Das wrote Ram Charit Manas in. But Awadhi was neglected and relegated to (Hindu) villages while Urdu flourished in (Muslim) Lucknow. So you can not deny the political aspects, the religious aspects, and the power imbalance. Urdu can certainly not claim to be more indigenous to Awadh than Awadhi can; yet it's a celebrated aspect of the Lakhnavi (Lucknow) culture. There was definitely a certain amount of oppression involved there.

From the little I know of Hindi, Braja bhasha and Punjabi, punjabi sounds closer to modern hindi than braj does.

Akbar was a muslim ruler who had respect for Hindu culture and himself followed a sort of Hindu-Muslim fusion synthesis. There are several tales of him patronizing Hindu saints in the Braj region.

Urdu is a beautiful and poetic language no doubt. I have some urdu ghazal cds and even though I don't know most of what they are saying, it sounds incredibly romantic.

Regarding Tamil. Maybe the "pure" form of Tamil does not use Sanskrit words? Or maybe those words were originally Tamil to beginwith but got subsumed later into Sanskrit?

Being that Sanskrit is supposed to be the language of the Vedas and "vedic culture" is preserved to a large extent in Tamil culture, that is why there appears to be so much Sanskrit in Tamil language. So then the question could be asked, was the area known today as Tamil Nadu the original seat of ancient vedic culture and not the north as most are led to believe?

And by the way Kabob Sahib, I'm surprised nobody here has yet referred you to read "Orientalism" by Edward Said. LOL.

A book that is over 30 years and based on events hundreds of years old, but somehow we are supposed to buy into his arguments hook, line and sinker for the present age.

I guess it hasn't dawned on people that there are some of us who were born at a time when we just didn't experience what Said said we did, or what Said says we are supposed to, even though he said it over 3 decades ago.

Enough Said!

What I am writing here is a simplified version. I hope my fellow commentators won't find anthing abhorrent/colonialistic in it. :)

I didn't quite understand your story about the Hindus speaking rudely about Muslims....b/c I'm sure as My Dog Jagat said, jerks can come in all religions and not just Hindus.

I think your assertions might be touchy b/c you aren't South Asian...although you are Polish and not British, in Asia you would be considered white, so I guess it's somewhat natural for some South asians to be dismissive. But that's not to say that your ethnic, national background doesn't mean that you don't have valid points. I'm just saying it, some people might dismiss your opinion as a first reaction.

You said you are Polish so perhaps the comparison would be if on a Polish blog, Russians or Germans started telling you what languages should take precedence in your country. Knowing German, Prussia's and Russia's long history of conquest and hegemony over Poland, I can understand if some Polish people would be suspicious of people who had formerly conquered them, killed about 6 million during wwII, telling them how they should linguistically run their country?

Has there been language wars in Poland? Any attempt to force Russian or German languages?

Can this whole Hindu/Urdu thing be compared to some extent to Ireland or Taiwan? For centuries Irish people were conquered and exploited by the British and now Ireland is making a concerted effort to bring back Gaelic...even though English is very much their language (If some Irish feel differently about what I wrote, it's just my opinion) or in Taiwan, where indigenous Taiwanese language was suppressed for Mandarin, and some of those who are ethnic Taiwanese resent the use of Mandarin?

Can this whole Hindu/Urdu thing be compared to some extent to Ireland or Taiwan?

The difference is, Gaelic and English are two totally different languages; Taiwanese and Mandarin are as well. Urdu and Hindi on the other hand are at heart the same language, just with different scripts and different (albeit overlapping) vocabulary sets. These differences in vocabulary become more apparent in formal situations; colloquial versions of Urdu and urban Hindi are very close if not almost identical. And the average Hindi speaker uses quite a lot of Urdu words and vice versa.

I think a great analogy is with Turkish. The literary language of Turkey used to be Ottoman Turkish. It had a Turkish base with a large amount of PersoArabic vocabulary, and was written in a version of the Arabic script. Certain people in power in Turkey decided in the early 20th century (or possibly earlier) to remove all the PersoArabic elements and replace them with pure Turkish words (or coin new Turkish words if necessary). And to write this language in Roman (English) script. Within a generation people forgot Ottoman Turkish. It is largely an incomprehensible and unreadable language for, pardon the expression, young turks. I would say Urdu bears the same relationship with Modern Standard Hindi that Ottoman Turkish bears with Modern Standard Turkish. Now, to extrapolate further, Turkish is mutually comprehensible with a number of other 'Turkic' languages, such as Azeri (spoken in Azerbaijan). Azeri probably bears the same relationship to Turkish that dialects like Braj and Awadhi do to Standard Hindi.

The difference is, Gaelic and English are two totally different languages; Taiwanese and Mandarin are as well.

yes, good point.

I think a great analogy is with Turkish. The literary language of Turkey used to be Ottoman Turkish

Your analogy seems to be a good one.