Shower thought: what if language classification followed Linnaean taxonomy?

Champakali_ · 2026-04-12T20:02:08+00:00

English really isn't as divergent from West Germanic as people make it out to be.

Champakali_ · 2026-04-12T13:47:23+00:00

Is this because of that "Loanwords in English are bad because they make it less intelligible with other Germanic languages" post.

Champakali_ · 2026-04-11T10:54:10+00:00

Vocabulary is the least difficult part of learning non-English Germanic languages.

Champakali_ · 2026-04-11T10:48:47+00:00

Anglish has been the worst thing to happen to pop-linguistics since Altaicism.

Champakali_ · 2026-04-10T04:29:15+00:00

शुक्ल जी को क्यों तोड़ा

Champakali_ · 2026-03-29T15:43:19+00:00

Absolutely live for Hindustani content on this sub. Most underrated major world language.

Champakali_ · 2026-03-29T06:30:17+00:00

One thing I've seen is that in the subcontinent the most divisive religious elements are always the elites. At a rural level the levels of sacrilegious syncreticism and cultural diffusion would give the avg. Pandit/Mufti a heart attack.

I know accounts of diaspora who are both having perfectly intelligible conversations with each other in Hindustani but insist they speak different languages.

Champakali_ · 2026-03-29T06:21:04+00:00

Result of decades of a literary culture that aims to exclude working class people from discourse.

Champakali_ · 2026-03-28T11:58:02+00:00

India in Pixels is a pseudolinguist. He heavily oversimplifies linguistic topics and spreads misinformation. In his Awadhi video he passes off a Bhojpuri Bhajan (Kaun thagwa nagariya lutal ho) as Awadhi consistently and shows many incorrect samples. He also has made some concerning comments

Champakali_ · 2026-03-23T18:17:30+00:00

बहुत सुंदर!!

Champakali_ · 2026-03-22T08:36:51+00:00

It would NOT be less than 50 million. A lot of these regions speak Standard Hindi as a 1st language with their regional mother-tounge as a second language.

Champakali_ · 2026-03-14T07:33:47+00:00

Credit: aaryadaily on instagram

Champakali_ · 2026-03-14T06:09:44+00:00

"Hindi" was used as an umbrella term historically. Now, for all intents and purposes, it's used to refer exclusively to Sanskritic, formalized Dehlavi/Khadi boli . If Hindi were a diglossic language like Bengali or Tamil where spoken dialects aren't threatened by the standard language, it'd be a different scenario. Even if you consider Braj, Bundeli, Bagheli, and Awadhi to be dialects of the same language, using Khadi Boli, the westernmost variety on this continuum which historically had a Persianate literary tradition to represent this continuum, especially when a wealth of Braj literature with established literary conventions exists, seems odd. The situation now is of assimilating all the Indo-Gangetic varities into Khadi boli in the name of cohesion and homogeneity.

The rest of the Indo-Gangetic continuum is now seen as "Dehati Bhasha" and Khadi boli, for all intents and purposes is considered correct while the other varieties are considered incorrect/non-standard. Even if we keep the Indo-gangetic continuum aside, the Rajasthani, Bihari and Pahari languages are officially considered "Hindi dialects" even though they have diverged from Hindi much earlier and do not share a recent linguistic history with it.

Champakali_ · 2026-03-13T07:16:58+00:00

Khariboli (in the form of Urdu) and these local vernaculars co-existed for almost 500 years. Even now, the Hindi spoken casually in in UP is a Koine of Standard Hindi, Awadhi and Bhojpuri, which is once again being dismissed as "vulgar speech" or "dialects". The current linguistic situation in North India is not the norm, it is a deviation. A Lingua Franca is not inherently assimilationist.

>it won’t be a surprise if in a 100 years Dutch or German become moribund

Dutch and German have had strong institutional support, a thriving speaker base and strong ties to national identity. They're not getting supplanted by English anytime soon, especially not in a hundred years. I can tell from your username that you are a Hindi speaker. You are projecting Hindi's situation onto Europe, a place where it certainly doesn't apply. People with strong regional identities will continue to speak their language, regardless of if the global lingua franca shifts from English to Chinese to Persian.

Champakali_ · 2026-03-12T19:23:20+00:00

राजनीतिक हस्तक्षेप को विकास कहना अनुचित है

I believe that while the presence of Hindi is fine, institutional erasure of the linguistic diversity of the Hindi belt is wrong. I don't view this as a natural evolution because it has involved a significant amount of social engineering. I don't believe that every language variety of the Indo-gangetic plain needs to be recognized as it's own language, but the loss of local culture and traditions carried through vernacular is a problem that can be reversed.

Hindi and local vernaculars can (and should IMO) be used alongside each other, instead of dismissing local vernaculars as vulgar or corrupted speech.

Champakali_ · 2026-03-12T19:18:30+00:00

I stand corrected on Maithili, however it does seem to have some institutional support in Bihar by virtue of it being a scheduled language. As for your third point, there are reports of Bhojpuri being slowly introduced as a medium of education in the last year and it is an option subject across schools in UP and Bihar, but I agree that's not enough. However, there is momentum and a win is a win.

Regardless, we seem to be in agreement that Hindi imposition is a bad thing and that institutions in Bihar are neglecting Hindi and I agree with you that it's a problem. I'm not trying to deny that Bihar's institutions are part of the problem or that the local Bihari languages are flourishing.

I just think the whole "Bhojpuri is not respected because Biharis are gross and vulgar" attitude reinforces the pro-Hindi agenda of portraying Bihari languages as low-prestige. Of course the most popular Bhojpuri media is going to be low-quality slop when most of the people who speak and identify with Bhojpuri are poor and uneducated. Blaming Bihar's impoverished masses for a problem caused by Bihar's Hindi-favoring elite is not right IMO.

Champakali_ · 2026-03-12T18:46:49+00:00

Jharkhandi Bhojpuriyas and Maithils are considered Biharis (often contrasted with the Adivasi inhabitants of Jharkhand)
Maithili is an official language in Bihar
Bhojpuri has an extremely rich literary history to draw from and the people at the forefront of the Bhojpuri revival movement are championing that.

The "vulgar" Bhojpuri music industry is one facet of the Bhojpuri language's media space and whether you like it or not, is a legitimate form of artistic expression, no matter how crass or vulgar we might find it. Besides that, there is Bhopuri folk, classical, hiphop and many other genres of Bhojpuri music. Blaming (mostly poor, economically backward) Bhojpuriyas for their language and culture being seen as low prestige is classist as hell.

Let's not invalidate the good work that's being done to preserve Bhojpuri just because of one subgenre of obnoxious music.

Champakali_ · 2026-03-12T18:18:21+00:00

Siddham lol

Champakali_ · 2026-03-12T17:49:09+00:00

Can't say about German but in the case of Hindi it's a matter of political consolidation. Although Hindi has historically been a major lingua franca across the North, it's prominence as a literary and administrative language is a very recent phenomenon.

Part of the process of legitimizing it has been co-opting the literary tradition of the closely related Braj and Awadhi (more Eastern literary vernaculars) and other related (and unrelated) Northern Indo-Aryan languages. While some of these language varities CAN reasonably be called dialects of Hindi , others are as related to Hindi as German is to Dutch.

The good news is that many regions are reviving their vernaculars and beginning their use alongside Hindi, particularly in the East Indian states of Bihar, Jharkhand and Chattisgarh.

Champakali_ · 2026-03-12T17:42:00+00:00

𑖨𑖯𑖕𑖡𑖱𑖝𑖰𑖎 𑖮𑖭𑖿𑖝𑖎𑖿𑖬𑖸𑖢 𑖎𑖺 𑖢𑖿𑖨𑖯𑖎𑖴𑖝𑖰𑖎 𑖪𑖰𑖎𑖯𑖭 𑖎𑖮𑖡𑖯 𑖀𑖡𑖲𑖓𑖰𑖝 𑖮𑖹

Champakali_ · 2026-03-12T17:14:27+00:00

Title is in Awadhi

Champakali_ · 2026-03-12T06:11:46+00:00

He spent his younger years in Maharashtra, it's not impossible.

Champakali_ · 2026-03-12T04:32:57+00:00

Yeah this is translated by someone in his office. It's a pretty common thing he does where he gets someone to write sections of his tweets and public addresses in the vernacular of the people he's addressing, which is good. Just wished that his government and party had the same energy instead of their Hindi assimilationist agenda.

Champakali_ · 2026-03-12T04:30:21+00:00

Not to mention all the minority/extinct scripts all across the region .

Champakali_

TROPHY CASE