Navneet Kumar's Blog on China

[Das ka das]

It was not just a 'hip' thing to do; Sanskrit was the link language of Ancient and Classical India. All discourse and communication between members of the social elite across India took place in Sanskrit. This was made possible because Sanskrit grammar was standardized at a very early stage by Panini (around 6th century B.C.E.), so people all over India learnt the same language regardless of where they were form. Thus, someone from Kerala (like Adi Shankaracharya) was able to communicate and transmit his ideas to someone on the other end of Aryavarta (like Kalhana, the Kashmiri author of Rajatarangini). It basically served the same purpose as English today, except it was indigenous.

Ah I found his post...

 

[Known_Unknown]

By link language I meant a language that is spoken across the land which Sanskrit was. As civfanatic mentioned, how else would a person from the Dravida country (my Avatar) able to communicate with someone from say Varanasi. Similarly English though only spoken by around 15% of Indians is a link language albeit not native.

The Adi Shankaracharya and Kalhana were both Brahmins, which only proves my point. It is no different than Roman Catholic bishops and priests across Europe which used to communicate between themselves in Latin. That did not make Latin the link language of Europe.

Sanskrit was limited to religious and literary pursuits of a specific class of people. Today Europeans don't talk of making Latin the sole official language of the EU and neither do they base their identity on Latin alone-their major languages are still the European apabhramsa languages such as French, English and German.

 

[Das ka das]

The Adi Shankaracharya and Kalhana were both Brahmins, which only proves my point. It is no different than Roman Catholic bishops and priests across Europe which used to communicate between themselves in Latin. That did not make Latin the link language of Europe.

Sanskrit was limited to religious and literary pursuits of a specific class of people. Today Europeans don't talk of making Latin the sole official language of the EU and neither do they base their identity on Latin alone-their major languages are still the European apabhramsa languages such as French, English and German.

Do you then consider English the link language of modern India....just curious?

 

[Known_Unknown]

Do you then consider English the link language of modern India....just curious?

No, English is spoken and understood by less than 10% of Indians as well. Hindi is closer to being a link language, but there is no single language, Indian or other that is spoken by more than 90% of the people, so currently, there is no link language.

 

[Das ka das]

No, English is spoken and understood by less than 10% of Indians as well. Hindi is closer to being a link language, but there is no single language, Indian or other that is spoken by more than 90% of the people, so currently, there is no link language.

Hmm I see your point, what you meant by link language was that the vast majority of people are able to speak it.

For me it is a language that is spoken throughout the area/nation-state.

 

[Known_Unknown]

Hmm I see your point, what you meant by link language was that the vast majority of people are able to speak it.

For me it is a language that is spoken throughout the area/nation-state.

If you look at it empirically, there is a set of necessary and sufficient conditions that need to be satisfied in order for a language to be categorized as a link language:

1. It must be spoken by a majority of the people
2. It must be spoken widely in all regions of the country

If only # is true, that is representative of regional languages, if only #2 is true, it is representative of English or Hindi, which is spoken widely, but only among the elite.

Of course this does not mean that I am against the institution of Sanskrit as a link language, as policy considerations must be driven not just by present circumstances but by a long term analysis of costs and benefits.

 

[Ray]

No, it is the otherway around, a symbol will only have one fixed sound with some excpetions while a sound can be assigned to many different symbols.

That is a wonderful discovery of your.

Saw the video?

Ma = one character + five different tone

Each character with different tone = different words!

 

[captonjohn]

Nah, not necessarily true, Chinese understood in terms of linguistic has an innate advantage over any major Indo-euro languages or linguas, it is a Class Language, it is just like the C++ or # in a way, it use premade library to call for when needed. This helps it getting rid of all lengthy and
effort-taking invention of new "words" in morphology. The thinnest file in UN is always the Chinese version.

Chinese as a language will define future.

I disagree, any knowledge of any area of the world can only transfer via language and you cannot get that knowledge until some of us go through their language and then translate it into our language. Hence it is impractical to say that any country can get all knowledge without knowing other languages. Aerospace technology translated from english to various languages and then it spreads in respective countries.

 

[Yijiuliuer]

That is a wonderful discovery of your.

Saw the video?

Ma = one character + five different tone

Each character with different tone = different words!

are you a Chinese or I am
Ma= 妈flat tone ma1 mother
麻raise tone ma2 hem
马tilt tone ma3 horse
骂drop tone ma4 scold, curse
吗slight tone m5 intonation tool to help question.
each character will only be assigned to one tone with some exceptions such as é•¿ can be pronounced in two ways, zhang3 or chang2.

You just as always, assumed too much and the the video is wrong.

 

[Yijiuliuer]

I disagree, any knowledge of any area of the world can only transfer via language and you cannot get that knowledge until some of us go through their language and then translate it into our language. Hence it is impractical to say that any country can get all knowledge without knowing other languages. Aerospace technology translated from english to various languages and then it spreads in respective countries.

Actually, you did not get what I said.
I am not talking about translation, I am talking about the convenience and the capacity of Chinese language as a signifier. This symbol system is very complete,
it can be expanded easily. I am not saying with Chinese language we can get rid of other ones, I just said, Chinese is easy to use. To define future I mean it will
be continuously enriched and future development will be sort of relying on it.

 

[Ray]

are you a Chinese or I am
Ma= 妈flat tone ma1 mother
麻raise tone ma2 hem
马tilt tone ma3 horse
骂drop tone ma4 scold, curse
吗slight tone m5 intonation tool to help question.
each character will only be assigned to one tone with some exceptions such as é•¿ can be pronounced in two ways, zhang3 or chang2.

You just as always, assumed too much and the the video is wrong.

You must be the Chinese.

But are you suggesting the links are wrong?

Click them and here the tones difference for the same character and the meanings.

Check this once again:


This video should tell you about the tones.

Note theat the teacher is Chinese and not from Mars.

Here is a minimal tone set from Mandarin Chinese, which has five tones, here transcribed by diacritics over the vowels:

A high level tone: /á/ (pinyin ⟨ā⟩)

A tone starting with mid pitch and rising to a high pitch: /ǎ/ (pinyin ⟨á⟩)

A low tone with a slight fall (if there is no following syllable, it may start with a dip then rise to a high pitch): /à/ (pinyin ⟨ǎ⟩)

A short, sharply falling tone, starting high and falling to the bottom of the speaker's vocal range: /â/ (pinyin ⟨à⟩)

A very short, neutral tone, sometimes indicated by a dot (·) in Pinyin, has no specific contour; its pitch depends on the tones of the preceding and following syllables. Mandarin speakers refer to this tone as the "light tone" (simplified Chinese: 轻声; traditional Chinese: 輕聲; pinyin: qīng shēng), also called the "fifth tone", "zeroth tone", or "neutral tone". This tone occurs only on unstressed syllables. Its occurrence on single syllable words is marginal, only with a small number of grammatical particles. There is a strong tendency in modern Mandarin for the second syllable of disyllabic words to be pronounced with a light tone.

These tones combine with a syllable such as "ma" to produce different words. A minimal set based on "ma" are, in pinyin transcription,


mā "mum/mom"
má "hemp"
mÇŽ "horse"
mà "scold"

ma (an interrogative particle)

These may be combined into the rather contrived sentence,

妈妈骂马的麻吗?/媽媽罵馬的麻嗎?
Pinyin: māma mà mǎ de má ma?
English: "Is mom scolding the horse's hemp?"

Tone (linguistics) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

One does not have to be a Chinese to understand the English explanation of the Chinese tonal use for different words for the same character.(syllable)

 

[Yijiuliuer]

You must be the Chinese.

But are you suggesting the links are wrong?

Click them and here the tones difference for the same character and the meanings.

Check this once again:


This video should tell you about the tones.

Note theat the teacher is Chinese and not from Mars.

Here is a minimal tone set from Mandarin Chinese, which has five tones, here transcribed by diacritics over the vowels:

A high level tone: /á/ (pinyin ⟨ā⟩)

A tone starting with mid pitch and rising to a high pitch: /ǎ/ (pinyin ⟨á⟩)

A low tone with a slight fall (if there is no following syllable, it may start with a dip then rise to a high pitch): /à/ (pinyin ⟨ǎ⟩)

A short, sharply falling tone, starting high and falling to the bottom of the speaker's vocal range: /â/ (pinyin ⟨à⟩)

A very short, neutral tone, sometimes indicated by a dot (·) in Pinyin, has no specific contour; its pitch depends on the tones of the preceding and following syllables. Mandarin speakers refer to this tone as the "light tone" (simplified Chinese: 轻声; traditional Chinese: 輕聲; pinyin: qīng shēng), also called the "fifth tone", "zeroth tone", or "neutral tone". This tone occurs only on unstressed syllables. Its occurrence on single syllable words is marginal, only with a small number of grammatical particles. There is a strong tendency in modern Mandarin for the second syllable of disyllabic words to be pronounced with a light tone.

These tones combine with a syllable such as "ma" to produce different words. A minimal set based on "ma" are, in pinyin transcription,


mā "mum/mom"
má "hemp"
mÇŽ "horse"
mà "scold"

ma (an interrogative particle)

These may be combined into the rather contrived sentence,

妈妈骂马的麻吗?/媽媽罵馬的麻嗎?
Pinyin: māma mà mǎ de má ma?
English: "Is mom scolding the horse's hemp?"

Tone (linguistics) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

One does not have to be a Chinese to understand the English explanation of the Chinese tonal use for different words for the same character.

Each character is assigned with just ONE tone with very few exceptions.
I have made this very clear.

 

[Ray]

You may have made your contention clear, but it is still not correct.

The syllable 'Ma' with differnt tones mean different words as shown in my post.

You know more than the teachers who teach Chinese or rather, Mandarin?

 

[Ray]

Check the paragraph on Chinese tones of the word Ma from this Chinese who teaches Mandarin

Things to know about Chinese | Learn Chinese with eTeacher

You maybe a Chinese, but do consult and relearn Mandarin before coming on a forum to lecture.

Every link states the same and that too by the teachers or organisation that teach Mandarin and you alone come out with some cockananny stuff that is totally way out for reasons best known to you.

Don't lose face that you do not know Mandarin.

 

[Yijiuliuer]

You may have made your contention clear, but it is still not correct.

The syllable 'Ma' with differnt tones mean different words as shown in my post.

You know more than the teachers who teach Chinese or rather, Mandarin?

Okay I am not correct, I stop here.

 

[captonjohn]

Actually, you did not get what I said.
I am not talking about translation, I am talking about the convenience and the capacity of Chinese language as a signifier. This symbol system is very complete,
it can be expanded easily. I am not saying with Chinese language we can get rid of other ones, I just said, Chinese is easy to use. To define future I mean it will
be continuously enriched and future development will be sort of relying on it.

Oh now I got it. This applies in all languages and depends upon people who want to use it.

 

[Indx TechStyle]

Is that written by @Navnit Kundu?:biggrin2:

 

[Navnit Kundu]

Is that written by @Navnit Kundu?:biggrin2:

Nahin bhai, ye koi aur Navneet hain. I don't have sole proprietorship on the name Navneet.

 

[aditya10r]

Nahin bhai, ye koi aur Navneet hain. I don't have sole proprietorship on the name Navneet.

It's been a long time sir.
Where were you??????

 

[alphacentury]

As I have already said, with the current globalisation, the world is moving towards a common culture. Hence, all languages other than English will decline slowly, and at the end of it, we will have a homogeneous world with a common culture.

This is gold. Nothing against the poster, but 4 years back I too had the same view.