Indian Linguist

Subcontinental socio-linguistics. Focused on Indian English, Hindi-Urdu and Bangla.

[Indian Linguist @IndianLinguist]

The other, more difficult to measure, but maybe also inevitable shift has been in linguistic prestige: Bengali in Kolkata held more linguistic prestige but wonder if that's true anymore. More and more elite spaces now have Hindi over Bengali (English is still top dog of course).

[Indian Linguist @IndianLinguist]

No doubt about Hindi words being loaned but to peg it exclusively on electorial politics might be simplistic.

Bollywood for eg is probably the single largest influence. In Kolkata, city Hindi films are significantly bigger than the native industry.

[Soumyajit Majumder @SoumyajitWrites]

As BJP became stronger in Bengali-speaking states, many Hindi words got into Bengali language. There is no word as "আদরনীয়" (adarniyo) in Bengali. I even looked up dictionary. However, most used is "জী". Even, Mamata Banerjee, a Bengali, called Sheikh Hasina-ji, another Bengali.

[Indian Linguist @IndianLinguist]

Urban (Indian) Bengali millennials and especially those from Kolkata are now (mostly) fairly proficient in Hindi. Big change from a couple of generations back.

[Indian Linguist @IndianLinguist]

@MarginalS4th @ssshaandro Phulbaganer chokra to ora.

[Indian Linguist @IndianLinguist]

@DibyaJana @ssshaandro (Now that you mention it....)

[Indian Linguist @IndianLinguist]

@DibyaJana @ssshaandro True. But that's quite standard. "God only knows" seems like a direct translation of "Allah/Khoda/Bhagaban-i jane" (or the Hindi-Urdu "hee jane").

[Indian Linguist @IndianLinguist]

@gyani_jahil I wonder if this is the reason for very specific dialect of Muslim Maghi from the approximate Gaya region (which as it so happens has widely influenced language for Kolkata's working class Urdu speakers).

[Office of Chief Minister, Jharkhand @JharkhandCMO]

सभी भाषाओं का सम्मान...

[Indian Linguist @IndianLinguist]

@samopriya @aryaman2020 Quite a bit longer no?

[Indian Linguist @IndianLinguist]

Except the "south Indian pronunciation" aa is not the same as the "original" Sanskrit word-final shwa :)

Ironically, in modern popular culture, the closest is the the way English native speakers say it.

[Indian Linguist @IndianLinguist]

@karanvasudeva @samopriya 🤘

[Indian Linguist @IndianLinguist]

@karanvasudeva @samopriya Hehe I guess it looks cool. Kinda similar to how q (or sometimes ph) is used in English. Not sure it means anything phonetically to the reader per se.

[Indian Linguist @IndianLinguist]

@aryaman2020 Yes but that's a separate point no. The final vowel of the say Tamizh "Rama" is still not the final a of (classical - don't think Vedic is part of the discourse honestly) Sanskrit

[Indian Linguist @IndianLinguist]

@Being_RedSkull Hehe, life gets in the way of Twitter sometimes 😛

[Indian Linguist @IndianLinguist]

One can see the politics of it. South Indians are reacting to Northie disdain.

But fwiw there is nothing "wrong" in shwa deletion. It is native to almost all IA languages. It is not a mistake just the way a modern English diverging from Proto Germanic is not an error 🙂

[Abhishek Avtans अभिषेक अवतंस 🌐 Public Linguist @avtansa]

Christmas words
Christmas in #Marathi नाताळ (Nātāl), #Gujarati નાતાલ (Nātāl), & #Indonesian Natal are all borrowed from Portuguese Natal (< Old Portuguese natal, nadal < Latin nātālis [diēs Dominī] (birthday of the Lord). Latin nātālis from nat- ‘born’, from the verb nasci. 1/2

[Simon Kuestenmacher @simongerman600]

This map shows what the Americas would look like if borders were drawn by language. Source: https://t.co/WDyzqnJLi1

[Indian Linguist @IndianLinguist]

@SameerudDowla @avtansa Not sure how much of a tropical fruit the pear is. So it's quite probable that these have come to Bengal quite recently. Hence WB and Bangladesh could be quite divergent in terms of cultivars etc...

[Indian Linguist @IndianLinguist]

@SameerudDowla @avtansa The gallery is a wilding but fwiw the top headline pic is what I'd recognise as a নাশপাতি.