Re: Devanagari handwriting?

Joe scripsit:

> I think the primary deciding factor is what you answer when people ask
> what your first language is.
I think not, not in general.  The Indic-speaking part of India is a vast
dialect continuum, where "languages" exist only as a result of regional
standardization.  A person from the Punjab may move to Delhi; at first
the language will be difficult, because there are sharp differences
(particularly in morphophonemic rules), but after a time he may
accommodate his Punjabi arbitrarily close to Hindi, while still retaining
a few conspicuous markers of Punjabi, just to make it clear that while
what he is speaking *sounds* like Hindi, it is "in fact" still Punjabi.
Yet a sociolinguistically naive linguist would surely call it Hindi.

Similarly, a person living near the boundary may speak a language that
is somewhat closer to standard Punjabi than to standard Hindi, and yet
he may say that his language is Hindi, meaning that he associates
himself with the higher prestige of Hindi, and that if he or his children
were to be educated, he would wish it to be through the medium of
standard Hindi.

(These examples from Robbins Burling's _Man and his language_, which I
have cited here before.)

--
                Si hoc legere scis, nimium eruditionis habes.