Re: A New Accent, Political Boundaries and Accents,

On Wed, 22 May 2002 04:26, Lars Henrik Mathiesen wrote:
> > Date:         Tue, 21 May 2002 07:51:26 -0400
> > From: John Cowan <jcowan@...>
> >
> > Lars Henrik Mathiesen scripsit:
> > > Cultural/ethnic/religious barriers can divide standard languages as
> > > well, sometimes to the point that colloquial languages achieve mutual
> > > unintelligibility. For instance: Serbian and Croatian, Hindi and Urdu.
> >
> > Well, I don't think we have mutual unintelligibility here; in fact,
> > I can't think of any examples of twinned standard languages without
> > geographical separation that are truly mutually unintelligible.
> > That would require a degree of social apartheid that makes the
> > caste system look like nothing.
>
> I see I was unclear --- I didn't mean that Serbian and Croatian were
> that different. Although I've seen examples where parallel texts
> shared very few words, that was probably a contrived effect.
>
> But are colloquial Hindi and Urdu really intelligible to monoglot
> speakers of the other language? Urdu is essentially Hindi with most of
> the Prakrit-derived lexicon replaced by Arabic loans... or so I've
> been told.
Replace "Prakrit-derived lexicon" with "Sanskrit-derived lexicon" and that'd
be right.  It's essentially a religious-nationalistic issue - Sanskrit is the
sacred tongue of the Hindu religions, while Arabic is the sacred tongue of
the Muslims of course.  Prakrit is the sacred tongue of the Jains, and of the
Theravada Buddhists in the south of Asia.

Wesley Parish

>
> (Though many or most speakers of either language can probably get by
> in the other as well --- that will tend to muddy the picture).
>
> Lars Mathiesen (U of Copenhagen CS Dep) <thorinn@...> (Humour NOT
> marked)
--
Mau e ki, "He aha te mea nui?"
You ask, "What is the most important thing?"
Maku e ki, "He tangata, he tangata, he tangata."
I reply, "It is people, it is people, it is people."