Indian borrowings in english

      Current classifications are by Loukotka (1968); a U.S. linguist, Joseph Greenberg (1956); and another U.S. linguist, Morris Swadesh (1964). That of Loukotka, based fundamentally on the same principles as his previous classifications, and recognizing 117 families, is, in spite of its unsophisticated method, fundamental for the information it contains. Those of Greenberg and Swadesh, both based upon restricted comparison of vocabulary items but according to much more refined criteria, agree in considering all languages ultimately related and in having four major groups, but they differ greatly in major and minor groupings. Greenberg used short lexical lists, and no evidence has been published in support of his classification. He divided the four major groups into 13 and these, in turn, into 21 subgroups. Swadesh based his classification upon lists of 100 basic vocabulary items and made groupings according to his glottochronological theory (see above). His four groups (interrelated among themselves and with groups in North America) are subdivided into 62 subgroups, thus, in fact, coming closer to more conservative classifications. The major groups of these two classifications are not comparable to those recognized for North America, because they are on a more remote level of relationship. In most cases the lowest components are stocks or even more distantly related groups. It is certain that far more embracing groups than those accepted by Loukotka can be recognized—and in some cases this has already been done—and that Greenberg's and Swadesh's classifications point to many likely relationships; but they seem to share a basic defect, namely, that the degree of relationship within each group is very disparate, not providing a true taxonomy and not giving in each case the most closely related groups. On the other hand, their approach is more appropriate to the situation in South America than a method that would restrict relationships to a level that can be handled by the comparative method.

      At present, a true classification of South American languages is not feasible, even at the family level, because, as noted above, neither the levels of dialect and language nor of family and stock have been surely determined. Beyond that level, it can only be indicated that a definite or possible relationship exists. In the accompanying chart—beyond the language level—recognized groups are therefore at various and undetermined levels of relationship. Possible further relationships are cross-referenced. Of the 82 groups included, almost half are isolated languages, 25 are extinct, and at least 10 more are on the verge of extinction. The most important groups are Macro-Chibchan, Arawakan, Cariban, Tupian, Macro-Ge, Quechumaran, Tucanoan, and Macro-Pano-Tacanan.

      Macro-Chibchan

      Macro-Chibchan languages, which form the linguistic bridge between South and Central America, are spoken from Nicaragua to Ecuador. Spread compactly in Central America and in western Colombia and Ecuador, they include approximately 40 languages spoken by more than 400,000 speakers. The group is probably more differentiated than a stock, languages not belonging to Chibchan being strongly differentiated. In the Colombian Andes a now extinct Chibchan language was the language of the highly developed Muisca culture. Important present-day languages include Guaymí (about 20,000 speakers) and Move (about 15,000) in Panama, Kuna (600) and Páez (37,000) in Colombia, and Cayapa, or Colorado (4,000), in Ecuador. A connection with Cariban has been suggested, and it is possible that such a relationship could be found through Warao (Warrau) and Waican (Waikan) on the one hand and through Chocó (Cariban) on the other.

      Arawakan

      Arawakan languages formerly extended from the peninsula of Florida in North America to the present-day Paraguay–Argentina border, and from the foothills of the Andes eastward to the Atlantic Ocean. More than 55 languages are attested, many still spoken. Around 40 groups still speak Arawakan languages in Brazil, and others are found in Peru, Colombia, Venezuela, Guyana, French Guiana, and Surinam. Taino predominated in the Antilles and was the first language to be encountered by Europeans; although it rapidly became extinct, it left many borrowings. As did most languages of the tropical forest, the Arawakan languages receded with the influx of Spanish and Portuguese, mainly through group extinction; thus, 14 groups became extinct in Brazil between 1900 and 1957. Important languages still spoken are Goajiro (52,000 speakers) in Colombia, Campa (41,000) and Machiguenga (11,000) in Peru, and Mojo (more than 15,000) and Bauré (4,500) in Bolivia. Although most Arawakan languages have been recognized as such for a long time, they are greatly differentiated. They are most probably related to both the Macro-Pano-Tacanan and Macro-Mayan language groups.

      Cariban

      Cariban languages, numbering approximately 50, were spoken chiefly north of the Amazon but had outposts as far as the Mato Grosso in Brazil. The group has undergone drastic decline, and only about 22,000 people speak Cariban languages today, mostly in Venezuela and Colombia; they have disappeared from the Antilles and have been much reduced in Brazil and the Guianas. The most important group today—Chocó in western Colombia—is distantly related to the rest of the stock. Other languages are Carib in Suriname, Trio in Suriname and Brazil, and Waiwai, Taulipang, and Makushí (Macusí) in Brazil. A relationship with Tupian seems certain. 

      Tupian

      With the exception of Emerillon and Oyampi of French Guiana and northeastern Brazil, Tupian languages were spoken south of the Amazon, from the Andes to the Atlantic Ocean and down to the Río de la Plata. There are approximately 50 attested languages related on the stock level and subdivided into eight families. Tupinambá, the language spoken along the Atlantic coast at the time of discovery, became important in a modified form as a lingua franca, and the closely related Guaraní became the national language in Paraguay, being one of the few Indian languages that does not seem to yield under the influence of Spanish or Portuguese. At the time of discovery, Tupí-Guaraní tribes were moving everywhere south of the Amazon, subjugating other tribes; some of these tribes adopted Tupí-Guaraní. Both Tupí and Guaraní are among the languages that have exerted a great influence on Portuguese and Spanish language. Tupí groups have declined markedly, 26 groups becoming extinct in Brazil between 1900 and 1957, and at least 14 languages disappearing during the same period. The westernmost language, Cocama in Peru, is still spoken by about 19,000 speakers, and Guaraní in Bolivia has about 20,000 speakers. Other languages have a much smaller number of speakers; there are 19,000 speakers for the 26 surviving groups in Brazil. The total number of Indian speakers of Tupian languages is approximately 60,000, but there are also about 3,000,000 culturally non-Indian speakers of Guaraní in Paraguay. Besides the connection with Cariban, further relationships possibly exist with Macro-Ge, various small families like Zamuco and Wichí-Maccá and isolated languages like Cayuvava.

      Macro-Ge

      Macro-Ge is geographically the most compactly distributed of the big South American language families. Ge proper extends uninterruptedly through inland eastern Brazil almost as far as the Uruguayan border. There are about 10 Ge languages with a total of 2,000 speakers. Most of the other families, now extinct, were located closer to the Atlantic coast, from where they probably were displaced by Tupian expansion. The Bororan family is represented by Bororo in Brazil and by the Otuké language in Bolivia. It seems likely that Macro-Ge has its closest relationship with Tupian.

      Quechumaran

      Quechumaran, which is composed of the Quechuan and Aymaran families, is the stock with the largest number of speakers—7,000,000 for Quechuan and 1,000,000 for Aymaran—and is found mainly in the Andean highlands extending from southern Colombia to northern Argentina. The languages of this group have also resisted displacement by Spanish, in addition to having gained in numbers of speakers from the time of the Incas to the present as several other groups adopted Quechuan languages. Cuzco-Bolivian Quechua is spoken by well over 1,000,000 speakers, and there are around seven Quechuan languages in Peru with almost 100,000 speakers each. Although most Quechuan languages have been influenced by Spanish, Quechuan in turn is the group that has exerted the most pervasive influence on Spanish. No convincing further genetic relationship has been yet proposed.

      Tucanoan

      Tucanoan, which is spoken in two compact areas in the western Amazon region (Brazil, Colombia, and Peru), includes about 30 languages with a total of over 30,000 speakers. One of the languages is a lingua franca in the region.

      Macro-Pano-Tacanan

      Macro- Pano-Tacanan, a group more distantly related than a stock, includes about 30 languages, many of them still spoken. The languages are located in two widely separated regions: lowland eastern Peru and adjoining parts of Brazil and lowland western Bolivia on the one hand, and southern Patagonia and Tierra del Fuego on the other. In the latter region the languages are practically extinct.

      By number of component languages, or by number of speakers, or by territorial extension, the other language groups are not as significant as those just listed. Most of these small families and isolated languages are located in the lowlands, which form an arch centred on the Amazon from Venezuela to Bolivia and include the bordering parts of Brazil.

      Lingua francas and cultural tongues

      Lingua francas as well as situations of bilingualism arose mainly under conditions furthered or created by Europeans, although a case like that of the Tucano language, which is used as a lingua franca in the Río Vaupés area among an Indian population belonging to some 20 different linguistic groups, may be independent of those conditions. Quechua, originally spoken in small areas around Cuzco and in central Peru, expanded much under Inca rule, coexisting with local languages or displacing them. It was the official language of the Inca Empire, and groups of Quechua speakers were settled among other language groups, although the language does not seem to have been systematically imposed. The Spaniards, in turn, used Quechua in a great area as a language of evangelization—at one period missionaries were required to know the language—and continued to spread it by means of Quechua speakers who travelled with them in further conquests. During the 17th and 18th centuries it became a literary language in which religious, historical, and dramatic works were written. Today its written literary manifestations are not spontaneous, but there is abundant oral poetry, and in Bolivia radio programs are broadcast entirely in this language.

      Dispersion of Tupí-Guaraní dialects, taking place shortly before the arrival of Europeans and even after it, resulted not from imperial expansion—as for Quechua—but from extreme tribal mobility and the cultural and linguistic absorption of other groups. Under Portuguese influence the modified form of Tupinamba known as língua-geral (“general language”) was the medium of communication between Europeans and Indians and among Indians of different languages in Brazil. It was still in common use along the coast in the 18th century, and it is still spoken in the Amazon. Tupí, now extinct, was an important language of Portuguese evangelization and had a considerable literature in the 17th and 18th centuries. Another dialect, Guaraní, was the language of the Jesuit missions and also had abundant literature until the middle of the 17th century when the Jesuits were expelled and the missions dispersed. Nevertheless, Guaraní survived in Paraguay as the language of a culturally non-Indian population and is today the only Indian language with national, although not official, status—persons not speaking Guaraní being a minority. Paraguayan Guaraní is also a literary language, not so much for learned works—for which Spanish is used—but for those of popular character, especially songs. There is a more or less standardized orthography, and persons literate in Spanish are also literate in Guaraní. A great mutual influence exists between Guaraní and Spanish.

1.2.1. Indian languages and dialects

      Hindi is an Indo-Aryan language with about 487 million speakers. It is one of the official languages of India and is the main language used in the northern states of Rajasthan, Delhi, Haryana, Uttarakhand, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Himachal Pradesh, Jharkhand and Bihar, and is spoken in much of north and central India alongside other languages such as Punjabi, Gujarati, Marathi or Bengali. In other parts of India, as well as in Nepal, Bangladesh and Pakistan, Hindi is understood. In Fiji people of Indian origin speak Hindi, and in some areas the Fijian people also speak it.

      Hindi is closely related to Urdu, the main language of Pakistan, which is written with the Arabic script, and linguists consider Standard Hindi and Standard Urdu to be different formal registers both derived from the Khari Boli dialect, which is also known as Hindustani. Apart from the difference in writing systems, the other main difference between Hindi and Urdu is that Hindi contains more vocabulary from Sanskrit, while Urdu contains more vocabulary from Persian.

      Hindi first started to be used in writing during the 4th century AD. It was originally written with the Brahmi script but since the 11th century AD it has been written with the Devanāgarī alphabet. The first printed book in Hindi was John Gilchrist's Grammar of the Hindoostanee Language which was published in 1796.⁷

     In the broadest sense of the word, "Hindi" is the Hindi languages, a culturally defined part of a dialect continuum that covers the "Hindi belt" of northern India, and includes Bhojpuri, an important language not only of India but which is the Hindi (or Hindustani) of Suriname and Mauritius; and Awadhi, a medieval literary standard and the Hindi of Fiji. Rajasthani is variously seen as a dialect of Hindi or as a separate language, though the lack of a dominant dialect as the basis for standardization has impeded its recognition. Three other varieties, Maithili, Chhattisgarhi, and Dogri ("Pahari"), have recently been accorded status as official languages of their respective states, and so are now generally considered separate languages. Despite the fact that it is in many ways indistinguishable from Hindi, Urdu, as the principal language of India's large Muslim population and an official language of Pakistan, is often excluded from the purview of the label "Hindi" in India and Pakistan, though Muslims may be included in other countries where Hindi (or "Hindustani") is spoken. As the official language of a separate country, Nepali has always been excluded from this conception of Hindi, despite the fact that it is one of the Pahari languages which were otherwise included.

     A narrower conception of Hindi, excluding all of specific varieties mentioned above, may be disambiguated as Western Hindi. This includes Braj Bhasha, a medieval Hindu literary standard. The current prestige dialect of Western Hindi, Khariboli, had been a language of the Moghul court, of the British administration, and is the basis of the modern national standards of South Asia, Standard Hindi and Urdu. Indeed, Khari boli is sometimes used as an alternate term for Hindi. Again, Urdu is sometimes excluded, despite being one of the Western Hindi languages. The colonial term Hindustani, though somewhat dated, is still used to specifically include Urdu alongside Hindi as spoken by Hindus.

     In its narrowest conception, "Hindi" means Standard Hindi, a Sanskritised form of Khariboli purged of some of the Persian influence it picked up during Moghul rule. The Constitution of India accords Hindi in the Devanagari script status as the official language of India, with Urdu, retaining the Perso-Arabic script, and the three other varieties of broad Hindi mentioned above among the 22 scheduled languages of India. Standard Hindi, along with English, is used for the administration of the central government, and Standard Hindi is used, often alongside scheduled languages, for the administration of ten Indian states. However, despite divergence of vocabulary in the academic registers of Standard Hindi and Urdu and the use of distinct scripts, common speech remains Persianised and is largely indistinguishable whether it is called "Hindi" or "Urdu". Much of Hindi cinema, for example, might be described as Urdu, and is extremely popular in Urdu-speaking Pakistan despite language politics.

     Thus the conception of Hindi is informed not just by external criteria of mutual intelligibility, but by ethnicity, history, literacy, nationalism, and religion. These issues are especially acute when differentiating Hindi from Urdu, which are generally considered independent languages by their speakers but different formal registers of a single dialect by linguists. However, such issues also arise in debates over whether Rajasthani, Maithili, and other members of the continuum are "languages" in their own right, or "dialects" of Hindi.

     Standard Hindi and Urdu are understood from a linguistic perspective to indicate two or more specific dialects in a continuum of dialects that makeup the Hindustani language (also known as "Hindi-Urdu"). The terms "Hindi" and "Urdu" themselves can be used with multiple meanings, but when referring to standardized dialects of Hindustani, they are the two points in a diasystem.

     See also: Hindi–Urdu controversy and Hindustani language

     The term Urdu arose as far back as the 12th century and gradually merged together with kharhiboli (the spoken dialect). The term Hindawi was used in a general sense for the dialects of central and northern India. Urdu is the official language of Pakistan and is also an official language in some parts of India.

     Linguistically, there is no dispute that Hindi and Urdu are dialects of a single language, Hindustani/Hindi-Urdu. However, from a political perspective, there are pressures to classify them as separate languages. Those advocating this view point to the main differences between standard Urdu and standard Hindi:

     the source of borrowed vocabulary;

     the script used to write them (for Urdu, an adaptation of the Perso-Arabic script written in Nasta'liq style; for Hindi, an adaptation of the Devanagari script);

     Urdu's use of five consonants borrowed from Persian.

     Such distinctions, however, are insufficient to classify Hindi and Urdu as separate languages from a linguistic perspective. For the most part, Hindi and Urdu have a common vocabulary, and this common vocabulary is heavily Persianised. Beyond this, Urdu contains even more Persian loanwords while Hindi resorts to borrowing from Sanskrit. (It is mostly the learned vocabulary that shows this visible distinction.)

     Some nationalists, both Hindu and Muslim, claim that Hindi and Urdu have always been separate languages. The tensions reached a peak in the Hindi–Urdu controversy in 1867 in the then United Provinces during the British Raj.

     With regard to regional vernaculars spoken in north India, the distinction between Urdu and Hindi is insignificant, especially when little learned vocabulary is being used. Outside the Delhi dialect area, the term "Hindi" is used in reference to the local dialect, which may be different from both standard Hindi and standard Urdu. With regard to the comparison of standard Hindi and standard Urdu, the grammar (word structure and sentence structure) is identical.

     The word Hindi has many different uses; confusion of these is one of the primary causes of debate about the identity of Urdu. These uses include:

• standardised Hindi as taught in schools in North India
• formal or official Hindi advocated by Purushottam Das Tandon and as instituted by the post-independence Indian government, heavily influenced by Sanskrit,
• the vernacular nonstandard dialects of Hindustani/Hindi-Urdu as spoken throughout much of India and Pakistan, as discussed above,
• the neutralised form of the language used in popular television and films, or
• the more formal neutralized form of the language used in broadcast and print news reports.

     The rubric "Hindi" is often used as a catch-all for those idioms in the North Indian dialect continuum that are not recognised as languages separate from the language of the Delhi region. Punjabi, and Chhattisgarhi, while sometimes recognised as being distinct languages, are often considered dialects of Hindi. Many other local idioms, such as the Bhili languages, which do not have a distinct identity defined by an established literary tradition, are almost always considered dialects of Hindi. In other words, the boundaries of "Hindi" have little to do with mutual intelligibility, and instead depend on social perceptions of what constitutes a language.⁸