Talk:Indo-Aryan languages

Mitanni

It seems strange that Mitanni language would be Indo-European if its speakers are hurrian?

no, the Mitanni nobility were indo-aryan, ruling over a hurrian population. there was some confusion as to which language should be labeled "mitanni", but the term generally refers to the upper-class indo-aryan language now. see Indo-Aryan superstrate in Mitanni dab (ᛏ) 07:24, 3 Mar 2005 (UTC)

wrong numbers

@Kautilya3 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indo-Aryan_languages

• The largest in terms of native speakers are Hindustani (Hindi-Urdu, about 329 million),[2] Bengali (about 200 million), Punjabi (about 100 million),[3] Marathi (about 70 million), Gujarati (about 50 million), Bhojpuri (about 40 million), Awadhi (about 38 million), Maithili (about 30 million), Odia (about 30 million), Sindhi (about 26 million), Braj Bhasha (about 21 million), Rajasthani (about 20 million), Saraiki (about 20 million), Chhattisgarhi (about 18 million), Nepali (about 16 million), Sinhala (about 15 miilion), Assamese (about 15 million), Haryanvi (about 13 million), Kannauji (about 9 million), Bagheli (about 8 million), Kashmiri (about 6 million), Dogri (about 4 million), and Bundeli (about 3 million), Garhwali (about 3 million), Kumaoni (about 2 million), with a total number of native speakers of more than 900 million.

• i was understand in wikipedia 900 = 1086!

329+ 200+100+ 70+ 50+40 +38 +30+ 30+ 26+21+ 20+ 20+ 18 + 16 + 15+ 15 + 13 + 9+ 8 + 6 + 4+ 3+3+ 2 million=1086 million, with a total number of native speakers of more than 900 million.

Language comparison chart

I've removed the tables listing words from the various languages (here's what they looked like). First of all, it's doubtful whether that sort of content is needed at all: without discussion of say, sound changes or semantic shifts, a simple list of words isn't really encyclopedic. Granted, an argument can be made that such a list could still be useful, but in that case the list will need to be very different from what we currently have. We've got a gigantic table, where apparently everyone has felt the need to add a column for their language, so the whole thing takes up several horizontal screens to display and it's difficult for any reader to make their way around it. It's also almost entirely unsourced, it's choke full of errors (for example, the Sanskrit words were given in a Bengali pronunciation), the transliterations used vary wildly (even within each language column). These tables also attract a lot of edits, and so are difficult to police.

If someone adds a new table comparing a small number of words across a small number of languages, where the words are sourced and consistently transliterated, and there is some text discussing this data, then that might be fine. But the horrid dumping ground we've had until just now is nowhere near that. – Uanfala (talk) 11:00, 8 May 2019 (UTC)

• I agree, there are too many languages and varied transliteration, I've been trying to fix them for a while now but it's very messy. I think it should be made similar to the one used in Germanic_languages#Vocabulary_comparison and only contain the major/most spoken languages. I'd also like to add, the Germanic languages page also does not seem to cite many references as well. UserNumber (talk) 11:58, 8 May 2019 (UTC)
  • Even the Germanic one is over the top with the table and quite thin on the prose. I think that if a similar table is added here, it will need to contain no more than 7 or 8 carefully selected languages, and the words chosen will need to be there in order to illustrate things actually discussed in the article text. – Uanfala (talk) 12:05, 8 May 2019 (UTC)

It seems the Germanic_languages#Vocabulary_comparison includes minor languages as well, like Scots, West Frisian, Bokmal, Faroese, Low German, Central German etc. Msasag (talk) 06:19, 9 May 2019 (UTC)

@Uanfala: Apparently, we encounter similar issues, cf. Talk:Austronesian languages#Inflated "Comparison charts". Having a concise comparison table in the article is important, because many readers are interested to get an impression of the diversity within a language family (or subgroup). There should be an initial consensus, however, about the choice of languages and lexical items, in order to keep further additions (I call it "Wikiflation") at bay. –Austronesier (talk) 08:48, 19 July 2019 (UTC)

@Uanfala and Austronesier: If I might suggest, a template would be useful. Normally they're used when we want a table repeated in more than one article, but they're also useful even if only used in one. For one thing, they add an additional step to edit them (at least if we don't supply an edit button) and so discourage random fly-by edits. For another, they generate a separate edit history and appear separately on your watch list, so changes to the table don't get lost in the edits to the main article. — kwami (talk) 21:49, 4 March 2020 (UTC)

@kwami: Sounds good. Is there an example of a table-turned-template so I get an idea what it technically looks like? I'm not aware that I've seen one, or maybe I have, and haven't noticed. –Austronesier (talk) 12:35, 5 March 2020 (UTC)

Just like an info box, but without all the special syntax -- you juist paste the table in template space and then call it from the target article by using braces instead of brackets around its name. As with an info box, you can tag things as 'include only' or 'no include' (e.g. categories, so the template or the article will or will not appear in the category). — kwami (talk) 12:53, 5 March 2020 (UTC)

Here's a simple table template - {{Pinyin table}}. You could make an even simpler list with asterisks and colons instead, of course. Copy the bracketed title as you see it now (with the brackets) and paste it somewhere, and the table should display. But you can't edit it in article space (only remove it), which should discourage the majority of editors. — kwami (talk) 13:07, 5 March 2020 (UTC)

For what it's worth, Wiktionary is the project with a scope more suited for vocabulary comparison tables, e.g. wikt:Appendix:Indo-Aryan Swadesh lists. These Swadesh appendices can and do still suffer from the problem of inconsistency and low editor attention, but Wiktionary's lexical templates can help with parts of this: cf. e.g. the use of the template {{ne-l}} which automatically provides consistent transcription of Nepali given the correct native orthography. --Trɔpʏliʊm • blah 17:28, 8 March 2020 (UTC)

Classification

@Uanfala and Kwamikagami: Please help me out: whose classification are we actually following here? The sources given are Masica (1991) and Kausen (2006). Masica (1991) lists several classifications starting from Hoernle in 1880. But none matches the classification here. So it's Kausen (2006), which is an eclectic synthesis from several RS's, but itself actually not a RS. And it's not only eclectic, but apparently flawed. E.g. I couldn't find any classification scheme which define "Western" and "Central" zones the way we do here. Hate me for this LOL, but I think we need a cleanup here. –Austronesier (talk) 15:30, 4 March 2020 (UTC)

I've mostly been following Cardona and Masica. I don't know who would be best. (And of course we can give more than one, but we should choose one for the info boxes of the individual languages, unless we have a local RS that overrides it.) Any classification is probably going to be arbitrary to the extent that it tries to impose a tree structure on a dialect continuum. — kwami (talk) 21:40, 4 March 2020 (UTC)

@kwami: Maybe we can sort out an agnostic rake model composed of uncontroversial low-order groupings, similar to the units in Masica's appendix (1991)? –Austronesier (talk) 09:56, 5 March 2020 (UTC)

That would probably be best for the lineages in the info boxes. On this page, though, I think it might be informative to give some of the more respectable groupings. (Or not -- if there are no points of agreement, it might not be meaningful.) — kwami (talk) 11:59, 5 March 2020 (UTC)

@kwami: Yeah, that was my idea, rake model for the infobox and the Template:Indo-Aryan languages, while here, we could give an overview of the notable proposals. The table in Uralic languages looks like an interesting way to present these things. –Austronesier (talk) 12:22, 5 March 2020 (UTC)

I seem to remember trying to remove the use of Kausen here (or in another related article), but that kept getting put back in, so I gave up (but then, I've almost given up on most of the "bigger" topics in this area anyway). The higher-level subdivisions (Eastern, Central, etc. zones) might be rather woolly and controversial (to varying degrees), but they're helpful at least as geographical terms pointing to spheres of contact, but I guess we should not use them in a way that strongly suggests a neat tree model. As for the lower-level groupings, they're at least as open to dispute (is Potwari a variety of Lahnda or of Punjabi?, is Lahnda a daughter node of Punjabi or an independent group?, is Khetrani a member of Lahnda or not?, is Bagri a Rajasthani or a Punjabi(c) variety?, is Ahirwati a subdialect of Mewati or an independent dialect?, etc.). This is the kind of quagmire we'd end up treading into if we tried to re-organise the Indo-Aryan navbox into smaller sections. – Uanfala (talk) 19:48, 5 March 2020 (UTC)

Thank you, Uanfala, for your evaluation. I was a bit optimistic about the feasibility of a rake model as in the case of Uralic or Malayo-Polynesian; with the former, we have discontinuous relic areas, with the latter, lots of water inbetween. With Indo-Aryan, it appears that discontinuities are the exception rather than the rule. Reminds me of what we find in Northern South Sulawesi languages, where we have a mesh of arbitrary reference points called "languages", and "transitional dialects" which happen to lie equidistant between two (or three) reference points.

I'll nevertheless try my luck in my sandbox, whatever I can carve out from Masicaa (maybe plus Glottolog). –Austronesier (talk) 15:33, 6 March 2020 (UTC)

The literature that I've seen gives the impression that Indo-Aryan simply has too many underdocumented dialects to currently present any reasonably full overview of the basic isoglosses, even though this is what we'd need for any kind of a "rake" overview. Many of the classifications seem like "black-box" overviews where units are asserted but not substantiated by any intensional definitions. If there is no general definition of what something like "Punjabi" as a dialect area even means, it is not possible (and not Wikipedia's job) even in principle to take a stance on a question like "is Lahnda Punjabi". If there are sufficiently many extensional definitions either to document even any one proposal in enough detail is not clear to me.

Even in the absense of a comprehensive taxonomy, we still should try to describe what is known of the isogloss structure of Indo-Aryan though (a la Masica: 459–460). The topic would surely deserve a separate article eventually. --Trɔpʏliʊm • blah 16:20, 8 March 2020 (UTC)

@Tropylium: When I said "rake model", I actually meant to simply adopt the seventeen boxes (plus Romani...) in Masica (pp. 451–455, also cited in Southworth, Linguistic Archaeology of South Asia, 2005), even though some (or all?) of these units are merely asserted but not substantiated. How many lects which have a WP page actually are controversial in their assignment to one of the "boxes" (like Potwari and Bagri mentioned by Uanfala)?

A second step would be a syopsis of the proposals, plus a presentiation of the isoglosses described by Masica and Southworth. Depending on how much detail we want to present here, I agree that a separate article would make sense. –Austronesier (talk) 17:20, 8 March 2020 (UTC)

Oh, it was that appendix! For some reason I had imagined you were referring to the second appendix, where all the major languages and dialects are listed in alphabetical order (though now that I think of it, if a list of several hundred names were the basis of a model, it would look a lot less like a rake and a lot more like like a clothes brush).
Now, using the 17 "boxes" as the basic building blocks with which to delineate the higher-level groupings when discussing the various classifications in this article – that's definitely a good idea, at the very least because each box normally stands for a major literary language, and that makes it recognisable to readers (though even here some of these categories are controversial – in Masica's diagrams, their names are in quotation marks). However, these are of limited use for any more extensive classifications, as the greater number of languages (at least the ones spoken by smaller groups or otherwise lesser known) do not fit easily into any of those boxes. In a very real sense, these are not boxes at all, but – similarly to the situation you describe for that group in Sulawesi – merely convenient reference points.
Though I have to admit some hypocrisy here – I've been quite happy to tolerate and eve use all these controversial higher- or lower-level categories in the infobox family trees of individual articles, as they've been simply too convenient to discard. I guess it might be time for a big rethink of how all that is done here? – Uanfala (talk) 18:56, 8 March 2020 (UTC)

@Uanfala: Well, my dumb, the fact that Assamese and Bengali have separate boxes, whereas Kashmiri is taken to represent all of Dardic should have rang a bell to me... –Austronesier (talk) 11:46, 12 March 2020 (UTC)

@Uanfala, Kwamikagami, and Austronesier: I've tried to cover a lot more about the issues in classification. I agree our current grouping is haphazard and not necessarily better than any of the other proposals put forth in the past, but it's not something that can be fixed by Wikipedia editors since it's a big linguistic problem. The status quo isn't terrible though I guess. Aryaman^{A (talk, contribs)} 23:56, 1 November 2020 (UTC)

@AryamanA: Absolutely great! This is way beyond what I had in mind but have been too lazy to write down LOL. Maybe we can also squeeze in the Ethnologue classification. –Austronesier (talk) 08:50, 2 November 2020 (UTC)

@Austronesier: Oh good catch, added it! Let me know if the colors are too excessive (borrowed the scheme from the map)... Aryaman^{A (talk, contribs)} 20:49, 2 November 2020 (UTC)

Accurate map

We need a new map for the Indo-Aryan category similar to that currently on the Dravidian map. Apart from looking horrible, the Indo-Aryan map currently used does not look very detailed at all. The boundaries for each language area are very general. I have made a start here but if you want to fix anything on this map please do. — Preceding unsigned comment added by C1MM (talk • contribs) 01:04, 3 April 2020 (UTC)

@C1MM: I love the new map BTW! Aryaman^{A (talk, contribs)} 21:41, 1 November 2020 (UTC)

@C1MM: A major problem is that the map is not labeled on Commons, and the label in our WP article is incomplete. I've given it a shot, but don't know what one of the colors is and likely got others wrong. — kwami (talk) 04:22, 2 November 2020 (UTC)

@C1MM: I think the map requires different shades for Assamese/Bengali. Chaipau (talk) 04:40, 2 November 2020 (UTC)

Why? What's so special about Assamese that everyone insists it's totally different than everything else on the planet, when it's little more than a dialect of Bengali? — kwami (talk) 04:49, 2 November 2020 (UTC)

@Chaipau: These are low-level classificatory units, but not down to the language level.

@C1MM: Agree with @AryamanA, the map looks good, but isn't it a bit over-fine-grained for Dardic, if compared to the other groups? –Austronesier (talk) 08:55, 2 November 2020 (UTC)

@Kwamikagami and Austronesier: OK, I see that it is showing Ethnologue levels just below "Eastern". Chaipau (talk) 10:54, 2 November 2020 (UTC)

I think the current categorisations are good (they're one below the very top-level geographical categories so Marathi-Konkani, Bengali-Assamese etc. are acceptable; my only possible suggestion is splitting off "Lahnda" as a group from Punjabi). I added the one label kwami missed (Halbi). Aryaman^{A (talk, contribs)} 16:57, 2 November 2020 (UTC)

@C1MM: I like the finer discrimination, because a label like "Southern Indic" isn't going to mean anything to most people. But labeling the end clades as if they were individual languages is misleading. I can fill them out, but if this is based on Ethnologue, they are not a RS. They don't indicate where they get their classifications from. If this is instead Masica (1991) or Kausen (2006), we should label it as such. Can you tell us where you got it? — kwami (talk) 21:28, 2 November 2020 (UTC)

Apparently, the labels are according to the long-standing classification here, which is based on Kausen (2006). With all due respect to this great communicator of knowledge, I am not really at easy with his classification, because it contains some idiosyncrasies, e.g. no other scholar of IA languages has defined Central IA the way we do here. As AryamanA's wonderful and colorful table shows, any kind of "compromise" version for a classification would inevitably have an element of OR. –Austronesier (talk) 21:44, 2 November 2020 (UTC)

Recent edits

Hi,

Mitannni-Aryan is a proposition/suggestion/hypothesis, not a fact. No reason to make it appear differently.(KIENGIR (talk) 21:21, 5 November 2020 (UTC))

Name in lead section

The term "Vedic languages" should not be used in the lead section as an alternate name for the Indo-Aryan languages. The term "Indo-Aryan languages" is used almost universally, and the term "Vedic languages" itself is a misnomer. Both the Mitanni-Aryan and Dardic languages are not descendants of Vedic Sanskrit but are part of the Indo-Aryan family. In fact, Vedic Sanskrit lost many features that were found in Proto-Indo-Aryan, yet still existed in Middle Indo-Aryan languages, meaning that some Middle Indo-Aryan variants cannot fully be derived from the documented form of Old Indo-Aryan (i.e. Sanskrit), but betray features that must go back to other undocumented variants/dialects of Old Indo-Aryan. -- — Preceding unsigned comment added by Chariotrider555 (talk • contribs)

References

Yeah, this has no place in the article. As far as I'm able to tell, "Vedic" here refers to Old Indo-Aryan, not the modern group. And, not that it matters much, the source cited is really fringe (to quote from the abstract [1]: "It has been demonstrated indisputably [...] the genetic relationship between Biblical Hebrew and Vedic Sanskrit and other so-called Indo-European languages, inclusively of ancient Egyptian and Chinese as well"). – Uanfala (talk) 23:27, 22 November 2020 (UTC)

Wow, I didn't even read the source. Now that I am reading the source it seems to be complete nonsense. Looks like can it be removed on the grounds of WP:FRINGE too. As for the second source, it is self-published, and the author hasn't been published in any third-party publications.Chariotrider555 (talk) 01:08, 23 November 2020 (UTC)

I am speechless out of sheer awe! @Mathglot: Consider this a random ping, but I would feel bad if I didn't at least inform you about the existence of this gem. –Austronesier (talk) 19:20, 23 November 2020 (UTC)

@Austronesier:, Well, it does say that it's based on "incomparable, unequalled, unparalleled, unrivaled, unsurpassable, and superior" sources, so I guess it must be true. At least, I thought so, until I got suspicious by its lack of any mention at all of the Miwok-Hungarian branch, and now I don't know what to think. Mathglot (talk) 19:56, 23 November 2020 (UTC)

Which is why i edited it. It refers to languages based or derived from Vedic Sanskrit. I even specifically mentioned it in my second edit.--Vishnu Sahib (talk) 21:44, 23 November 2020 (UTC)

To be more specific: neither do I agree that "Vedic languages" appears in the lead. The sources are disqualified per WP:FRINGE and WP:SELFPUB. –Austronesier (talk) 22:27, 23 November 2020 (UTC)

They are "self-published" they are "fringe?" How? It is why i edited it and mentioned it is specifically for languages derived from Vedic Sanskrit and not inclusive of languages derived from Proto-Dardic--Vishnu Sahib (talk) 21:14, 24 November 2020 (UTC)

Well?--Vishnu Sahib (talk) 00:01, 28 November 2020 (UTC)

Well:

• Ivanković (2017) is WP:FRINGE. The author in all earnest (?) believes that Biblical Hebrew, Vedic Sanskrit, Ancient Egyptian and Chinese are related. Read this if you want to know more about the author. (Yo, @Mathglot: another must-read!)
• Paliepa (2011) is WP:selfpublished at AuthorHouse.

I hope this helps. –Austronesier (talk) 10:05, 1 December 2020 (UTC)

Inner–Outer hypothesis

Hi @Joshua Jonathan:, I made a new page for the Inner–Outer hypothesis since I felt like it was an interesting debate that would take a long article to really explore fairly. I didn't want to flood this page (I wrote the section on it here originally) so I've separated out most of the content that was here into that article and expanded a lot. I hope this is a fair change; I'm open to discussing how much we want to keep here (maybe one para is too little). Aryaman^{A (talk, contribs)} 16:48, 5 April 2021 (UTC)

AryamanA I see; thanks! Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 19:16, 5 April 2021 (UTC)

Suggesting changes to the area of IA languages in Uttarakhand, India

1. The current map shows the border areas of Uttarakhand with China & the Nepal as IA speaking area which is wrong. These area are Bodish or Himalayish speaking regions (Jad, Rongpa, Darmiya, Byangsi & Chaudangsi in border with China & Nepal & Raji-Raute in parts of border with Nepal).

2. Bangani should be part of Western Pahari rather than Central Pahari.

3. Part of Pauri Garhwal, Dehradun & Uddham Singh Nagar are Buksa & Tharu speaking regions i.e. Bihari branch instead of Western Hindi branch.

Otherwise really liked the current version of the map. Nik9hil (talk) 06:23, 6 April 2021 (UTC)

"Indo-Aryan" is a Wikipedia editor's Invention

Hi can someone help start a vote to convert all references an articles from "Indo-Aryan" to Indic? Indic is the long-standing, proper and academically-recognized linguistic and ethnic designation for this group of languages, and always has been.

Main reasons (there are more):

- "Indo-Aryan" causes confusion among both laymen and Academic circles, anthropologists and linguistics specialists, who have always designated this class of languages and ethnicities as Indic, not Indo-Aryan. Having two designations for the same language group is just a bad idea, not to mention "Indo-Aryan" as a language group or ethnicity group has no basis in fact.

- There is no such thing as an Aryan language, nor is Indic exclusively an "Aryan" ethnicity.

In addition to the Indo-Aryan languages articles, someone has also started a series of fictitious articles based on "Indo-Aryan people" which is equally ridiculous and an attempt to introduce baseless, poorly researched, Original Research into Wikipedia.

Looking forward to some cooperation among editors on fixing this major issue.Xoltron (talk) 00:37, 5 September 2021 (UTC)

The article is well-sourced. I suggest you look at the cited (and uncited) sources. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 01:20, 5 September 2021 (UTC)

I have checked the sources. They are either from sources that are not considered to be mainstream linguistics specialists from academia or they are indirectly from this wikipedia article!Xoltron (talk) 07:37, 5 September 2021 (UTC)

I agree with Kautilya3, the term Indo-Aryan languages is often used in academia and is well sourced in the article. Chariotrider555 (talk) 20:15, 5 September 2021 (UTC)

I've thrown in my 2 cents here[2]. –Austronesier (talk) 20:39, 5 September 2021 (UTC)

Is the next thing we will hear that Suniti Kumar Chatterji wasn't a mainstream linguistics specialist, who in all his writings used the term "Indo-Aryan"? Or Colin Masica, George Cardona and thousands of others who have used and continue to use it? –Austronesier (talk) 20:48, 5 September 2021 (UTC)

I agree with Kautilya3. I have used the sources that Austronesier has listed in Talk:Indo-Aryan_peoples#"Indo-Aryan"_is_a_Wikipedia_editor's_Invention. It seems to me that Xoltron is unaware of the literature at all. Chaipau (talk) 20:55, 5 September 2021 (UTC)

This user is evidently gaslighting. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 21:28, 5 September 2021 (UTC)

@Kautilya3: we can only assume that. What the user is displaying at face value is WP:CIR. Chaipau (talk) 22:56, 5 September 2021 (UTC)

This is Hindutva propaganda. See the recent growth of "Indic Studies". TrangaBellam (talk) 20:52, 6 September 2021 (UTC)

Kautilya3 Based on the abuse you posted on my talk page, I don't think it's appropriate for you to retaliate here because my suggestion on this talk page somehow angers you for unknown reasons. Please consider this a warning the next time you start engaging in similar bullying activity. Let's get back on topic here. Again, Indo-Aryan is certainly not a language group and it may have been coined by one author somewhere but it is not a mainstream point of view. Xoltron (talk) 23:13, 11 September 2021 (UTC)

"Certainly" seems to betray a lack of understanding on your part, given the clear consensus against your point of view. Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 05:30, 12 September 2021 (UTC)

Clear consensus? By whom? Instead of these personal attacks, why not name one linguistics textbook that uses the term "Indo Aryan Languages" over the academically recognized "Indic Languages"? "Aryan" is neither a language, nor a country, nor a geographical area. It is usage is not mainstream although I am sure it is coined commonly by laymen who likely used Wikipedia as a reference.Xoltron (talk) 01:15, 16 September 2021 (UTC)