Indian borrowings in english

Content 

INTRODUCTION

1. General characteristic of American Indian language

    1.1. Investigation and scolarship of American Indian language

    1.2. Classification of South American Indian languages

    1.2.1. Indian languages and dialects

2. The main features of American Indian language

    2.1. Grammatical peculiarities

    2.2. Phonological characteristics

    2.3. Vocabulary

    2.4. Indianisms

    2.5. Writing and texts

3. The Indian borrowings in contemporary American

    3.1. Processes of word-formation

    3.2. Foreign tendencies

CONCLUSION

BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

INTRODUCTION

      Topicallity. American Indian language is a group of languages that once covered and today still partially cover all of South America, the Antilles, and Central America to the south of a line from the Gulf of Honduras to the Nicoya Peninsula in Costa Rica. Estimates of the number of speakers in that area in pre-Columbian times vary from 10,000,000 to 20,000,000. In the early 1980s there were approximately 15,900,000, more than three-fourths of them in the central Andean areas. Language lists include around 1,500 languages, and figures over 2,000 have been suggested. For the most part, the larger estimate refers to tribal units whose linguistic differentiation cannot be determined. Because of extinct tribes with unrecorded languages, the number of languages formerly spoken is impossible to assess. Only between 550 and 600 languages (about 120 now extinct) are attested by linguistic materials. Fragmentary knowledge hinders the distinction between language and dialect and thus renders the number of languages indeterminate.

      Because the South American Indians originally came from North America, the problem of their linguistic origin involves tracing genetic affiliations with North American groups. To date only Uru-Chipaya, a language in Bolivia, is surely relatable to a Macro-Mayan phylum of North America and Mesoamerica. Hypotheses about the probable centre of dispersion of language groups within South America have been advanced for stocks like Arawakan and Tupian, based on the principle (considered questionable by some) that the area in which there is the greatest variety of dialects and languages was probably the centre from which the language groups dispersed at one time; but the regions in question seem to be refugee regions, to which certain speakers fled, rather than dispersion centres.

      South America is one of the most linguistically differentiated areas of the world. Various scholars hold the plausible view that all American Indian languages are ultimately related. The great diversification in South America, in comparison with the situation of North America, can be attributed to the greater period of time that has elapsed since the South American groups lost contact among themselves. The narrow bridge that allows access to South America (i.e., the Isthmus of Panama) acted as a filter so that many intermediate links disappeared and many groups entered the southern part of the continent already linguistically differentiated.1

     The theme of the research is the use of Indian borrowings in contemporary American.

     The object of our research is Indian borrowings. The subject is its main peculiarities, stylistic features and usage in colloquial American speech.

     Nowadays we have a lot of theoretical and practical materials about this notion, but only some of them are effective.

     That’s why it is important for us to analyze the works of famous American writers, on the basis upon theoretical knowledge we’ve got during our research.

     The aim of our research is:

  • to find out the difference between different types of American Indian language and their peculiarities;
  • to analyze methods of their linguistic analysis;
  • to find out the place which these Indian borrowings occupy in contemporary American;
  • to analyze the influence of cultural factor in analyzing Indian borrowings in contemporary American.

      The tasks of our research are:

    • to give the general characteristics of Amerian Indian language;
    • to define the main peculiarities of the usage of Indian borrowings in contemporary American;
    • to examine different examples of Indian borrowings in contemporary American.

      The practical aim implies that it can be used by teachers while teaching students the notions of stylistics and interpretation of a text.

      The theoretical aim implies that it can be used by young students who want to analyze oral language and its peculiarities while studying famous work of American writers.

      The description of Indian borrowings was made long time ago in works of ancient grammarians and medieval rhetoricians.

      Nowadays Indian borrowings in contemporary American are more vividly interpreted both in general semiotic and linguistic researches.

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

1. General characteristic of American Indian language

     Language is central to Indian identity. Although there are exceptions, in general, aboriginal group identity corresponded to the language that its members spoke. This tradition continues in that tribal designations often refer to language, even though in some cases few if any of its members may know the language.

     At the time of the European contact, some 300 languages are estimated to have been in use among the indigenous habitants of the area north of Mexico and a surprisingly large number of these survive to the present day. In the 1990 U.S. census, 136 such languages were identified as household languages by respondents. Although census figures may involve overreporting and underreporting of both languages and their numbers of speakers, by adding in a conservative additional figure for languages found only in Canada, it can be asserted that perhaps half of the estimated number at the European contact are still in use.

      The starting point for discussions of Indian languages is usually their relationships to one another or their classification. The primacy of this concern grows out of the tradition of historical and comparative linguistics, particularly with respect to many European languages in the Indo-European family. The success of the Indo-European tradition is based to some extent on the availability of data over time (as much as four thousand years) in some of the languages. Since no comparable record exists for Indian languages, however, their relationships and their classification have been more problematical.2

      Early students of Indian languages included Thomas Jefferson, who engaged in fieldwork and asked Meriwether Lewis and William Clark to bring back information on the languages of the tribes they encountered on the 1804–1806 expedition. Albert Gallatin, Jefferson's secretary of the Treasury, is also credited with later making the first serious attempt at a comprehensive classification. The definitive classification of Indian languages was produced by the Bureau of American Ethnology under the leadership of John Wesley Powell in 1891 and recognized fifty-eight distinct language families. Since then, generally accepted modifications of the Powell classification have been made that involve mergers of languages and groups with other groups and other rearrangements. However, the view of a large number (more than fifty, including isolates) of distinct language groups in North America has remained the orthodox one. There have, however, been attempts to reduce radically the number to as few as three stocks for the entire New World by postulating remote relations showing genetic unity among numbers of the Powellian families. This has led to considerable and sometimes acrimonious debate among experts. Substantial progress has been made in determining the internal relations within families and relating these to prehistoric and historic migrations. Advances have also been made in the reconstruction of earlier stages of the languages.

      It is important to note that genetic classification of languages does not necessarily correspond to other classifications such as geographic or cultural. The geographic diversity of the Algonquian languages, which are spread over a huge part of the North American continent in several noncontiguous locations, including the high plains and both the east and west coasts, illustrates this well. Another kind of linguistic relationship among languages is illustrated by the Pueblo languages, which derive from three quite distinct families but show parallel patterns of expression and use because of the close geographic and cultural relations of their speakers. This kind of nongenetic relationship is called a linguistic area.3

      Although Indians recorded information using pictograms before contact with Europeans, they had no writing in the sense of a graphic system with which to directly represent language. The singular accomplishment of the Cherokee Sequoyah, who created a syllabary for his language in the early nineteenth century, is without parallel within the Indian world. Writing systems using the Latin alphabet and, in the case of Cree and Ojibwe, a geometric syllabary were developed initially by white missionaries and anthropologists, but Native speakers have taken responsibility for promulgating standardized orthographies. The strong tradition of orality has given many Indian languages as rigorous a set of conventions about usage as exists for formal, written English.

      Central to any discussion of Indian languages is the relationship between language and culture. Here, the focus has been the debate on the hypothesis associated with the linguist Edward Sapir and his student Benjamin Lee Whorf that language can determine ways in which its speakers view the world. Early evidence given by Whorf in support of the hypothesis has been rejected as untenable, but the debate continues to surface in scholarly discussions.

      There can be no doubt, however, that Native culture is richly reflected in the Indian languages. Elaborate kin-ship systems found in these languages not only illustrate specific views of kinship, but also show the centrality of such relations to Indian life. Native systems of classification for the natural world are often subtle and complex.

      American English has been greatly enriched by borrowing from Indian languages. Aside from the many place names, the two most commons types of borrowing are terms for native flora and fauna and for objects and concepts of the Native culture.

     We study loanwords from the three main spoken Malaysian languages which are the Malay language, Chinese dialects and Indian languages in local English newspapers. This research is confined to two English language newspapers namely New Straits Times and The Star. This study seeks to identify the loanwords from the three Malaysian languages which are the Malay language, Chinese dialects and Indian languages in the English language newspapers and to investigate the types of lexical items or loanwords found in the English language newspapers.4 The data for this study has been culled from 141 newspaper articles which comprise 194 loanwords from the period of October 2005 to August 2006. The loanwords from the three Malaysian languages are also categorized and analysed to show the extent to which the Malay language, Chinese dialects and Indian languages are used in the English newspapers. The extent of the borrowing of the Malay language, Chinese dialects and Indian languages was analysed by calculating the percentages. The percentages revealed the number of borrowings in the Malay language, Chinese dialects and Indian languages and determined the most predominant language in which the highest number of loanwords comes from. Loanwords from the Malay language, Chinese dialects and Indian languages used in the English local newspapers differed in terms of quantity and types of lexical borrowings. The findings of this study prove that the need to use the loanwords from the three main Malaysian languages is mainly to express the ideas which exist in the multiracial society in Malaysia with the readers. Borrowing from the local languages show that the English language is still in contact with other languages to express new ideas and concepts. Hence, it is prone to change according to the users’ needs and to express themselves with respect to their needs. This nativization process is therefore inevitable in the outer circle countries where English is used as a second language mainly. It is hoped that this study will assist in some measure towards an understanding of the way local words, phrases and ideas are borrowed into the English language and the extent of using these loanwords in the local English newspapers.

     Kajian ini adalah berkenaan ‘non-English language borrowings’ atau ‘loanwords’ daripada tiga bahasa utama yang digunakan di Malaysia iaitu Bahasa Malaysia, dialek-dialek Cina dan Bahasa-bahasa India yang dipinjam ke dalam Bahasa Inggeris di Malaysia. Tesis ini merupakan kajian tentang ‘non-English language borrowing’ daripada Bahasa Malaysia, dialek-dialek Cina dan beberapa Bahasa-bahasa India yang dipinjamkan dalam Bahasa Inggeris khususnya, surat khabar Bahasa Inggeris. Hanya ‘loanwords’akan dikaji dalam disertasi ini. Data untuk kajian ini terdiri daripada 141 artikel suratkhabar Bahasa Inggeris daripada News Straits Times dan The Star. Terdapat sebanyak 194 ‘loanwords’ daripada Bahasa Malaysia, dialek-dialek Cina dan beberapa Bahasa-bahasa India dari bulan Oktober 2005 hingga Ogos 2006 yang dikaji. Tesis ini bertujuan mengenalpasti dan mengklasifikasikan ‘loanwords’ daripada Bahasa Malaysia, dialek-dialek Cina dan Bahasa bahasa India yang dipinjamkan dalam Bahasa Inggeris. Tesis ini juga bertujuan mengenalpasti keluasan peminjaman ‘loanwords’ atau ‘extent’ peminjaman ‘loanwords’ daripada Bahasa Malaysia, dialek-dialek Cina dan Bahasa-bahasa India dalam Bahasa Inggeris. Keluasan atau extent peminjaman dalam Bahasa Malaysia, dialek-dialek Cina dan Bahasa-bahasa India dikira dalam peratus. Kiraan peratus menunjukkan kekerapan peminjaman ‘loanword’ daripada bahasa mana yang kerap dijumpai dalam suratkhabar. Akibat dan kesan peminjaman dari segi ‘sociocultural’ dibentang. Secara keseluruhan, peminjaman ‘loanwords’ daripada Bahasa Malaysia, dialek-dialek Cina dan Bahasa-bahasa India menunjukkan yang Bahasa Inggeris masih dipengaruhi oleh bahasa-bahasa lain untuk memperkenalkan idea-idea dan konsep-konsep baru. Dengan itu, Bahasa Inggeris yang digunakan sekarang adalah mengikut kehendak pengguna dalam keperluan sehariannya. Namun demikian, proses ‘nativization’ tidak dapat dielakkan dalam penggunaan Bahasa Inggeris di negara-negara ‘Outer Circle’. Adalah menjadi harapan bahawa kajian ini dapat membantu sedikit sebanyak dalam memahami dengan lebih lanjut bagaimana dan mengapa perkataan-perkataan, frasa-frasa dan idea-idea asing dipinjamkan ke dalam Bahasa Inggeris.

      At the start of the twenty-first century, all North American indigenous languages were classified as endangered. Navajo had by far the largest number of speakers, about 150,000, while most had fewer than 1,000, and many had only a very small number of elderly speakers. The most devastating influence was the pressure of the anglophone milieu in which Indians lived, under which only a small percentage of Indian children learned to speak their Native language at home. This led tribes to introduce ambitious programs of language maintenance and renewal as they took control of their education systems from pre-school through graduate school.

 

1.1. Investigation and scolarship of American Indian language

      The first grammar of a South American Indian language (Quechua) appeared in 1560. Missionaries displayed intense activity in writing grammars, dictionaries, and catechisms during the 17th century and the first half of the 18th. Data were also provided by chronicles and official reports. Information for this period was summarized in Lorenzo Hervás y Panduro's Idea dell' universo (1778–87) and in Johann Christoph Adelung and Johann Severin Vater's Mithridates (1806–17). Subsequently, most firsthand information was gathered by ethnographers in the first quarter of the 20th century. In spite of the magnitude and fundamental character of the numerous contributions of this period, their technical quality was below the level of work in other parts of the world. Since 1940 there has been a marked increase in the recording and historical study of languages, carried out chiefly by missionaries with linguistic training, but there are still many gaps in knowledge at the basic descriptive level, and few languages have been thoroughly described. Thus, classificatory as well as historical, areal, and typological research has been hindered. Descriptive study is made difficult by a shortage of linguists, the rapid extinction of languages, and the remote location of those tongues needing urgent study5. Interest in these languages is justified in that their study yields basic cultural information on the area, in addition to linguistic data, and aids in obtaining historical and prehistorical knowledge. The South American Indian languages are also worth studying as a means of integrating the groups that speak them into national life.

 

2. Classification of the South American Indian languages

      Although classifications based on geographical criteria or on common cultural areas or types have been made, these are not really linguistic methods. There is usually a congruence between a language, territorial continuity, and culture, but this correlation becomes more and more random at the level of the linguistic family and beyond. Certain language families are broadly coincident with large culture areas—e.g., Cariban and Tupian with the tropical forest area—but the correlation becomes imperfect with more precise cultural divisions—e.g., there are Tupian languages like Guayakí and Sirionó whose speakers belong to a very different culture type. Conversely, a single culture area like the eastern flank of the Andes (the Montaña region) includes several unrelated language families. There is also a correlation between isolated languages, or small families, and marginal regions, but Quechumaran (Kechumaran), for instance, not a big family by its internal composition, occupies the most prominent place culturally.

      Most of the classification in South America has been based on inspection of vocabularies and on structural similarities. Although the determination of genetic relationship depends basically on coincidences that cannot be accounted for by chance or borrowing, no clear criteria have been applied in most cases. As for subgroupings within each genetic group, determined by dialect study, the comparative method, or glottochronology (also called lexicostatistics, a method for estimating the approximate date when two or more languages separated from a common parent language, using statistics to compare similarities and differences in vocabulary), very little work has been done. Consequently, the difference between a dialect and language on the one hand, and a family (composed of languages) and stock (composed of families or of very differentiated languages) on the other, can be determined only approximately at present. Even genetic groupings recognized long ago (Arawakan or Macro-Chibchan) are probably more differentiated internally than others that have been questioned or that have passed undetected.

      Extinct languages present special problems because of poor, unverifiable recording, often requiring philological interpretation. For some there is no linguistic material whatsoever; if references to them seem reliable and unequivocal, an investigator can only hope to establish their identity as distinct languages, unintelligible to neighbouring groups. The label “unclassified,” sometimes applied to these languages, is misleading: they are unclassifiable languages.

      Great anarchy reigns in the names of languages and language families; in part, this reflects different orthographic conventions of European languages, but it also results from the lack of standardized nomenclature. Different authors choose different component languages to name a given family or make a different choice in the various names designating the same language or dialect. This multiplicity originates in designations bestowed by Europeans because of certain characteristics of the group (e.g., Coroado, Portuguese “tonsured” or “crowned”), in names given to a group by other Indian groups (e.g., Puelche, “people from the east,” given by Araucanians to various groups in Argentina), and in self-designations of groups (e.g., Carib, which, as usual, means “people” and is not the name of the language). Particularly confusing are generic Indian terms like Tapuya, a Tupí word meaning enemy, or Chuncho, an Andean designation for many groups on the eastern slopes; terms like these explain why different languages have the same name. In general (but not always), language names ending in -an indicate a family or grouping larger than an individual language; e.g., Guahiboan (Guahiban) is a family that includes the Guahibo language, and Tupian subsumes Tupí-Guaraní.6

      There have been many linguistic classifications for this area. The first general and well-grounded one was that by U.S. anthropologist Daniel Brinton (1891), based on grammatical criteria and a restricted word list, in which about 73 families are recognized. In 1913 Alexander Chamberlain, an anthropologist, published a new classification in the United States, which remained standard for several years, with no discussion as to its basis. The classification (1924) of the French anthropologist and ethnologist Paul Rivet, which was supported by his numerous previous detailed studies and contained a wealth of information, superseded all previous classifications. It included 77 families and was based on similarity of vocabulary items. Jestmír Loukotka, a Czech language specialist, contributed two classifications (1935, 1944) on the same lines as Rivet but with an increased number of families (94 and 114, respectively), the larger number resulting from newly discovered languages and from Loukotka's splitting of several of Rivet's families. Loukotka used a diagnostic list of 45 words and distinguished “mixed” languages (those having one-fifth of the items from another family) and “pure” languages (those that might have “intrusions” or “traces” from another family but totalling fewer than one-fifth of the items, if any). Rivet and Loukotka contributed jointly another classification (1952) listing 108 language families that was based chiefly upon Loukotka's 1944 classification. Important work on a regional scale has also been done, and critical and summarizing surveys have appeared.

      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

Indian borrowings in english 📙 Дипломная → 🆔 71

Indian borrowings in english 📙 Дипломная → 🆔 71

Indian borrowings in english