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Something I've noticed about this forum:..
- Thread starter avvie
- Start date
We still end up having plenty of opportunities to ask for clarification or more explanation, but most often that's due to lack of information rather than sheer incomprehensibility of the original text.
People do tend to forget that if they don't communicate effectively, their attempts at communication are wasted effort. Unfortunately for them, mind reading is a lost art (if in fact 'twas ever found.)
People do tend to forget that if they don't communicate effectively, their attempts at communication are wasted effort. Unfortunately for them, mind reading is a lost art (if in fact 'twas ever found.)
WHOA!!!
I use groovy ALL THE TIME! I LOVE that word, and have never- and will never- let it die! 
Hey now! I resemble that remark.
This is a forum of bassists assembled to help each other and talk music. If some illiterate child (or worse, an adult) asks questions or wants to, you know, talk bass, but cannot utilize proper spelling, punctuation, and sentence structure, not only am I *not* going to go out of my way to help them, I'm going to ridicule them for their borderline intelligence.
I think it's more to do with the fact that TBers tend to be older and therefore wiser/more sensible than on other forums.
We also tend to type with all our fingers rather than posting with their thumbs, and it's ironic considering the thumb is what differentiates us from animals. 
Dirk
Dirk
I'm regular at a drum forum that also has a degree of literacy to it. I especially like to see how younger players develop their writing skills over time.
In middle school, we had Shakespeare's Julius Caesar without the modern English interpretation. In high school, we had Macbeth, again, without the interpretation. Unless one paid 100% attention and tried to catch up quick, it was pretty difficult, especially considering the (for me, somewhat cliched) fact that English is not our native language.
I'm a native Hindi speaker, though my Bengali is as good as a native Bengali speaker (or so I've been told
). Hindi, much like English, varies widely from region to region, with variations in lingo which are a consequence of influence of other local languages. Generally, Hindi seems to have borrowed a fair few words from Urdu, IME. As for Bengali, though, of late, Indian Bengali (i.e. not taking into account the Bangladeshi variations) has been influenced quite a bit by Hindi.
I'm a native Hindi speaker, though my Bengali is as good as a native Bengali speaker (or so I've been told
The standard linguistics take on Hindi and Urdu is that they are variants of the same language, although with the added distinction that they use different scripts (as is the case with Serbo-Croatian) and have borrowed strongly from different source languages. I don't know much about it personally, other than a single Hindi course that I took (where I was the only non-Indian!) so I'm curious how you would respond to the characterization that Hindi-Urdu is a single language? Linguists usually base that definition on whether two speakers can reasonably understand each other.
I find it pretty interesting too: Hindi and Urdu seem to share a lot by way of grammar and syntax, but have totally different scripts. So grammatically, I'm sure they're from the same family: just a case of spoken language evolving commonly and scripts evolving differently, AFAICS.
As for mutual intelligibility, colloquial Hindi and colloquial Urdu are mutually intelligible for the most part, IME. When talking about purer versions of either language, though, the variation in sources (as you mentioned) plays a big part. I know for a fact, though, that I can't say I totally understand 'pure' Urdu, which typically comprises of lots of Farsi and Arabic influences; again, IMO, a native Urdu speaker won't fully understand 'pure' Hindi, which again, would have lots of words sourced from Sanskrit.
That jibes with what I've read about the situation - I was also curious as to whether it would be a point of much controversy whether or not they are thought of as one (the same) or two (different) languages? Linguists tend to ignore the political side of things, and classify languages based on data, but this can be at odds with what the actual speakers of the languages think. For example, Serbian and Croatian are classified as one language by linguists, but are thought of as separate languages by many speakers. And variants of Chinese such as Shanghainese, Cantonese, Mandarin are usually described as dialects by many speakers and the Chinese government, but identified as distinct (and not mutually intelligible) languages by most linguists. I myself think that linguists cannot totally ignore the political scenarios - even by ignoring politics, they are part of it, IMO.
Considering how much Hindi and Urdu scripts differ, I would consider them separate languages even from a purely linguistic POV (not considering political or even cultural sensibilities). That said, I would like to take a look at the standpoint of linguists who refer to them as the same language. Any links? If by language they mean to refer to purely the grammatical aspect then even I'd agree with them (not sure that's a correct concept, though).
My Mom was an English teacher.
Get it right or do it over BEFORE anyone else reads it...you WILL get it right.
Get it right or do it over BEFORE anyone else reads it...you WILL get it right.
