Talk:Indo-Aryan languages/Archive 1

Archive 1

Classification

The Ethnologue classification, which we repeat here, seems a bit idiosyncratic - making Eastern Punjabi closer to Hindi than to western Punjabi, standard Hindi and the western Hindi dialects closer to Gujarati than to the eastern Hindi dialects; the Bihari dialects closer to Bengali than to Eastern Hindi...Britannica, as copied on this page, gives what appears to me to be a more standard classification of the Indo-Aryan languages. Should we perhaps report both? as alternatives? k 21:17, 3 August 2005 (UTC)

I think perhaps another classification should be used. Also, Nuristani and Dardic as Indo-Aryan? There is not a consensus on Dardic, but I have seen Nuristani as an independent branch of Indo-Iranian. Perhaps some of us can come up with a better classification and to clean up the article a bit. Imperial78

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The term Aryan needs some mention. The link to Aryan gives this text: The word Aryan was originally used in various Indo-Iranian languages with a meaning roughly similar to "noble" or "honorable", and was sometimes used by the speakers of these languages to refer to themselves. but it should be part of this page rather than relying on a link to a different topic which has a sub-note explaining what, to it, is a different topic - if that makes sense.

Seeking help and contribution

Dear Wikipedians,

We apreciate your valuable contribution in article named Wikipedia:Indic transliteration scheme on english WIkipedia.

We at Marathi Language wikipedia do not have enough expertise to update IPA related info in our article, specialy we have been unable to import/update IPA templates and do not know how to use IPA symbols.Please click here-this link- to provide help to update "IPA transliteration for Indic Languages" article for Marathi wikipedia

We seek and request for help in updating above mentioned article and would like to know relevant resources and refferences in respect of Devanagari and IPA .

Thanks and Regards

Mahitgar 16:08, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

Merge with List

I agree, it should be merged - the list should be the main thing, and here there should only be a link to the list. This is the way it's done in a lot of other language articles. --Cbdorsett 09:12, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

Sorry, I'm lost; to what are you referring and to whom are you replying? --Mel Etitis (Μελ Ετητης) 11:43, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

Classification

We desperately need a good classification system for these languages. At the moment, we use a mixture of the Ethnologue system (unsatisfactory) with some excentric additions. I just came across West and Southwest Indo-Aryan languages, and it doesn't seem to make much sense of anything. You might be interested in Linguasphere's statistical classification, which can be seen in PDF here. — Gareth Hughes 13:46, 14 February 2006 (UTC)

It doesn't make any sense at all. The classification is "Western" and "Southern" Indo-Aryan. I am starting the articles Southern Indo-Aryan languages and Western Indo-Aryan languages and I will redirect as much as I can. However West and Southwest Indo-Aryan languages needs to be deleted. Krankman 10:08, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

Pulling in stuff from German article

The German de:Indoarische Sprachen just got a major overhaul, won the 4th prize in the semi-annual writing competetioon there and is on the way to featured. So perhaps someone here may be interested to pull some some content from that article. (Being not a native speaker of English I myself prefer doing translations to, not from German). --Pjacobi 19:54, 22 April 2007 (UTC) _______________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Chronology of attestation

Vedic Sanskrit is an earlier linguistic stage than Prakrits, but as far as concrete physical attestation, the Prakrits are actually attested first (in the Asoka inscriptions, which should probably be mentioned in this article). AnonMoos (talk) 15:18, 28 December 2007 (UTC)

Map

Is there really a need to show the same map twice on the same page? --Maurice45 (talk) 13:01, 7 February 2009 (UTC)

The first map says that Urdu is only a lingua franca with no prevalence as first language. Nothing can be farther from the truth. Urdu has millions of first language speakers in India and Pakistan.

Burrowed Words=

I think the article speaks to much of Indians, and there is very little evidence supporting their claims. The Indian sanskirt language has many burrowed words from the ancestor PIE language, making it not the home of the "Aryans" or PIE's This is associated with the steppe theory. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.80.105.24 (talk) 06:41, 15 September 2009 (UTC)

kurds are aryan race

we kurds are aryan race and we are not : iranian or turk or arab —Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.224.178.177 (talk) 07:13, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

There is no such thing as aryan race. Read up on Race (classification of humans) to see what the scientific community thinks about layman use of the term. Chartinael (talk) 11:24, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

Dialect continuum

The text in the Dialect Continuum section was copied from the Dialect Continuum article. I changed text where I thought appropriate. But the author seems to discuss only the dialect continuum of the Hindi dialects, and doesn't touch upon the other Indic. The author of that section mentions some other languages, and points out that out of these, Punjabi may be most reasonably included in this continuum.

Of course, the author(s) who contributed that section isn't necessarily correct. But I took the information from that article, and changed some text to better clarify the information based on that interpretation.89.187.142.72 (talk) 07:17, 30 December 2010 (UTC)

Yeah, that needs some work. Hindi isn't a dialect continuum, it's only part of one. The criterion is whether people consider their language to be Hindi, not whether it's mutually intelligible or has intermediate varieties. — kwami (talk) 07:46, 30 December 2010 (UTC)

Nepali certainly borrows a lot of words from Hindi. Whether you can find a Hindi word in a Nepali dictionary or not, it's usually readily understood by nominal Nepali speakers. Nevertheless Nepali uses different pronouns and different verb conjugationss. That could be a pretty good indicator of which language you are actually speaking at a particular moment! Based on conjugations perhaps there isn't a true dialect continuum, although you could also argue for a continuum if you ignore that and only look at word stems. LADave (talk) 13:00, 13 July 2011 (UTC)

A dialect continuum is really continuous only at the level of (usually) traditional rural dialects, where neighbouring settlements (villages, for example) use varieties which are almost imperceptibly different from each other, not on the level of standardised national languages, which are based on points in the continuum which are usually too widely spaced out to be nearly as similar. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 20:20, 13 March 2012 (UTC)

Number of speakers

In its current form, the introduction says there are 1.5 billion speakers. It also later says there are more than 900 million native speakers. This last number might mean the sum of the speakers of the specific languages listed, but I did the math and got 800 million. If it means native speakers of all languages, why the discrepancy with 1.5 billion? Maybe 900 million are native speakers, where as 1.5 billion includes non-native speakers? I don't know the answers to all these questions, but it'd be good if someone who does edits this. 188.169.229.30 (talk) 10:19, 18 March 2013 (UTC)

Untitled

there is no evidence Sanskrit is an Indo european language at all kindly review this article Thank you — Preceding unsigned comment added by 122.167.47.178 (talk) 16:01, 26 July 2013 (UTC)

Orphaned references in Indo-Aryan languages

I check pages listed in Category:Pages with incorrect ref formatting to try to fix reference errors. One of the things I do is look for content for orphaned references in wikilinked articles. I have found content for some of Indo-Aryan languages's orphans, the problem is that I found more than one version. I can't determine which (if any) is correct for this article, so I am asking for a sentient editor to look it over and copy the correct ref content into this article.

Reference named "NE":

• From Chittagonian language: Nationalencyklopedin "Världens 100 största språk 2007" The World's 100 Largest Languages in 2007
• From Punjabi language: Nationalencyklopedin "Världens 100 största språk 2010" The World's 100 Largest Languages in 2010

I apologize if any of the above are effectively identical; I am just a simple computer program, so I can't determine whether minor differences are significant or not. AnomieBOT⚡ 17:01, 7 October 2013 (UTC)

Kannada should not be included in Indo-Aryan

In the Language Comparison chart of this article, Kannada language should not be included as it's very obvious it's not the part of Indo-Aryan or Indo-European sect but rather it belongs to the Dravidian family group.

Don't agree, --Onegoal91 (talk) 07:29, 27 April 2013 (UTC).

Agree — Preceding unsigned comment added by 85.154.3.184 (talk) 13:31, 31 December 2013 (UTC)

"Indo-Aryan" and related Categories defined Incorrectly

First, I am not sure where the Categorization and Definition of Indo-Aryan came from, but the concept in its current form does not appear to exist outside of what has been created here on Wikipedia. Can we have more non-wikipedia sources on this term? My understanding is that the earliest written evidence of a anyone refering to themself as 'Aryan' in ethnicity is from the Behistun Inscription of Darius the Great who was a Persian. Whereas here, we have now changed the concept to distinctly "Indian". This entire content on Wikipedia, as well as the related articles, sounds like POV to me and needs revisiting and edited with actual non-wikipedia-derived sources. PenningtonClassical (talk) 00:00, 28 June 2012 (UTC)

I agree. I thought it was pretty much universally acknowledged that there is no such thing as Aryan. I'm thoroughly confused after reading this page. would someone care to explain to me how it became OK to use this word to denote any particular people,language or w/e? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.227.222.145 (talk) 17:57, 5 August 2012 (UTC)

What is Aryan?? It's not a race, has been proven. What is Indo-Aryan?? — Preceding unsigned comment added by AshaPradeep (talk • contribs) 18:20, 10 December 2012 (UTC)

I too wish to know about this discrepancy.Aryan is a word mired in racism and outside of Sanskrutam meanings of noble has no physical definition attached to it. So why is it being used as a definition for a peoples/language? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 209.147.224.225 (talk) 20:20, 24 September 2012 (UTC)

Personally I prefer "Indic". I believe the problem is that Dravidian speakers (and maybe Munda or other) object that "Indic" implies "Indian", which could mean all of them. "Aryan" means Indic + Iranian. (As in the "Aryan invasion" of India.) "Indo-Arian" therefore means the cross-section of Indian × Aryan -- that is, "Indic" sensu stricto. All of this will be explained in any basic volume on Indic or even Indo-European languages. — kwami (talk) 07:37, 11 December 2012 (UTC)

Your explanation here sounds a bit confused. The term "Aryan" simply refers to what is now more usually called "Indo-Iranian", in the historically justified sense (the wider meaning "Indo-European" is obsolete and was never really justified, but admittedly handy if confusing due to its ambiguity – the "Aryan" in "Aryan race" refers to Indo-European, not specifically Indo-Iranian). "Indo-Aryan", then, simply refers to the branch of Aryan that is spoken in India (or the Indian subcontinent more generally). We cannot simply call the Indo-Aryan languages "Indian" because that is a geographical (or even political) reference which would cause ambiguity: the Dravidian languages and others are just as Indian as they are.

"Aryan" refers primarily to a language family, though the community who spoke the Indo-Iranian parent language (Proto-Indo-Iranian) could also be called "(the original) Aryans" (currently sought in the Poltavka culture or Sintashta culture). In a linguistic sense, of course, anybody whose native language is an Indo-Iranian language might be called "Aryan". (Full bilinguals and multilinguals are a complication, though, and multilingualism is notoriously frequent in India: what if a person speaks Hindi and English equally natively?) A language-independent ethnic meaning is much more difficult to define as it is not nearly as clear-cut, and once you refer to biological ancestry that is where race and racism come in. Does an aborigine from the Andaman Islands who speaks Hindi as his native language and not a word of any Andamanese language count as "Aryan"? How about people with mixed Andamanese-aboriginal and North Indian heritage? What about Veddas from Sri Lanka who speak only Singhalese, or East-Asian-looking people from Nepal who happen to speak Nepali as their only language? Indo-Aryan languages are spoken as far afield as Fiji and Suriname, creating the potential for more unusual combinations. (It has been pointed out frequently that at least in a linguistic sense, Romani speakers are Aryan and German speakers are not). Some monolingual German speakers have not a drop of European blood in them (case in point: Philipp Rösler, whose biological parents were Vietnamese, but he has never met them and no connection to Vietnam), demonstrating that language, material culture and biological ancestry can be completely separate. A racial essentialist would never accept that a person with very dark skin or East Asian appearance (and matching genetic markers) could ever be a "real" German, because he sees "Germanness" as exclusively based on biology. But that's arbitrary and unscientific, of course. There's nothing racist or otherwise deeply problematic about talking of "Aryan languages" (in the sense of "Indo-Iranian languages"), though. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 15:44, 21 February 2014 (UTC)

Map

According to this map on Ethnologue, there are two non-scheduled Indo-Aryan languages spoken in far southern India, but our map does not hint to this. I do understand that our map is rough, but still. --JorisvS (talk) 09:11, 28 March 2014 (UTC)

Vedic Sanskrit = Proto-Indo-Aryan?

This article states that Vedic Sanskrit is the proto-language of this family. In other words (although the article does not phrase it this way) Vedic Sanskrit is identical to Proto-Indo-Aryan, just as, in fact, Latin (leaving aside the question of Old, Classical, or Vulgar, etc.) is identical to Proto-Romance. However (I can look up some sources later) I had thought it was widely accepted that there are horizontal differences between Classical Sanskrit and Vedic, i.e. the former represents a slightly different dialect than the latter; or, at least, the various vernacular dialects that developed into the Prakrits represent dialectical differences that already existed in the Vedic period; and, at least, if we count Dardic as part of Indo-Aryan, it seems surprising to think that Kashmiri, etc. would be direct descendents of Vedic. No, my impression was that there is thought to be an earlier, unattested form lying behind all of the attested Indo-Aryan languages.—21:27, 3 May 2014 (UTC)

You're right. It was added as the equivalent to the ancestral-form field of the language info box, but the family box only allows for the protolanguage. — kwami (talk) 00:42, 4 May 2014 (UTC)

wordlist

The unsourced wordlist contradicts in many cases the entries in en.wiktionary "Indo-European languages", with many unlinked examples, thus suspicious of being "ghost words" or mistranslations! HJJHolm (talk) 08:00, 30 May 2014 (UTC)

current total also wrong, if add numbers results 1086 million and not 900

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.

329+200+100+............................=1086, can u add them? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Callofworld (talk • contribs) 09:05, 22 February 2017 (UTC)

need to update numbers

Hindustani (Hindi-Urdu, about 329 million),[2] = Standard Hindi L1: 260.1 million (2001), L2: 120.5 million (1999). Urdu L1: 68.6 million (2001-2014), L2: 94 million (1999): Ethnologue 19. from 1999 to 2017?number belong to 18 years ago. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Callofworld (talk • contribs) 15:28, 22 February 2017 (UTC)

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Map removed by ethnic activist

The map which appeared at the start of this article has been removed twice by a recent editor, Axomika, on the basis that a somewhat recently scheduled Indian language (Maithili) does not appear on the map, which dates from 1978. This WP:SPA editor may not be interested in going through the steps to correct the map, leading to an edit war. Would any editors, including admins, like to step in with advice for this editor? I told Axomika about the Graphics lab on his Talk page a few minutes ago.-Quisqualis (talk) 18:29, 26 January 2018 (UTC)

The map shows only the major language groups, it can't sow all the individual languages that make them up. Still, it does have some oddities, like the label Dogri (Punjabi/Pahri) for the languages of Himachal. – Uanfala (talk) 20:54, 26 January 2018 (UTC)

Maithili

@Filpro: I am contacting you to let you know that your Indo-Aryan languages map that is used on Indo-Aryan languages and Indo-Aryan peoples is incorrect as it displays Maithili as a dialect of Hindi. The constitutions of both India and Nepal recognise Maithili as a distinct language:

http://mha.nic.in/sites/upload_files/mha/files/EighthSchedule_19052017.pdf

Ethnologue also includes Maithili as a separate language and not a dialect of Hindi as well:

https://www.ethnologue.com/language/mai

Could you please edit the map and include Maithili as a separate language which almost all sources recognise it as. Thanks.Axomika (talk) 16:22, 26 February 2018 (UTC)

Go ahead & prepare a better map, but removing it is vandalism. Your edit reverted. AshLin (talk) 16:44, 26 February 2018 (UTC)

I have shared sources and not a single person has refuted them. These are facts and yet a map that has been proven wrong is allowed to stay? You at Wikipedia are all RACISTS of the highest order including the map creator. This degradation of a language and culture by you people is disgusting.Axomika (talk) 20:47, 26 February 2018 (UTC)

You are advised to be civil. Difference of opinion is a regular feature of Wikipedia and are to be resolved by civil discourse. It is also noted that the same map had been removed by you in January, with three consequent reversions by other editors. You are hereby placed on notification for edit-warring. Kindly do not make any edits without first discussing the proposed edit on this talk page and getting consensus. AshLin (talk) 11:38, 27 February 2018 (UTC)

Indo-Ayran to Arya

I believe that the word Arya also best describes Indo-Ayran as this term can be seen in the region that Vedic Indo-Aryans migrated towards, which is called Aryavarta, or "home of the Aryas". Jugwinder20 (talk) 17:39, 22 September 2018 (UTC)

You believe that this term should be used, but it is not used, at least not in English. See MOS:NEO. Wikipedia reflects the existing usage in the literature, it's not a vehicle for the promotion of new terms. – Uanfala (talk) 19:21, 22 September 2018 (UTC)

It is used in Indic languages, see aryavarta. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jugwinder20 (talk • contribs) 19:40, 22 September 2018 (UTC)

This page is on languages. For the Aryan ethnicity, see Aryan. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 10:29, 23 September 2018 (UTC)

http://aboutworldlanguages.com/indo-aryan-branch

http://aboutworldlanguages.com/indo-aryan-branch

Indo-Aryan languages represent the easternmost branch of the Indo-European language family. They are spoken by close to one billion people in India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, parts of the Himalayas, and in Sri Lanka. There are 219 Indo-Aryan languages, some of which are yet to be definitively classified (Ethnologue). There is also a far-flung Indo-Aryan speaking diaspora encompassing U.S., Canada, U.K., South Africa, Fiji, Trinidad, and Mauritius.

https://www.ethnologue.com/browse/families — Preceding unsigned comment added by Braherends (talk • contribs) 20:49, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

middle indo-aryan characteristics of mitanni

The mitanni language has been declared as early middle indo aryan or transitional indo aryan by S.S. Misra comparable to the buddhist hybrid sanskrit. meaning it displayed both old indo aryan and middle indo aryan characteristics, such as sapta (seven in old indo aryan/sanskrit) becoming satta(seven in prakrit), it has already been noted since 1947 and yet this article represents archaic information that middle indo aryan is only first attested in buddhist and jain scriptures, mitannis are mentioned but their inscriptions are deliberately declared as old indo aryan which is very agenda based. I think that this article needs to correct it and state that middle indo aryan is first attested or some of its features attested in mitanni 14th century BC inscriptions already.

References

• I don't know anything about the Mitanni, but if the claim that the language has MIA features in entirely based on the -pt- > -tt- assimiliation, then that's extremely flimsy: this is a very common sound change cross-linguistically and it's very easy for it to arise independently in different language varieties. – Uanfala (talk) 13:45, 4 December 2018 (UTC)

no these are not flimsy, and yes there are four characteristics of MIA noted in mitanni indo aryan if you try to read the description in my link and thats how linguistics work to be honest, the same linguists arguing about different things in this field of linguistics are the ones proposing the MIA character of the mitannis so flimsy for you but not for the linguists. If you think this is flimsy, you probably would be declaring whole mitanni indo aryan based on flimsy evidences since we have only few words of mitanni to work with in the first place. 202.188.53.210 (talk) 01:14, 12 December 2018 (UTC)

The handling of Urdu baffles me

Acording to this article and the accompanying maps, no Indic language is spoken anywhere in Pakistan (or was in 1979), except maybe for a very narrow fringe near the East border, and Urdu, which is the same as Hindi for linguistic purposes, is a "Central zone" language spoken in a large but limited area about as far away from Pakistan as from Bangladesh, and not really near to either. I'm baffled. — Tonymec (talk) 16:42, 25 January 2019 (UTC)

This article builds on academic sources. If you think there are better academic available we'll be happy to consider them. Just keep in mind that "better" refers to the academic quality (publisher, citation counts) and not which source is more correct. Jeppiz (talk) 17:19, 25 January 2019 (UTC)

What in the article's text leads to such a conclusion, Tonymec? As for the map (it's this one), the large blue blot in the north-west is mostly in Pakistan. The parts of Pakistan that aren't included are the ones where the non-Indic Pashto and Balochi are spoken. Urdu doesn't appear on the map, and one reason is that it's widely dispersed and the regions where it it's in the majority are too small to be shown on a small-scale map like this one. – Uanfala (talk) 23:11, 25 January 2019 (UTC)

Removal of Romani language

@Podgoras:,

why do you removed everything about the Romani language?(KIENGIR (talk) 18:29, 16 April 2019 (UTC))

Because Romani doesn't belong to Indo-Aryan languages.

But yes,it belongs to the Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European language family.(KIENGIR (talk) 19:07, 16 April 2019 (UTC))

No, that's a Marxist lie. Tcherman is the only European language that belongs to the Indo-Aryan language family. Romani is an Anatolian language (Gypsy, Egypsy, Egyptian) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Podgoras (talk • contribs) 21:29, 16 April 2019 (UTC)

We go by what established sources say. It currently takes a lot of good faith to believe you're here to contribute. If you are, reading up on WP policies is recommended. Continuing on your current path will lead to a swift block. Jeppiz (talk) 21:40, 16 April 2019 (UTC)

Podgoras has been blocked indefinitely as a sock puppet. If you see any other user repeating similar edits, revert them immediately and report repeated attempts to WP:AIV Richard-of-Earth (talk) 07:01, 17 April 2019 (UTC)

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)

@TrangaBellam: FWIW, this time it appears to be an outgrowth from a different kind of alternative reality (cf. OP's contributions). –Austronesier (talk) 13:04, 16 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. Its 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)

Your question was already answered by Austronesier at Talk:Indo-Aryan peoples#"Indo-Aryan" is a Wikipedia editor's Invention. – Uanfala (talk) 01:32, 16 September 2021 (UTC)

Clearly a case of WP:IDHT. Chaipau (talk) 02:23, 16 September 2021 (UTC)

Map - legend color

The colours in the map are very difficult to follow. Though I know what is Eastern Hindi in the map, what I see in the legend is a different colour, for instance. Or maybe my screen/eyes are playing games. Chaipau (talk) 20:01, 9 January 2022 (UTC)

What?!

Why there is no mention of just aryan alone? 2404:8000:1027:85F6:4C83:2256:B46E:F7D7 (talk) 15:07, 21 February 2023 (UTC)