|
Indonesia deliberately decided not to make either Dutch (the colonizers' language) or Javanese (largest ethnic group's language) its working language, choosing instead a dialect of Malay used mostly for trade due to its historical significance in bringing Islam (and Christianity), use in nearby areas (what is now Malaysia/Singapore, Brunei), and relative simplicity (doesn't have all the pronoun hierarchy that Javanese has for example). The fact that at the time it was spoken natively by only a small portion of the population was considered a plus. (having said all that I agree English is the least bad choice for a working language for India and South Africa, but Indonesia is one of the most populous countries in the world with a huge amount of linguistic diversity and therefore a very notable exception)
|
#
?
Dec 6, 2019 13:12
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 23, 2024 10:54 |
|
|
XMNN posted:a token concession to multilingualism by making everyone including Hindi speakers learn at least two national languages (excluding English) at school (which is what Switzerland does) FWIW Switzerland has been spending the last 30 years gradually removing national multilingualism and replacing it with English. Every couple years there's a new change in cantonal education policies that sets English at a younger age, and reduces the German/French requirements (whichever one is the 'foreign' language). English is taught before French in most German-speaking cantons. Like in Zurich, English instruction usually starts in primary school, and French instruction several years later. This is the current-ish policy, of which "foreign" language is taught first -- lower map. The Suisse Romand keep getting pissed at French getting eroded, so I'm sure in the next few years Vaud and Geneva will also start switching towards English as the first "foreign" language of instruction and sideline German. IME outside of Bern and Solothurn, French is rarely spoken to any even vague degree of fluency in any of the Swiss German-speaking cantons, and almost never at a greater degree of fluency than English. 
|
|
#
?
Dec 6, 2019 13:55
|
|
|
Can we move the ethno-linguistic cleansing chat to a new thread? I wanna learn more about Indian politics.
|
|
#
?
Dec 6, 2019 17:55
|
|
|
Grouchio posted:Can we move the ethno-linguistic cleansing chat to a new thread? I wanna learn more about Indian politics. This article by Dexter Filkins about Modi is pretty good https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/12/09/blood-and-soil-in-narendra-modis-india
|
|
#
?
Dec 6, 2019 21:08
|
|
|
Grouchio posted:Can we move the ethno-linguistic cleansing chat to a new thread? I wanna learn more about Indian politics. FWIW the language issue has been a major driver of Indian politics since independence. It contributes mightily to the trend of stronger state governments and a weaker federal center and is part of the general ungovernability of India. I mean it’s been a bit done to death in the thread sure but if anything it’s just a small indicator of some of the issues that really do drive Indian politics and it’s not a small matter to Indians.
|
|
#
?
Dec 7, 2019 00:40
|
|
|
Rutger posted:This article by Dexter Filkins about Modi is pretty good (Modi is a nationalist machiavellian hell-bent on answering the Hindu-Muslim question with a hard HINDUTVA.) Grouchio fucked around with this message at 06:20 on Dec 7, 2019 |
|
#
?
Dec 7, 2019 06:16
|
|
|
Something funny happened last month in one of India's states: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-50402748 The Shiv Sena, a party that's even more right-wing Hindutva supremacist than Modi's BJP, broke its alliance with the BJP to form a coalition with the Congress party and one of its splinters. It didn't matter that the Indian National Congress and the Nationalist Congress Party have ideologies that are completely incompatible with the Shiv Sena, or that the SS had a history of strongly opposing the Congress(es) by insisting on their corruption: there was a short-term political gain to make. The question now is how will voters react in the next elections.
|
|
#
?
Dec 7, 2019 11:10
|
|
|
Speaking of something funny, there was a doctors vs lawyers brawl in Pakistan:  quote:Video showed the lawyers ransacking wards at the cardiac hospital, beating up staff and smashing equipment.  how does this happen
|
|
#
?
Dec 12, 2019 22:38
|
|
|
mobby_6kl posted:Speaking of something funny, there was a doctors vs lawyers brawl in Pakistan: It’s Pakistan. I could explain but even Lovecraft couldn’t conceive of the horrors within the explanation
|
|
#
?
Dec 12, 2019 22:43
|
|
|
mobby_6kl posted:Speaking of something funny, there was a doctors vs lawyers brawl in Pakistan: Reminds me of some of the crowd brutality which took place in the late stage of the nazis rise to power. Pretty much exactly like that, like it could be straight out of that period and I wouldn't bat an eye.
|
|
#
?
Dec 13, 2019 03:47
|
|
|
mobby_6kl posted:Speaking of something funny, there was a doctors vs lawyers brawl in Pakistan: So... are they all criminally responsible for the deaths of patients who died during this stupid stunt? Because I feel like it'd be the case in the US.
|
|
#
?
Dec 13, 2019 15:52
|
|
|
Joey Steel posted:So... are they all criminally responsible for the deaths of patients who died during this stupid stunt? Because I feel like it'd be the case in the US. I can direct you to a couple hundred lawyers that would say no, they're not.
|
|
#
?
Dec 13, 2019 15:55
|
|
|
Crossposting from USNEWS:Otteration posted:India: largest protests in decades signal Modi may have gone too far
|
|
#
?
Dec 22, 2019 05:38
|
|
|
Grouchio posted:Crossposting from USNEWS: His "landslide" was only with like 37% of the vote. FPTP strikes again.
|
|
#
?
Dec 22, 2019 05:51
|
|
|
Grape posted:Do actual scholars call those "population replacements" or is that your own spin on things. yes, but it is not remotely synonymous with genocide. If you look at genetic studies of India male Indo-European lineages introgressed rapidly into the subcontinent while indigenous paternal lineages were more likely to disappear or decrease in frequency, that is to say local men were much less likely to have kids than the new migrants from central Asia. This likely implies a power differential between the new arrivals and older population, but there's many different ways that could have manifested to produce the observed pattern. WAR CRIME GIGOLO posted:"Genetic redistribution" is the new hip term. I have never, under any circumstance, not even in the insane racist ramblings of the far right, heard anyone use that phrase. You might be thinking of the concept of introgression, an actual term used in population biology by professionals. XMNN posted:last time I was at the pub one of my friends (of Punjabi Sikh descent) complained about having to speak English in southern India to make himself understood following independence there was actually a serious push to adopt Hindi as the primary language of the courts and government of India. It was seen as part of the project of decolonizing Indian society, and creating a new unified Indian nation. However very quickly southern Indians turned hard against the idea. With the British gone they began to fear institutionalized dominance of the Hindi speaking north, and instead turned hard in favor of maintaining English as the primary language of administration and education. As a result the push to reform language policy stalled out, and basically fell apart in the nineteen sixties. Many post-colonial states have had similar experiences. Essentially they have become stuck with the colonial language not so much because of concerns over international competitiveness, but because in a plurali-national environment adopting any one of the many local languages is seen as unfair to all the rest. Sticking with the European language might not be anybody's first choice, but it is a compromise position a lot of people (sometimes grudgingly) have decided to live with. Malay in Indonesia fulfills a similar role.
|
|
#
?
Dec 22, 2019 15:07
|
|
|
Sticking with the nonwhite Commonwealth where English has some officially-defined place as elite medium of instruction, accepted language of petitions, legislation, or judicial decisions, &c: - English or English creoles at independence: the British West Indies, generally (I'm not going to name every island) - wholesale switch to English as the spoken-at-home language of majority of population: Singapore. I think this is the standout case from <1% at independence in the 1960s. Note this is not merely "fluent in English" but "primary language at home" in the span of five decades; a language shift of this magnitude and rapidity is seen essentially nowhere else short of ethnic cleansing. There's a bunch of idiosyncratic factors there: tiny size, Malay nationalist context, Chinese dialects collapsing anyway in the face of diasporic nationalist switch to Mandarin, &c. Change of this kind isn't impossible - someone upthread mentioned Indonesia, which is also unusually successful at imposing a once-niche language (Malay) but even then its success as the language at home has 'only' risen from <1% to 20% in the census in that time. - small increases in English as the spoken-at-home language, but not as majority of population: Malaysia, South Africa, Botswana, Kenya, Uganda, Belize... by country this seems to be the most common. All of these seem to be single-digit or thereabouts, there don't seem to be any big increases - small decreases in English as the spoken-at-home language: India, Sri Lanka, Pakistan? By population this is probably the most common (India...) (There doesn't seem to be a conveniently centralized database for these, I am checking country by country. Apologies if I have missed any cases) Besides Singapore, which clearly had some unique cultural dynamics going on, one is not really talking about ethno-linguistic replacement wholesale. It is true that language politics has been a controversial struggle in India since independence, but nowhere in India was English previously dominant as such; rather the contemporary dynamic is the secondary language or regional lingua franca steadily shifting from English to Hindi. Generally, languages at home have resisted change by statute. Secondary languages are vulnerable to alterations in medium-of-instruction or statutory support, however. If I speak Malayalam at home and my coworker speaks Tamil at home, if we are not mutually bilingual, English will probably be mutually acceptable "office language", and there is sensitivity to whether a language favouring someone else is challenging the status quo. This is an onion with layers - e.g. a live issue in Kerala is whether attempts to defend Malayalam from Hindi are instead entrenching Malayalam too much, which would be problematic for Kannada-speaking minorities in Kerala. XMNN posted:last time I was at the pub one of my friends (of Punjabi Sikh descent) complained about having to speak English in southern India to make himself understood The problem specifically is the decline in the firewall between a language of communication versus a language of heritage and identity - English is sufficiently foreign that southern Indian states can promote it without fearing that Anglophone culture will erase or displace regional identity. For the 40% that speak Hindi, the language of one's cultural heritage and the language of industry and commerce are one and the same. Refusing to at least learn another native language underscores the anxiety that north Indians do not actually regard the assorted parts of south India as authentically Indian and would be quite fine with that erasure and ensuing replacement with some Bharat Mata identity. Half a century of English as a secondary language has not made it a primary language, not even close. But that's not the case with Hindi, which has successfully consolidated itself in the Hindi belt. The distinction is like... say, British schools spending some time teaching French vs the tenacity of the Gaelic medium schools in emphasizing immersion (i.e., the exclusion of English) due to the otherwise already dominant place of English in other spheres of life. There is no sense that French will displace English in Britain. But there is a sense that English could displace Gaelic over time (as it has). The Switzerland shift toward a neutral secondary language noted upthread is interesting, although I'm not sure it was a conscious shift at a national policy level. ronya fucked around with this message at 19:10 on Dec 22, 2019 |
|
#
?
Dec 22, 2019 18:44
|
|
|
https://twitter.com/repaoc/status/1234593931532423169?s=21 Linked article is a good (read: horrifying) summary of the recent Delhi pogrom.
|
|
#
?
Mar 3, 2020 19:10
|
|
|
This was the freshest thread involving India vs. Pakistan, so I figured I'd drop a congratulations here to India for having only 341 COVID-19 cases, while Pakistan has 646. Perhaps if someone points out to the Indian government that it is losing on points to Pakistan, they will begin testing and reporting for real and announce some serious numbers. News sources say their reporting is now up to about 420, but just lol. A massive country of 1.2 billion, the world's second largest, bordering China, with dense and chaotic population centers. 400-ish cases. Even Thailand is reporting more cases lol. The most impressive thing so far is that, from what I can see, no one has called India out on this in a big way. Pakistan gets a little more leeway for being Pakistan, of course. I mean nobody's yelling at Romania.
|
|
#
?
Mar 23, 2020 15:08
|
|
|
ronya posted:The Switzerland shift toward a neutral secondary language noted upthread is interesting, although I'm not sure it was a conscious shift at a national policy level. Like you mentioned earlier, Nigeria is the prime example of a policy-oriented transition to a national language. Everyone with a little pigin can understand everyone else and outside biafra has tamped down separatism
|
|
#
?
Mar 23, 2020 15:53
|
|
|
ReindeerF posted:This was the freshest thread involving India vs. Pakistan, so I figured I'd drop a congratulations here to India for having only 341 COVID-19 cases, while Pakistan has 646. Everyone is too worried about whats happening to themselves to care that some other place is being dumb.
|
|
#
?
Mar 23, 2020 17:24
|
|
|
Generally speaking, neighboring countries are pro-care, heh. Of course if you're India you're kind of lucky in that regard, because China's the only big boy next door and they're in a glass house situation for a bit longer.
|
|
#
?
Mar 23, 2020 19:42
|
|
|
Covid statistics are going to be bullshit anyway because excessively few countries have the means to test everyone; and none have the means to test everyone daily. When it comes to choosing who gets tested, there are so many factors that can be different that you end up comparing apples with walruses.
|
|
#
?
Mar 23, 2020 21:21
|
|
|
 Just loving lol. Second most populated country in the world, not even reporting in the top, what, 30? If you've spent any time in the developing world you can read that like a map - India has a massive number of cases and is trying not to report them. That's fine if you're, you know, Mali or Brunei. When you're the size of India with as many people as India, traveling and living all over the world like India, and you border as many countries as India, it's serious. Watch the news. India is going to explode onto world headlines in the next week or so.
|
|
#
?
Mar 25, 2020 05:04
|
|
|
How much of India's population is elderly/immunocompromised/obese? Edit: 100 million over the age of 60. Huh.
|
|
#
?
Mar 25, 2020 05:16
|
|
|
mila kunis posted:It's probably an unsolveable problem under the current system. Is it a problem though?
|
|
#
?
Mar 25, 2020 10:05
|
|
|
India thankfully has BCG Vacination at birth tho - don't expect their numbers to be as bad as comparable worst-case (E. Dependant on bcg vacine efficacy on covid-19 naturally) ThisIsJohnWayne fucked around with this message at 10:54 on Mar 25, 2020 |
|
#
?
Mar 25, 2020 10:27
|
|
|
India announced yesterday a "total lockdown" of the entire country for 21 days. I'm no expert, but I have spent a few weeks in different parts of India. My impression is that they are not, as a state, capable of doing this. Their cities are so dense and chaotic. The countryside so poor. The state doesn't have a ton of money to throw at problems, let alone one on this scale. And I don't believe they have the organizational capacity to make up for the lack of funds. It uh could get a bit rough.
|
|
#
?
Mar 25, 2020 13:04
|
|
|
Count Roland posted:India announced yesterday a "total lockdown" of the entire country for 21 days. On the other hand is there a cultural fear of disaster that might make people more likely to stick to the plan that the kind of idiot that lives in the west?
|
|
#
?
Mar 25, 2020 13:07
|
|
|
What's interesting about the lockdown in India is the timescale and severity - total lockdown (ie not leaving your house at all) for 21 days, announced to start a few hours later. People are going to starve to death in their millions if this is enforced, surely? What kind of insane logistics are needed to supply 1.3 billion people with food on the fly needed to make this work?
|
|
#
?
Mar 25, 2020 13:19
|
|
|
I can't find the original source now but I read it wasn't supposed to be a total lockdown, food and other essential stuff was supposed to be open. But on the other hand they're doing this: India announces World’s largest food security scheme to 80 crore people. Rs.2/kg for wheat, Rs.3/kg for Rice for three months [like 4c/kg??] quote:India announces an ambitious food security scheme to cover 80 crores (800 million) of its population for the next few months
|
|
#
?
Mar 26, 2020 09:53
|
|
|
https://twitter.com/ajaishukla/status/1264023829778587648?s=21 lol Jesus gently caress
|
|
#
?
May 23, 2020 13:32
|
|
|
What's going on with the water scarcity crisis? This was the year that 21 cities were supposed to completely run out of groundwater.
|
|
#
?
May 25, 2020 10:56
|
|
|
https://twitter.com/CNN/status/1272807308100349952 Between the pandemic and everything in the US being a shitshow, I completely forgot that this was going on until now.
|
|
#
?
Jun 16, 2020 13:55
|
|
|
nvm, quote is not edit
|
|
#
?
Jun 16, 2020 13:57
|
|
|
I remember, back a couple of mobths ago, a poster saying that Pakistan's high commans was probably worried, since India had managed to move the armies necessary to Kashmir without them noticing. What happenned here? Did China just pull the same trick? I still can't believe you can move a division in this day and age withour everybody and their cleaning ladies knowing, but here we are.
|
|
#
?
Jun 16, 2020 14:04
|
|
|
Wonder what China is up to. India and China already have poor relations in Kashmir so I doubt this really changes anything. Edit: That guff about India moving hundreds of thousands of troops overnight without being spotted was a load of rubbish. Indian troop build up was being tracked from like 2 weeks beforehand, the whole scenario was a complete fabrication. Flayer fucked around with this message at 14:09 on Jun 16, 2020 |
|
#
?
Jun 16, 2020 14:06
|
|
|
Ah makes sense. Thanks.
|
|
#
?
Jun 16, 2020 14:49
|
|
|
https://twitter.com/SushantSin/status/1272935871642251267 20 announced dead so far.
|
|
#
?
Jun 16, 2020 18:38
|
|
|
Are we really supposed to believe that 20 soldiers have died as a consequence of stone throwing and fistfights? I bet China shelled them and it's being covered up to avoid further escalation.
|
|
#
?
Jun 16, 2020 20:32
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 23, 2024 10:54 |
|
|
Pistol_Pete posted:Are we really supposed to believe that 20 soldiers have died as a consequence of stone throwing and fistfights? Fistfights in the Himalayas, remember. Our regular Everest thread is a helpful reminder that even minor injuries will deeply gently caress you over up there.
|
|
#
?
Jun 16, 2020 20:36
|
|