RT @SandalBurn: With the year ending today, here's a project I've been very proud to have researched and written. With @typotheque, I explored the evolution of the Devanagari script in print medium from its earliest days, script politics, and standardization. https://t.co/pDYqBVJc4Y
— Indian Linguistics | Bhāṣāśāstra (@TianChengWen) Dec 31, 2022

https://twitter.com/TianChengWen/status/1609094088913203201

Encountered #Konkani speakers today in rural Ernakulam district, Kerala (on Vypin island). A small but prominent community of Konkani speakers migrated to Kochi in the late 1500s, fleeing from Goa. They speak a dialect distinct from their kin around Mangalore and North Canara.
— Indian Linguistics | Bhāṣāśāstra (@TianChengWen) Jan 6, 2023

https://twitter.com/TianChengWen/status/1611364733453758464

It was surprising to hear #Konkani here — most of Kerala is linguistically homogenous & #Malayalam speaking, linguistic minorities primarily exist in border taluks like northern Kasaragod, eastern Idukki. Konkani speakers are the largest linguistic minority in central Kerala.
— Indian Linguistics | Bhāṣāśāstra (@TianChengWen) Jan 6, 2023

https://twitter.com/TianChengWen/status/1611365928410959873

The qualifier "largest" is also slightly misleading because the community is essentially very small — roughly 50,000 #Konkani speakers in Ernakulam, Alappuzha, and Kottayam districts. And yet, even with that miniscule number, they're the largest linguistic minority in the region.
— Indian Linguistics | Bhāṣāśāstra (@TianChengWen) Jan 6, 2023

https://twitter.com/TianChengWen/status/1611373751547101184

@RainTracker Tamil speakers are concentrated in the border taluks of Palakkad, Idukki, and Trivandrum (plus Trivandrum and Palakkad cities). Not so much in coastal central Kerala.
— Indian Linguistics | Bhāṣāśāstra (@TianChengWen) Jan 6, 2023

https://twitter.com/TianChengWen/status/1611374104325804038

@mythmenon It's interesting you mention bāy bhāṣa — the materials I'm reading mention that members of the local Vypin Konkani community are called bāy. Bāy bhāṣa would then be an exonym for their dialect of Konkani.
— Indian Linguistics | Bhāṣāśāstra (@TianChengWen) Jan 7, 2023

https://twitter.com/TianChengWen/status/1611597333439066113

RT @SandalBurn: For this week's episode of @FiftyTwoDotIn, I write about the once majestic city of Bijapur — its monuments, masterpieces of poetry, but also its neglect. Historians, local & national, excluded it from their visions of history. But that's been changing. https://t.co/QyDq9FBn7w
— Indian Linguistics | Bhāṣāśāstra (@TianChengWen) Jan 28, 2023

https://twitter.com/TianChengWen/status/1619191251622072320

As a Tibeto-Burman language, Manipuri (Meitei) is quite distinct from India's other scheduled languages. On consonants : Older forms of Manipuri lacked /r/ as a distinct sound, and /n/ at the end of words became [l] (as happens now). Voiced stops — like /b d g/ were also absent.
— Indian Linguistics | Bhāṣāśāstra (@TianChengWen) Feb 24, 2023

https://twitter.com/TianChengWen/status/1629116449724956672

Older Manipuri court literature, written after the conversion of the kingdom's ruling elite to the Vaiṣṇava faith, show Indo Aryan loanwords, including Sanskrit names, adapted to these patterns of native Meitei pronunciation. Rāvan, Rādhā for ex, became Lavon, Latha.
— Indian Linguistics | Bhāṣāśāstra (@TianChengWen) Feb 24, 2023

https://twitter.com/TianChengWen/status/1629142489788731393

This is also the process behind the Meitei (Manipuri) name Pāngal, the name of the local Meitei Muslim community. Pāngal is a reference to Bengal, the most immediate source of Islam and Muslims locally. The name must have come about before the p/b distinction developed in Meitei.
— Indian Linguistics | Bhāṣāśāstra (@TianChengWen) Feb 27, 2023

https://twitter.com/TianChengWen/status/1630092358690963456

@oligoglot /b d g/ appear word initially only in loanwords (mostly Bengali, Hindi, Sanskrit, English), but contrast with /p t k/ in native words and phrases between vowels. They don't appear at the end of syllables otherwise.
— Indian Linguistics | Bhāṣāśāstra (@TianChengWen) Feb 28, 2023

https://twitter.com/TianChengWen/status/1630495685857660929

Interestingly, languages surrounding Meitei, spoken in the hills around the Imphal valley including Tangkhul and Thadou, lack these voiced sounds b d g. They weren't influenced culturally or linguistically by Bengali/Sanskrit like Meitei was, and didn't develop these new sounds.
— Indian Linguistics | Bhāṣāśāstra (@TianChengWen) Mar 11, 2023

https://twitter.com/TianChengWen/status/1634552271194443784

The Telugu word for "water", nīḷḷu (నీళ్ళు) is interesting (and a little unusual) in that it's a plural word, requiring verbs that refer to the noun to be in their plural form. For ex, nīḷḷu unnāyi ("there is water"), unnāyi (plural form) instead of undi (singular form).
— Indian Linguistics | Bhāṣāśāstra (@TianChengWen) Mar 18, 2023

https://twitter.com/TianChengWen/status/1636940137195266050

#Kodava speaking Kodagu district (Coorg) in Karnataka is part of the larger ecological zone of Wayanad - Nilgiris - Kodagu. Although Kodava speakers use Kannada as their primary written language, the langs of this area show stronger linguistic similarities with Tamil & Malayalam.
— Indian Linguistics | Bhāṣāśāstra (@TianChengWen) Apr 9, 2023

https://twitter.com/TianChengWen/status/1644980917092626435

One of the more conspicuous linguistic differences as you enter the #Kodava zone is that words beginning with p- feature quite prominently in Kodava, as opposed to Kannada where Old Kannada p- shifted to h-. Compare Kodava pālɯ, pāṭɯ Kannada hālu, hāḍu "milk, song".
— Indian Linguistics | Bhāṣāśāstra (@TianChengWen) Apr 9, 2023

https://twitter.com/TianChengWen/status/1645045672830455808

RT @SandalBurn: Today, on Jotirao Phule's birth anniversary, I'm sharing an essay I'd written for @thecaravanindia last Oct. Phule's uncompromising politics of equality was spread through the medium of print, adding new dimensions to Marathi written culture. https://t.co/YGp4kj4pHb
— Indian Linguistics | Bhāṣāśāstra (@TianChengWen) Apr 11, 2023

https://twitter.com/TianChengWen/status/1645823109625417731

Recently learned that many Anglo Indians use a different past tense form of "clean" in their #IndianEnglish dialect — "cleant" (rhyming with "bent"), instead of the usual "cleaned".

Have you heard this verb form used by Anglo Indians before?
— Indian Linguistics | Bhāṣāśāstra (@TianChengWen)
Apr 29, 2023


https://twitter.com/TianChengWen/status/1652252196552179713

This is an excellent initiative, especially given the puzzling neglect of formal second language education for migrants in India. It can't be expected that people will learn local languages completely organically without guidance or instruction. This training is a great decision. https://t.co/NU34w5NBaV
— Indian Linguistics | Bhāṣāśāstra (@TianChengWen)
May 21, 2023


https://twitter.com/TianChengWen/status/1660144158353522688

To elaborate : with working class migrants from poorer states becoming a part of the labor force in South India, there are concerns about them not picking up the local language. But it's strange that this is expected to happen without any sort of external guidance or instruction.
— Indian Linguistics | Bhāṣāśāstra (@TianChengWen)
May 21, 2023


https://twitter.com/TianChengWen/status/1660157858120605697

If you work long hours for low wages, there's not really any time to go out and actively learn a very different language unless you have some assistance. European countries do this where migrants are taught local languages. Why are poorer Indians expected to do it themselves?
— Indian Linguistics | Bhāṣāśāstra (@TianChengWen)
May 21, 2023


https://twitter.com/TianChengWen/status/1660158524582928386