Talk:Languages of South Asia

Expanded Page for South Asian languages
Expanded page on South Asian Languages to combine languages of Indian Subcontinent. Used languages of India as the starting template. The data from Census reports of India, pakistan, Bangladesh, nepal, Sri-Lanka etc could be consolidated on this page. I have changed some figures but they need to be corrected with actual consolidated figures and references need to be attached.

This page needs to be expanded for several reasons"

1. Cultural, historical oneness of the entire Indian Subcontinent. 2. Bengali, Punjabi, Sindhi, Urdu are pan Subcontinent languages cutting across countries (like germany, korea, russia...) 3. Other reasons may be added here... —Preceding unsigned comment added by Crishnaa (talk • contribs)


 * I am not sure this is a good idea. Obviously languages don't follow country boundaries, South Asia isn't an exception in this, but there is no "Cultural, historical oneness of the entire Indian Subcontinent", unless you are referring to a single century of British rule. And there is no reason for a copy-paste duplication of List of Indian languages by number of native speakers here. It is easy to copy-paste a giant list, but it is a nightmare to maintain it in more than one place.
 * If you insist we need this title, it should not have list character but explain the major points in coherent prose. --dab (𒁳) 05:23, 22 June 2009 (UTC)

Table with Percentages
The table with percentages is inaccurate. The percentages are of the population of the country of India as a whole while the numerical figures are given for the total language speakers. Thus, the number of speakers of Bengali and Punjabi (spoken also in Bangladesh and Pakistan) is being compared as a percentage out of the population of India. So you're comparing two different types of numerical data here. I hope that makes sense. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 216.15.20.154 (talk) 02:59, 4 March 2013 (UTC)

External links modified
Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just modified 8 one external links on Languages of South Asia. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/20120206233628/http://www.censusindia.gov.in/Census_Data_2001/Census_Data_Online/Language/Statement1.htm to http://www.censusindia.gov.in/Census_Data_2001/Census_Data_Online/Language/Statement1.htm ✅
 * Added archive http://web.archive.org/web/20070524104936/http://www.ciil.org:80/Main/Languages/indian.htm to http://www.ciil.org/Main/Languages/indian.htm ❌
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/20120206233628/http://www.censusindia.gov.in/Census_Data_2001/Census_Data_Online/Language/Statement1.htm to http://www.censusindia.gov.in/Census_Data_2001/Census_Data_Online/Language/Statement1.htm ✅
 * Added archive http://web.archive.org/web/20051201232831/http://www.ciil.org:80/languages/map4.html to http://www.ciil.org/languages/map4.html ❌
 * Added archive http://web.archive.org/web/20080324032158/http://www.censusindia.gov.in:80/Census_Data_2001/Census_Data_Online/Language/Statement4.htm to http://www.censusindia.gov.in/Census_Data_2001/Census_Data_Online/Language/Statement4.htm ✅
 * Added archive http://web.archive.org/web/20081118143215/http://www.censusindia.gov.in/Census_Data_2001/Census_Data_Online/Language/Statement6.htm to http://www.censusindia.gov.in/Census_Data_2001/Census_Data_Online/Language/Statement6.htm ✅
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20070101015404/http://www.indojin.com/discoverindia/indianlang.htm to http://www.indojin.com/discoverindia/indianlang.htm ✅
 * Added archive http://web.archive.org/web/20050109084200/http://www.ethnologue.com:80/show_country.asp?name=India to http://www.ethnologue.com/show_country.asp?name=India ✅

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 * Six OK, two failed. --Worldbruce (talk) 19:16, 11 December 2016 (UTC)

Cheers.—cyberbot II  Talk to my owner :Online 00:52, 5 July 2016 (UTC)

External links modified
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I have just modified 6 one external links on Languages of South Asia. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
 * Corrected formatting/usage for http://www.censusindia.gov.in/Census_Data_2001/Census_Data_Online/Language/Statement1.htm
 * Corrected formatting/usage for http://www.ciil.org:80/languages/map4.html
 * Corrected formatting/usage for http://www.censusindia.gov.in:80/Census_Data_2001/Census_Data_Online/Language/Statement4.htm
 * Corrected formatting/usage for http://www.censusindia.gov.in/Census_Data_2001/Census_Data_Online/Language/Statement6.htm
 * Corrected formatting/usage for http://www.indojin.com/discoverindia/indianlang.htm
 * Corrected formatting/usage for http://www.ethnologue.com:80/show_country.asp?name=India

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External links modified
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Misleading image
The image captioned 'The names of each state in the script of the dominant language of that state' is wrong. It's using Devnagiri script for some northeastern states like Meghalaya and Mizoram when the dominant languages use Latin script. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 103.232.241.5 (talk) 10:53, 15 May 2018 (UTC)

Do we need a separate article for the languages of the Indian subcontinent?
The article Languages of Indian subcontinent was recently created by. Although there may sometimes be differences in the precise geographical delimitations of the terms India subcontinent and South Asia, it's difficult to imagine any topic area that we might want to have separate summary articles for each of the two: whether that's geology, politics, or languages. At the very least, for such a split here we'd need reliable sources that consistently deal with the languages of South Asia as a separate topic from the languages of the subcontinent. I'm not aware of any. What do people think? – Uanfala (talk) 23:19, 18 November 2021 (UTC)
 * No, it's an unnecessary POV-fork, and as such badly sourced and incoherent. The difference between "South Asia" and "Indian subcontinent" is tenuous, and where it is assumed, it only affects the inclusion of Afghanistan, which we do not discuss in the article anyway. In spite of its title, the lead of the POV-fork primarily makes a case for the ambiguous term "Indic languages", based on a source that does not even discuss the Indian subcontinent ("Language in the British Isles"). This includes the weirdly self-cn-tagged statement about Santali not being "Indic": who cares if the topic is "Languages of Indian subcontinent"? Merge (if there's anything keepworthy and not covered elsewhere) and redirect here. –Austronesier (talk) 10:57, 19 November 2021 (UTC)
 * I already redirected once and it was reverted. We need a formal discussion it appears. Usedtobecool ☎️ 07:31, 31 December 2021 (UTC)
 * I've fixed the title per a request at WP:RM/TR, but also can't see any reason these should be separate pages. Feel free to ping me if there's a merge proposal or AfD. --  Tamzin  [ cetacean needed ] (she/they) 09:29, 31 December 2021 (UTC)
 * Please join the discussion here, since you have restored the article.
 * The article hasn't become much better since then. The whole page revolves around "Indic languages", and the term is cited to the fringe musings by Subhash Kak, who is a scholar in computer science but has no credentials in linguistics. What exactly is keepworthy there that is not mentioned here or in the articles about the individual countries? –Austronesier (talk) 09:58, 31 December 2021 (UTC)
 * N.B.: People may want to wait for Sockpuppet investigations/GokulNC to be sorted out before things continue much further. --  Tamzin  [ cetacean needed ] (she/they) 21:06, 31 December 2021 (UTC)
 * So, conclusion on the SPI side: BawaseerKhwaja's revert was inappropriate under WP:MEAT, and I've instructed him not to make such reverts again, and to disclose his off-wiki connection to Gokul going forward if they're in the same discussions. That said, Gokul would have been within his rights to make that revert himself (since any user may contest a WP:BLAR, with the appropriate next step being AfD or talkpage discussion), so policy-wise I'd consider this a wash, and think continuing to talk this out content-wise is the best course of action. --  Tamzin  [ cetacean needed ] (she/they) 09:40, 1 January 2022 (UTC)
 * Thanks for pointing out, did not see this citation to the Subhash Kak thing (even most of his works seem very politically-biased, I agree it should be replaced with a better ref). The reason I restored the page is because I see it as a(n underdeveloped) page for linguistics of Indic languages, and I currently see this South Asia page is more like a geopolitical directory; apart from the first few lines of both the articles, I do not see anything in common honestly. BTW, the domain in which I work has heavy overlap with linguistics, and it's pretty common here to call Indic languages as native language families of the subcontinent (in a more inclusive sense rather than an offensive term). For example, if you go to https://scholar.google.com and search "Indic languages", the results would show many (if not most) of the papers mentioning Indic languages in this above context (not IE context where Indic means Indo-Aryan). Probably adding some credible refs would solve this Kak issue; I will do it in a few days. Yes, the article still seems work-in-progress to me; it's more like Wikipedia:Summary_style now. But I do not think that is a good reason to take-it-down entirely. But still if there is consensus that it is the same article, please feel free to remove it. (Also, it would be great if you could address these above mentioned concerns/confusions in this page itself if you are merging.) BawaseerKhwaja (talk) 07:55, 1 January 2022 (UTC)
 * I'm still not seeing anything to suggest that we should keep two separate articles here. We should by all means merge any of the other article's content that is good, but it does have problems that go beyond the reliance on Subhash Kak. For example, the way it takes pains to emphasise that "Indic" only includes Indo-Aryan and Dravidian, but the only reliable source it cites in this context is the chapter in Language in the British Isles, where "Indic" refers to any of the languages of South Asia, with the Iranian language Pashto explicitly included (yes, there's no mention of say, Munda or Tibeto–Burman, but that's only because there are no significant number of speakers in Britain). – Uanfala (talk) 18:21, 1 January 2022 (UTC)
 * Moved on to Articles for deletion/Languages of the Indian subcontinent. – Uanfala (talk) 18:26, 9 January 2022 (UTC)

Creating an article called "Indic sprachbund"
With reference to the discussions in the above section as well as at Articles for deletion/Languages of the Indian subcontinent, I am planning to create an article called Indic sprachbund which would be focused on discussing the linguistics of (all) the language families of the Indian subcontinent, or Indic languages. I believe this cannot go into this current article, as it would be somewhat tangential from what is being discussed here. Also, the term Indic in itself could be offensive if perceived by commoners, hence attracting more vandalism in this article -- for example, just like how Pashtuns might perceive calling Pashto as Iranian as offensive, similarly for example, Nepalis or Pakistanis might perceive it offensive calling Nepali or Urdu as Indic. (This was also very slightly evident in the votes here, I believe.)

So please let me know if there any concerns, suggestions, or objections before we create the above mentioned article. Happy to hear your comments. Thank you! – BawaseerKhwaja (talk) 17:43, 6 February 2022 (UTC)
 * The most natural place for treating this topic is the current article. That's probably the main point of any Languages in Region article after all. – Uanfala (talk) 18:07, 6 February 2022 (UTC)
 * The common name in the linguistic literature since Emeneau for this topic is South Asian sprachbund or South Asian linguistic area. Since linguistic and geographic/geopolitical areas don't necessarily overlap, we might well have a separate article South Asian linguistic area (we don't discuss the Balkan sprachbund in Languages of the Balkans either). But maybe it's better to expand the topic here first until it reaches the potential for being split into a comprehensive standalone article. –Austronesier (talk) 18:36, 6 February 2022 (UTC)

A Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion
The following Wikimedia Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion: Participate in the deletion discussion at the. —Community Tech bot (talk) 19:07, 2 September 2022 (UTC)
 * South Asian language Families.jpg

Lingua francas
I was thinking of somehow compiling a list of historical and current lingua francas of the subcontinent and maybe including the list in this article; examples would include Sanskrit, Sant Bhasha, Hindustani, etc. Furthermore, it might be nice to treat certain donor languages which influenced most of the languages of the subcontinent i.e. Sanskrit, Persian, and English. Does anyone have any recommendations on that? GreekApple123 (talk) 18:16, 7 May 2024 (UTC)