[nkoren]

> The language and script change every five hundred miles

Huh, somebody is making a vast over-simplification, presumably in a well-intentioned attempt to package this in a way the Western mind can comprehend. Which frankly is futile. India is much more diverse than that.

In my youth I spent some time bumming around Saurashtra, a region in Gujarat state that's about 150 miles square. Nearly 50 languages are indigenous to that one region alone. Not dialects. Languages. It's wonderful, but nuts.

That was almost 20 years ago; no doubt it's more homogenous now, which is sad to think about. A century ago nearly 80 languages were spoken there, so linguistic diversity has been declining fast. Any effort to preserve it deserves applause.

[vinayms]

> Nearly 50 languages are indigenous to that one region alone. Not dialects. Languages.

I am a native Indian, born, raised and living there (I mean in India). I find it hard to process this claim. I am pretty sure there are about 10 languages in any fairly diverse region of the country, but beyond that what we find are mostly dialects of various languages.

I am not sure if you are a 'western mind' (as you self identify in a later post) of Indian descent and whether you made that claim based on reading about Indian languages or by interacting with locals and asking them if they spoke languages or dialects. You see, almost all Indian languages (AFAIK) lack words to distinguish the concept of language and dialect. For academics sake, linguists do use some words but they haven't trickled down to general public. The tendency is to use the word 'bhasha' (or its variations such as bhashe, basai etc), which just means 'language', for both language and dialect, and even for such ideas as register and slang. So, any claim made by the general public about they speaking a different 'bhashe' must be evaluated properly and not taken at face value.

[nkoren]

The distinction between dialects and languages is always rather dodgy and politically loaded (as anyone who uses the words "Chinese Language" soon finds out). One of the better working definitions I've seen is that "a language is a dialect with an army and a navy" -- which would explain why Hindi and Urdu get to be separate languages, but Bhojpuri is sometimes counted as a dialect. Anyhow, I personally am happy to respect both political and practical labelling of things as "language", so if its community of speakers think of something as a separate language then I'll respect that. A dialect may have different inflections and word-usages, but remains mutually comprehensible and is thought of as the same language by its community of speakers. By these definitions, there are roughly 1,600 languages in India[1], and perhaps twice as many dialects.

Anyhow, for Saurashtra, I really did mean "language" and not "dialect". Honestly it's not a typical example of India, but is fun to use for dramatic effect. You know those 500 princely states that existed before unification? 200 of them were in Saurashtra (which is tiny). Politically, it was basically the India of India.

The linguistics seem to reflect that. At one point I recall finding myself in a tiny village somewhere near Dwarka where the residents spoke something completely baffling to me, with not a shred of English or Hindi or Gujarati in the mix. I was completely out of luck communicating with the locals, and had to rely on passing bus drivers for orientation. Later I read a book which said that there were a handful of tiny little Dravidian isolate languages scattered around Saurashtra; I must have stumbled across one of those. The claim of "50 languages" comes from that book, whatever it was. Feels about right, based on personal experience, but I can't really defend the claim beyond that.

(Also I should re-iterate that this was almost 20 years ago, and I very much doubt that there are any places so isolated today.)

1: Per https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_India: 122 major languages and 1599 minor languages counted in the 2001 census.

[newacct8086]

> Later I read a book which said that there were a handful of tiny little Dravidian isolate languages scattered around Saurashtra

Do you remember the title or author of the book by any chance?

This is fascinating. Because there is a pocket of Brahui (a Dravidian language) speakers in Pakistan.

[kamaal]

>>I find it hard to process this claim.

I think me means dialects. Which many times can sound very different. During my first semester engineering we had a electronics lecturer who came from North Karnataka. They speak a fairly different dialect of Kannada. When I heard her talking for the first time, I was quite startled to see that some thing like that would also mean Kannada. In Bangalore we have our typical street slang Kannada, heavily overloaded with English words.

Same is true of Urdu as well. Even the Dakhani Accent has so many varieties, some times it could sound strange hearing some one speak Urdu in Bangalore, then Tumkur and then Mysore(All districts close to each other).

[vinayms]

I am pleasantly surprised to see Kannada and Karnataka mentioned. I am a Kannadiga from Bengaluru. As for street slang of the city, don't ignore the copious amounts of Urdu loan words!

As you might already know, the case with Kannada is more complex. Firstly, it has high amount of diglossia. Even with all the unnecessary, flowery Sanskrit loan words removed, the spoken form is greatly different from the written form. Next, the spoken language has many many regional variants, as with most languages in the world. Further, the spoken language varies according to social groups aka caste within the regions. One could even attempt to find variations based on economic status, aka rich to poor scale, but as an amateur linguist I don't find anything particularly noteworthy to hold such a classification, and, if anything, the variation is mostly confined to the tone of speech (not same as being tonal) and a bit of inflectional oddities rather than vocabulary. In modern times, the rich tend to use more English words which muddles the matter further. Beyond all this, there are about half a dozen languages that are identified as child languages of Kannada that are mostly associated with tribal groups living in forests and mountains. I guess this kind of diversity is expected of a language which is in continuous use for nearly two millennia.

For those intrigued and interested by this, I can't give any references on the internet beyond the wikipedia page because Kannada and Karnataka are severely underrated and underrepresented in Indian historical scene. Any work of worth written in English belong to the colonial times, with 1930s being the latest. The information in this post comes from knowledge acquired by reading books published, in Kannada, by language departments of universities of the state and the literary organization, and others are from personal experiences.

[kamaal]

While I was in US one Arab told me something similar about Arabic.

Apparently if your language isn't used for economic, science or to say activities that advance the state of world affairs, your language stagnates. For example, you would run out of words to describe something like a Lorry/Truck. So you start naming it on the basis of number of wheels. Like for example you would call Auto Rickshaw as ತ್ರಿ ಚಕ್ರ ವಾಹನ. The literal translation comes down to three wheeled vehicle. But it sounds strange to say it that way. So you just say 'Auto', a loaned word from english.

So you end up borrowing a lot of words from other languages if the worldly state of affairs aren't getting invented in your language.

And yeah, the other part is spot on. Kannadigas aren't very assertive of their identity. As a language Kannada is >2000 years old. There are countries on earth today which didn't have a written language back then. And then of course with such a long history you also get a lot of literature.

[nielsole]

> Not dialects. Languages.

It doesn't get more specific than that. He/she means languages

[screye]

I would believe the top comment.

My family has their own language that is spoken by 2-3 villages max. 80 languages in a region is perfectly believable .

[svat]

For example, when the article says:

> five of the most widely used scripts in India—Devanagari, Gujarati, Gurumukhi, Tamil, and Latin. Those five scripts support seven or eight of India’s most widely used languages, together spoken by hundreds of millions of people across the Indian subcontinent.

this list of scripts actually does not cover (for example) Bengali and Telugu, which together have more speakers than the population of the United States.

[naniid]

which means Telugu and Bengali have more speakers but their scripts are not as widely used in digital world.

[parthdesai]

In India, language and food, both change every 200km. When you tell this to people who haven't been to India, they usually think you are exaggerating but it's surreal how diverse India actually is.

[moultano]

The best analogy for westerners IMHO is to compare India to the EU with a stronger central government.

[screye]

That is my favorite analogy too. Easily the closest Western approximation.

[janc_]

Here in Northern Belgium, some people might be able to pinpoint your origin down to a 10-20km region. :)

Over a 200km distance, people definitely would have trouble understanding each other without using a common standardised language ("Standard Dutch", which we learn in school), even when "officially" they are speaking the same "language". On TV, people who don't use the standardised language are subtitled.

So, I haven't been to India, but what you describe seems quite natural.

[echevil]

I totally believe that as it’s basically the same situation in China

[shrimp_emoji]

Why fetishize diversity for its own sake, especially when it's a barrier to communication?

I think we should all speak one language (preferably, the one we're speaking now). The information suddenly marketable to or directly consumable by anyone at any given place will significantly increase.

[svat]

Diversity is not necessarily a barrier to communication. (In fact, the idea that diversity is a problem and a barrier to communication is itself a bigger problem IMO.) In India most people are multilingual, and there's usually a link-language. For instance, in the region mentioned in the comment you're replying to, probably a majority would speak Gujarati too as a second language, and a significant number of them Hindi, and many English as well. There's going to be a fair bit of interchange and translation going on too. (For example, even in the Anglosphere one is not completely blind to French or Italian or German language or culture, say, and is aware of at least a few of their peaks: enough to recognize they have something of value too.)

The existence of diversity is generally a sign of freedom and self-sufficiency: that the people in question were/are free to retain and develop/enrich their own culture, and yet function successfully (enough) in interaction with the broader society, without too much pressure to give up their ways. (See: “melting pot” and “salad bowl”.) Monocultures, monolingualism, monotheism, etc., do have certain advantages too of course, but I hope some can see why diversity is valuable too.

[gumby]

Why fetishize uniformity in the name of some absurd "efficiency"?

People are all different and why should they not choose to communicate/eat/enjoy themselves as they wish, with all the advantages and disadvantages of their choices?

(Plus in the case of languages there are things which can be said in some and really can't be said in others. My wife, child and I would typically speak multiple languages, sometimes even in the same sentence, in order to convey the nuance of what we wanted to say. Hell, even in English there are things said in discipline-specific jargons that aren't really communicable any other way).

[vvillena]

The moment that happens, that language would start diverging again. You have to unify culture in order to unify language, and that doesn't sound as good anymore.

Settling on a "common" or "business" language, though, is entirely possible, and has been done many times in history. No language ever encompassed the whole world, and if one language has it's English, right now. Latin, Arabic, Mandarin, French, English, Spanish... The world has seen its share of common languages used within certain spheres of influence.

[mantas]

Point in case - proto Indo European language. It's clear most of European languages (except pre-Indo-European, like Finnish, Estonian, Basque..) have common parent language. For example, look at numbers. All those languages have awfully familiar numbers. If you speak one language, you can recognise most numbers in other languages rather easily. Yet they evolved into very different languages in different regions.

[murukesh_s]

I think numbering system is a recent introduction to European languages - adopted from India in 10th century or so.. but some other words have similarity like maatha- mother, pithaa- father etc!

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hindu–Arabic_numeral_system

[mantas]

Exactly, essential words that we needed thousands of years ago as well as today sound similar. Because they are leftovers from when it was a single language. Modern words that were just invented tend to sound similar as well. E.g. "computer" in different languages. The vast difference is in words that came up in between split of Indo-European tribes and modern times.

[yorwba]

The written numerals are relatively recent, but the words for numbers are much older and still very similar across languages.

[murukesh_s]

Wasn't Roman numerals in use, before the Indo-Arabic came to Europe? How come they are similar? They look worlds apart to me..

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_numerals

[nkoren]

> Why fetishize diversity for its own sake, especially when it's a barrier to communication?

Ĉar diverseco estas la bazo de ĉia belo kaj ĉia kreemo. Sin diverseco, vivo estus sensignifa.

> I think we should all speak one language (preferably, the one we're speaking now).

Certe, mi konsentas -- sed nur aldone al vian unikan lokan lingvon. Kaj ne la Anglan, mi petas!

[skosch]

When I looked into Esperanto a few years ago, I lost interest relatively quickly as I figured that this Euro-mashup of a language probably won't ever make it very far into areas where it would be most useful to me (i.e. outside of the Western world). Is this true, in your experience? Do you know of any Indian/African/Chinese Esperantists? Has Esperanto been a worthwhile investment of your time, and would you recommend studying it over "real" languages, on the merit of its community alone?

[nkoren]

I'd say it's been a worthwhile investment -- but not really on the merit of the community. That's probably my own fault: the community seems cool and I probably ought to be less of a hermit. There are certainly plenty of Chinese Esperantists; the China Radio International (the PRC's equivalent of Radio America, roughly) even has an Esperanto service that's pretty interesting to listen to[1].

What's really made it a worthwhile investment is that it's given me a better understanding of language itself. All languages have idiosyncrasies, including Esperanto -- but Esperanto's idiosyncrasies are unusually consistent, making it really easy to map things onto. So I often find it easier to comprehend some weird construct in (say) Hindi or Japanese by mapping it onto straightforward Esperanto, rather than trying to map it onto an English construct that's probably even weirder.

Plus it's just such an easy win. I can order off a menu and find my way around town in a fair handful of languages, but haven't really gotten much further than that. But I can easily read just about anything in Esperanto, with 1/10th the effort that I've put into any other language. Which is just kinda gratifying to be able to do.

1: http://esperanto.cri.cn/

[skosch]

Thank you, that's interesting, glad I asked! I'll have to take another look then.

[squiggleblaz]

Esperanto has speakers in China, Japan, Korea, Indonesia and Thailand. No doubt others besides but these are the ones I've met either in my own country or in theirs.

You can see some chinese uptake here: http://esperanto.china.org.cn/

Esperanto is very european in its appearance (both grammar and vocab). This seems to have helped it to gain a userbase, which allows others to adopt it who don't share its background. The regularity of the language helps people even if they have to learn a lot of weird roots and struggle to get the very latinate relative clause system (a lot of English speakers struggle with that too though, because agreement is moribund).

Esperanto havas parolantojn en Cxini, Japanio, Koreio, Indonezio kaj Tajlando. Nedube ankauw aliaj sed cxi tiuj estas tiuj de kiuj mi renkontis esperantistojn, aw en mia lando aw en ilia.

Jene vi povas vidi ion de la cxina uzigxo: http://esperanto.china.org.cn/

Esperanto estas tre ewropa law sia formo (kaj gramatike kaj vorte). Sxajne tio helpis gxin obteni fruajn uzantojn, kiuj instigas ekuzi gxin aliajn kiu ne kunhavas gxian historion. La reguleco de la lingvo helpas homojn ecx se ili devas lerni multajn strangajn radikojn kaj penas kompreni la tre latinan relativan fraz-sistemon (multaj angla-parolantoj devas peni per tiu ankaw, cxar konsento estas mortonta).

[z3phyr]

"We should also have one programming language, one processor architecture (preferably the x86-64) and one browser"

If the above statement sounds wrong, it's because __it is__

We should let other cultures and languages to thrive by themselves; as this is the primary reason of evolution of our business language too. If multiple languages would not suddenly exist, our business language will stop borrowing from other languages and would cease to advance by itself.

[jogjayr]

> I think we should all speak one language (preferably, the one we're speaking now).

Gods no. You'll have to pry my other two languages from my cold, dead tongue. Just the ability to have private conversations in public feels like a superpower. The amazing puns you can make up is also a huge benefit - I can amuse myself all the time.

Plus, you know, cultural diversity, accessing millennia of literature and history etc. But that's the boring stuff /s

[tensor_rank_0]

sprechen se habla?

[msaharia]

So, people should give up their culture to become easier preys to global consumerism? Diversity is not a problem - it's fundamental to the survival of a species.

[ivm]

No way, English is too dry and limiting due to the lack of emotional tones that are present at least in Spanish and Russian (because of the flexibility of words and their order in a sentence). I'm ok with using it for technical purposes but I would prefer something else to actually talk.

[shrimp_emoji]

I know what you mean. I speak another language (natively), and it's surprising how more emotionally expressive it is than English. Personally, though, I like English's relative dryness; it makes English seem much more civil and rational. That other language sounds vulgar and primal. D:

[janc_]

I think you are comparing with "business English" instead of actual locally spoken/written English here...

[ivm]

No, the one spoken with family and friends – it's still limiting. Profanities in English aren't diverse either.

[sangnoir]

> Profanities in English aren't diverse either

English profanity feels unsatisfying/watered-down. I suspect overuse in pop-culture has worn away most of the taboo factor, making it less cathartic.

[wbl]

And of the seven words you can't say we mostly use three.

[_emacsomancer_]

Because diversity emerges, like it or not. Go back far enough and Swedish and Nepali were dialects of the same language.

[draw_down]

> I think we should all speak one language (preferably, the one we're speaking now).

Good grief.

[allpratik]

Seriously, I am trying my luck in NLP with some Indian languages like Marathi, Hindi, Gujarati and Tamil. The sheer number of dialects is driving me nuts.

Even dialects have very different sounding words or pronunciations which increases the complexity exponentially. But I am trying it only with an eye on its potential. NLP will simply act as the catalyst for technology adoption in the rural and semi-rural area.

I'm thinking to study China's approach here since I heard even Chinese is incredibly diverse.

[azurezyq]

China does have very diverse dialects. But Mandarin is taught in all schools in mainland China and we treat it as standard. Also it is the unified way people from different area communicate.

For younger generation this is not a problem, back in my college life where people in the same class came from different areas, from Xinjiang to Canton to the northeast corner. We have no problem understanding each other though sometimes funny with unique words or accents.

It seems that the problem is not as severe in China as in India.

[_emacsomancer_]

And what are called "dialects" in the Chinese context are just as much dialects as French, Italian, and Romanian are "dialects" of Romance.

[jacobolus]

These mostly get called “dialects” for political reasons: the Chinese government doesn’t want to acknowledge that they are separate mutually unintelligible languages. Media in Chinese languages other than Mandarin is restricted, children are forced to use Mandarin in school, all official business is done in Mandarin, etc. There is a concerted effort to make other languages economically unviable, and generally to disempower and discourage regional / minority cultures. The grandparent poster’s experience is evidence that this strategy is working out.

It is similar to the way the Chinese government assigns non-native political officials to rule each region, and severely censors any politically controversial communication/media. That is, it is yet another tool of authoritarian social control, an effort to forestall any political opposition to the central government and its unresponsive top-down decision-making process.

India does not have the same kind of authoritarian governing institutions, so similar forced homogenization would not be politically viable.

[baobrain]

> the Chinese government doesn’t want to acknowledge that they are separate mutually unintelligible languages.

Except they are not mutually unintelligible. Put someone from heilongjiang province in Sichuan and they will still be able to understand the language, albeit with more difficulty.

Though there are dialects that do have completely different pronunciation, they all use the same underlying script, save a select few minority languages. Mandarin Chinese is taught in school, but everyone still uses the local dialect to speak with each other.

I'm not even denying the CCP has ulterior motives in doing this, but your original claim was simply incorrect and disingenuous.

[barry-cotter]

Heilongjiang is part of the Northeast, aka former Manchuria and was settled in the mid to late 1800s from the North Chinese plain. The entire North Chinese plain speaks variants of Mandarin for the same reason North American English is far less diverse than British and Irish English, there was a relatively small recent founder population.

Wu (Shanghainese and the other related dialects of the Yangtze river delta), Yue (Cantonese), Hakka, Xiang and Min are absolutely languages. They're at least as divergent as the Romance languages or the different "dialects" of Arabic. Having a single written standard does not make the spoken varieties one language. And even if it did Cantonese has a written standard even if it's not used much, so there are at least two Chinese languages.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_varieties_of_Chinese https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Written_Cantonese

[HumanDrivenDev]

Cantonese, Hokkien, and Mandarin are not at all mutually intelligible. Mandarin speakers can't even read Hong Kong newspapers fluently.

Only Mandarin and Cantonese even have a fully developed way of writing with characters. Up until relatively recently Mandarin itself was considered a spoken language, until a written standard (ie correspondence of characters with the words people actually spoke) was developed. Hokkien is in the process of this now in Taiwan, they literally have a government department choosing characters for words (They started off with 900 or something, not sure where they are up to now).

[krapht]

Are you a native speaker? Because 廣東話 and 閩南話 are totally unintelligible to me, and I want your language superpower.

[echevil]

I don't see any part of your comment being correct.

First of all, "Mandarin" is spoken not only in China mainland, but also the standard in Singapore and Taiwan. It was a creation by the Republic of China (which later became Taiwan government) back in 1923, long before the current Chinese government came into power.

Children use Mandarin in school because they have to learn it to be able to communicate with people coming from other parts of China, which would have become a huge disadvantage to themselves. (I can't imagine how I would communicate with other people in college otherwise) It doesn't mean people will forget how to speak their own dialect. In fact, people from the same region almost always speak their own dialects.

Regional / minority cultures are generally protected by the government. The minority are almost always over-represented in all kinds of national events. Being a minority in China means you can get tons of advantage (lower score required to enter good colleges, financial aid, etc.)

[jacobolus]

The language we call Mandarin has been the native language of some parts of northern China for thousands of years, and was certainly not “created” any time recently. Some people speaking dialects of that language migrated to other parts of China. But there are various other languages natively spoken elsewhere in the country.

Singapore is a cosmopolitan port city, there are several Chinese languages spoken there, and Mandarin was not the dominant one until recently. There are also many other languages spoken in Singapore, and from what I understand English is the primary language used for official business. Taiwan was not natively Mandarin speaking but speaks it now because it was taken over (from the Japanese) by the fleeing Mandarin-speaking KMT after they were beaten militarily by the Communists during the Chinese Civil War. Both Singapore and Taiwan were ruled for decades by authoritarian governments. I’m not sure about Singapore but in Taiwan other Chinese languages were forcefully suppressed.

Plenty of other parts of the world manage to communicate across regional/national borders without restricting people’s ability to produce/distribute local media in their native languages.

There are many countries where students learn several languages in school (including their native regional language and a national language) from an early age.

(Disclaimer again: I’m not an expert in the history, politics, or comparative linguistics of China. I recommend Wikipedia as a better first summary, if you are curious to learn about these subjects.)

[squiggleblaz]

However, it's worth noting that you call the official language of China "Mandarin" for political reasons. The analogy would be if you called French "Bureaucratese" and said "Yes, but Breton and Occitan are not mutually intelligible with Bureaucratese".

The statements "Bureaucratese is not mutually intelligible with Occitan" and "Mandarin is not mutually intelligible with Cantonese" are both true, but we could just say "French is not mutually intelligible with Occitan" and "Chinese in not mutually intelligible with Cantonese".

[jacobolus]

I could call it Beijingese (or Pekingese) if you prefer. But many people might not know what I was talking about. Mandarin is the common name used in English to refer to this language.

I don’t have any problem if you want to talk about Parisian French (or pick your preferred other name for it), Castilian Spanish, etc.

Parisian French was pushed onto the people within the borders of the French nation-state by force, by a brutal authoritarian monarchy. Quoting Wikipedia,

‘The goals of the Public School System were made especially clear to the French speaking teachers sent to teach students in regions such as Occitania and Brittany; “And remember, Gents: you were given your position in order to kill the Breton language” were instructions given from a French official to teachers in the French department of Finistère (western Brittany).’

The French state continues to repress minority languages inside its borders. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_policy_in_France

[echevil]

In fact, it's just called "Chinese" by Chinese speakers. I never heard of the word "Mandarin" before I came to US.

[PeterisP]

That's how languages form. You don't get a language like French just by hoping for it to emerge or by letting dialects run their own lives and continue to diverge; you take it by taking a bunch of Romance dialects including quite separate ones (Langue d'Oc and the Langue d'Oil groups) and pushing them together through a common system of mass media (printed for the time, but still), education and cultural acceptance of a "proper dialect" at the top end of the society. That's how you get a strong language that helps you to unify a country and reduce internal barriers of communication; and that's what the Chinese are doing.

[_emacsomancer_]

By "that's how languages form", I assume you mean something like "standardized languages", which then becomes somewhat circular, because it's certainly not how languages form generally (and even standardized languages can form without mass media, and certainly did, even pre-writing).

That's also not how standard French formed. Standardized French is Parisian French, so just the 'dialect' of the politically-important centre. Not too dissimilar to Latin (which was originally narrowly the dialect of Rome) in that.

Whatever the propaganda, China still contains a number of non-mutually intelligible (though related) languages, but of course Mandarin enjoys much prominence and has an enormous number of speakers.

[titanix2]

I never heard that the language was standardized taking langue d’oc elements or any other French languages or dialects. You should give some sources to affirm that. The standard French is based on the French spoken in Paris which was then extended (or imposed in some case) in the whole country via the administration and the public school (forbidding the use of dialects).

[echevil]

While this might be true for spoken language, luckily the Chinese writing system does represent how the the words are pronounced. All of these "dialects" share the same writing system. So it's much easier for someone speaking one of these dialects to learn and use Mandarin.

[nkoren]

How does phonological complexity affect these things? I'm not a linguist, but Hindi at least seems way complex, with a much larger phoneme inventory than other languages I've studied.

[moultano]

I don't think Hindi's phonology is more complex than English, but it is all explicit in the character set rather than implicit in the etymology. (The voicing difference between "this" and "thistle" is my favorite example of this, even beyond the fact that we're representing one of the most common consonant sounds in the language with two characters.)

[squiggleblaz]

In the World Atlas of Language Structures http://wals.info/chapter/1 , Hindi is considered to have a large consononant inventory. Hindi consonants plus vowels is not hugely different than English. But even though it's relatively large, I certainly wouldn't describe it as complex. It's mostly just the same properties repeated in different locations.

Language areas aren't made more complex by additional phonological complexity. The question you've asked seems to be "Does phonological complexity cause more language diversity". When put this way, there doesn't seem to be any causal mechanism that could do it. For instance, one might say: Well, English has a lot of vowels. People in California might simplify them one way, whereas people in Texas might simplify them in another way so that they can't understand each other well: therefore, you get additional linguistic diversity. But this requires the Texans and the Californians to be isolated from each other which isn't what people mean when they say "India is a very linguistically diverse country".

If we try it the other way "Does language diversity cause more phonological complexity", languages tend towards each other in case of diversity (because a person who speaks both Chinese and English will sometimes adopt features of one language into the other). This can sometimes lead to the propagation of more sounds (for instance, languages pretty much only use clicks if they're in contact with other languages that use clicks). And sometimes it can lead the elimination of them. I'm not sure of any particular research about this question, but my guess is on average it would tend towards the average, but if you took English and put it in India it wouldn't be too long before English in India sounds a lot more Indian.

[HumanDrivenDev]

> presumably in a well-intentioned attempt to package this in a way the Western mind can comprehend

Did you intend for that to come across as condescending?

[nkoren]

You mean to the Western mind? I've got one, so yeah I feel somewhat at liberty to make mildly self-depreciating jokes about it. Sort of the way that Woody Allen is allowed to make good-natured fun of pedophiles.

Egads, that's terrible company to keep. Moving on now...

[huebnerob]

There's nothing condescending about stating that there are some world views that may be beyond our immediate rapid comprehension. I have a 'western mind' and I was not offended.

[endgame]

I don't know if GP did, but I did not read it as such.

[paganel]

> but I did not read it as such.

The same here (granted, I'm not a "true" Westerner, as I live in Eastern Europe, but that's also West of India). Adding to the conversation, I have the same issue of trying to comprehend the linguistic craziness that the Caucasus area represents. I mean, as a language buff I'm always amazed whenever I look at this language-map of the area (https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b0/Caucasus...) and at the language families included in there.

[mavelikara]

This usually comes up in the skilled immigration backlog discussion when someone chimes in "But we want the skilled immigrants to be diverse. That's why we have a per-country cap!"

[wodenokoto]

> Nearly 50 languages are indigenous to that one region alone. Not dialects.

Just nitpicking, but the distinction is entirely political. In China, people speak Chinese dialects, that are much more diverse than the difference between the Danish language and the Swedish language.

Since China wants to look united, these are "dialects", while Denmark and Sweden wants to be separate sovereign nations they want to have distinct languages, so Danish and Swedish are not some Scandinavian dialects.

[drieddust]

We have a saying in Hindi which translate into this.

> " kos kos par badle paani,chaar kos par baani, par ek hai jo nahi badalta vo hai Hindustani"

Rough Translation:

> Taste of water changes every 2 miles, language changes every 4 miles, but Indian still don't change.

[shrikrishna]

* but what doesn't change is we are Indians

Literal translation doesn't work here (also one of the shortcomings of tools like Google Translate)

[Eire_Banshee]

So... the comment wasnt stereotypical enough?

[_emacsomancer_]

There is an actual Hindi aphorism which is similar, basically: "the language and the water change every five miles"

[reaperducer]

>in a way the Western mind can comprehend. Which frankly is futile.

Xenophobic much?