Business Standard .. TV18 to start Hindi business news channels

Television Eighteen India Ltd (TV18), co-promoter of the English business news channel, CNBC India, will launch its 24-hour Hindi business news channel in the next financial year.

...
With the launch of the Hindi business channel, TV18 is eyeing a 30 per cent growth in its sales revenue.
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Prajant's Xanga Site

For those not in the know, that says "Hindi!"

CIOL : News : Adobe's Hindi version, two months away:

"BANGALORE: Software maker, Adobe will be releasing the Hindi version of its software applications in the next couple of months. 'It is beyond the conceptualization stage and is almost in the releasing stage. In another couple of months you should see us releasing the Hindi version,' said Bruce Chizen, President and CEO of Adobe Systems Inc."

पीटीआई वेबसाइट का उद्घाटन

नयी दिल्ली, 27 सितंबर : भाषा : देश की प्रतिष्ठित संवाद समिति प्रेस ट्रस्ट आफ इंडिया ने आज अपने अंग्रेजी और हिंदी के आनलाइन डिलीवरी सिस्टम : ओडीएस : का उद्घाटन किया और इसके साथ ही पीटीआई अंग्रेजी और पीटीआई भाषा तथा पीटीआई फोटो सेवा इंटरनेट पर उपलब्ध हो गयीं।

पीटीआई के महाप्रबंधक और मुख्य संपादक एम के राजदान ने यहां पीटीआई मुख्यालय में आयोजित एक समारोह में इस वेबसाइट का उद्घाटन किया।

अब पीटीआई की सभी सेवाएं डब्ल्यू डब्ल्यू डब्ल्यू.पीटीआईन्यूज.काम पर उपलब्ध होंगी।

इस अवसर पर पीटीआई के अध्यक्ष एम पी वीरेन्द्र कुमार ने अपने संदेश में कहा कि संवाद समिति की अपनी वेबसाइट चालू होना पीटीआई के तकनीकी उन्नयन में एक और मील का पत्थर साबित हो रहा है।

भाषा - पीटीआई

My Hindi Journey

Share your thoughts here.

Microsoft to set up lab for promoting Hindi:

"Chandigarh: To promote the use of Hindi in computer applications, Microsoft Corporation India Pvt Ltd would set up a Research and Development (R&D) laboratory at Kurukshetra University.

Haryana chief minister Om Prakash Chautala assured state government's assistance to Microsoft and suggested that while developing Hindi software, care should be taken to use such words which would be easy to understand and simple to write.

Appreciating the initiative taken by the state to promote the use of Hindi in computer application, Rajiv Kaul, MD Microsoft India, sought the cooperation of Haryana government in undertaking research and development in this area.

Microsoft had already made investment in developing software for Hindi, Kaul said adding it would be necessary to set up a Hindi laboratory in Haryana for further R&D."

A socio-political commentary on Hindi
(Tehelka.com)

" Take a Hindiwallah who insists on his right to use Hindi. Once I was at a film symposium and there were people from both North and South India. The language they were speaking was a kind of mix of Hindi and English. And we were rubbing along with some understanding and some loss. Then one of the local Hindi patrakars stood up and began to make a speech about how his rights were being denied and so on. He wanted to speak in Hindi and his entire expectation was that he would be denied that right; he would be told: you can't because there are people present from elsewhere. As it happened, I was chairing that session and I said: please speak in Hindi. He had nothing to say and kept quiet after that. All he wished to do was to insist on his right to speak in Hindi. So there is a further problem of what you are going to say in the language once it is granted to you. That problem has not been addressed simply because the Hindiwallah has invented an enemy who holds him back. He is always shadow-fighting with this guy who has denied him the right to speak."

यह टिप्पणी इलॅक्ट्रानिक माध्यमों के सम्बन्ध में और भी जायज़ है। कोई किसी को हिन्दी का इस्तेमाल करने से रोक नहीं रहा, आपकी जैसे इच्छा हो वैसे लेखन और पाठन कर सकते हैं। टी वी पर तो हिन्दी के चॅनलों ने बाज़ी मार ही ली है, अब बारी है जाल की।

Oxford Chacha's mast chaap
(The Times of India)

"'Chacha's mast chaap made me very positive about desh as I gave my naam into the videshi nivas'. Cross my heart, that's English as the modern linguistic 'natak' goes, even though it may not be quite the language Shakespeare used and recognised.

The Oxford Dictionary of English's updated 353,000-word listing, published on Thursday incorporates a further 37 Indian imports and a huge number of West Indian pronounciation-blunders into the world's fastest-growing, most widely-spoken tongue.

From today, it's fine for Indians to not know the English equivalent of chit-fund, udyog, murgh, history-sheeter and chawal.

'Hell, why should they,' laughs British Asian linguistics student Ramesh Panwal. 'Don't find out what a chowki is called in English - it is English. Dhoti is English. So is vaid, tal, namak, palak and so on'."

Business Standard .. Angrezi nahin, Hindi chalega:
...
NDTV Media’s Nayak, however, feels that a comparison between English and Hindi news channels is odious. “It’s like comparing apples with oranges. Do you ever compare HBO with Zee Cinema,” he asks.

Besides, he feels that language makes all the difference as the television market for the two languages are distinct. Unequal comparisons notwithstading, the question is: is there a market for English news channels in India?

TV Today’s Krishnan thinks so. “There’s a large English-speaking segment that is keen to update itself on world affairs,” he says.

However, media planners say that despite the tall claims made by broadcasting companies about the market size of English news viewers, the two new entrants have performed below expectations. They even point out the reasons for the poor show.

For starters, media independent Carat India’s chief executive officer Sulina Menon says, Hindi news channels offer high production quality which hasn’t allowed viewers to shift to English news.

“We notice that even high net worth individuals in the socio-economic category A watch these news channels,” says Menon. Besides, within Hindi, there are at least five channels to choose from, she adds.
...

English Hindi Dictionary - Unicode Display:

"This online interface to English Hindi dictionary for Unicode display is based on the dictionaries in ISCII made available under GPL License by the LTRC Group of IIIT Hyderabad. "

Borrowed words and pronunciation:
By Rajeev Srinivasan (rediff.com)

"For those of us who are challenged in Arabic and Persian, like me, there may be some hope: I read recently of an Urdu-Hindi dictionary. I hope Hindis use this to replace Arabic/Persian words with perfectly good Sanskrit-derived ones, which we poor Southerners can also understand. For instance, I think prem would be a fine substitute for ishq. After glancing at Hindi film posters for years, I still have no idea what qayamat means. I should buy that dictionary."

NewsForge: Linux now in Hindi and other Indian languages:

"Linux For You, Asia's first Linux magazine, has launched a multilingual version of Linux from India - For You (LiFY). It now supports all major Indian languages including Bengali, Gujarati, Hindi, Kannada, Gurmukhi, Tamil, Malayalam and Telugu. It is totally free for any personal and business use. It is developed at LFY Labs, New Delhi.

Speaking on the launch, Mr. Rahul Chopra, Editor, Linux For You said: 'The support of all major Indian languages in LiFY will make it a universal choice for all Indians, all across the country. Till now, the basic language for computing was English. Now Indians will be able to user their own languages in computers using LiFY."

छहारी नेपाली / देवनागरी टाईपराइटर

Google launches India site in 4 languages:

"Google.com, the world's top search engine has launched an India site. The site, launched in four languages ? Hindi, Marathi, Tamil and Telugu ? was launched today quietly without any brouhaha.

This site, google.co.in, comes only a few weeks after they launched a news site for India. Whenever a visitor from India lands on the Google home page the user is automatically taken to the Google India website."

Govt. plans Hindi medium for NDA exam: Fernandes

"New Delhi, July 31. (UNI): The Government is actively considering introduction of Hindi as a medium for the NDA entrance examination, said Defence Minister George Fernandes in the Lok Sabha today.

In a written reply, he said at present the question papers for NDA are printed only in English.

All the recruitment examinations conducted by the Union Public Service Commission (UPSC) except the Civil Service (Main) Examination are held in English medium only, Fernandes added. "

Bollywood songs improve mass literacy! - Sify.com:

"New Delhi: Bollywood songs are helping in literacy improvement as the 'idiot box' turns 'read-it box' for millions of semi-literate and illiterate people in the country.

Social entrepreneur Brij Kothari has partnered with Doordarshan and is using subtitles in the nationally televised song show 'Chitrahaar' to help reinforce reading skills for the semi-literate and illiterate audience.

Professor Kothari, a literacy expert at the Centre for Educational Innovation at the Indian Institute of Management in Ahmedabad (IIMA), has pioneered ''Same Language Subtitling'' (SLS) -- subtitling the lyrics of 'Chitrahaar' songs on television in Hindi.

The lyrics from the hit songs of Bollywood movies are subtitled in Hindi word for word in synchronisation with the visuals. The songs in the music videos are hugely popular and the lyrics well-known.

SLS builds on people's knowledge of the lyrics, enabling partially literate people to anticipate the sub-titles and read along as hearing and reading reinforce each other.

He is using a $250,000 award from Development Marketplace for the innovative pilot project that leverages existing TV viewing by semi-literate villagers for literacy improvement."

India aiming for Hindi recognition at UN - Sify.com:

"New Delhi: India is making an all out efforts for getting Hindi recognised as the seventh official language at the United Nations.

The issue was discussed at a meeting convened by External Affairs Minister Yashwant Sinha with the officials of his Ministry.
The meeting constituted a task force, led by Minister of State for External Affairs Digvijay Singh, for a follow-up action on the efforts to get Hindi recognised at the UN.

The task force will draw up a list of the countries which could be targetted for support in this regard.

The committee would also get in touch with the Indian diaspora to get its support on the issue.

Presently, English, French, Spanish, Russian, Chinese and Arabic are the six languages recognised by the UN.

The support of 96 countries will be needed out of a total 190 members of the UN for getting Hindi recognised as the seventh official language by the world body. "

Yahoo! Groups : devanaagarii:

देवनागरी में लिखने और पढ़ने के बारे में चर्चा

Indian languages to remain in S Africa curricula - Sify.com:

"Durban: The South African Government has agreed to retain four Indian languages- Tamil, Hindi, Telugu and Urdu- right up to matriculation level at schools in the country, after weeks of protests from the Indian origin community against their proposed removal from the carricula. "
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LinuxDevices.com - Trolltech announced the release of Qt version 3.2:

"Trolltech announced the release of Qt version 3.2. the popular C++ multiplatform application framework. According to Trolltech, the new version of Qt includes hundreds of enhancements and features that enable developers to build high-performance, low maintenance multiplatform applications.

Key features of Qt 3.2 are said to include . . .

* The SQL support in Qt 3.2 includes drivers for IBM's DB2, complete support for stored procedures, and improved connection parameters.

* The addition of Indic script input and rendering means that Qt 3.2 now supports all major script-based languages, including advanced languages such as Hindi and Bengali."
...

Indian Lexicon: An Overview:

DEDICATED TO: PA_N.INI and TOLKA_PPIYAN-
Dr. S. Kalyanaraman
11 May 1998

"This is a comparative study of the 'semantics' of lexemes of all the languages of India (which may also be referred to, in a geographical/ historical phrase, as the Indian linguistic area). The objective of the lexicon is to discover the semantic repertoire of India ca. 3000 B.C. to further facilitate efforts at deciphering the inscriptions and script of the Sarasvati-Sindhu civilization.

The Indian Lexicon establishes an Indian Linguistic Area, ca. 3000 B.C. by authenticating the use of the lexemes for inscriptions of the civilization of the ancient period."

Troops may not go to Baghdad but GI Joe is learning Hindi
By Reshma Patil (indianexpress.com)

Mumbai, July 14: For a while now, the US Department of Defense and its research wings have been in a tearing hurry to read Hindi. Because keeping tab on a faraway border that doesn’t speak English is tiresome work, the translation a painfully slow exercise.

So from June 1, commanded by a message — the surprise language is Hindi...Good luck! — from a research funding branch of the US military, around 100 computational linguists at 11 sites in the US and UK invented a new set of information tools to translate Hindi text into English. And query Hindi databases with English questions.

The technology can identify documents with ‘‘highest promise’’ of holding information the researcher is interested in, saving translators hours of drudgery.

‘‘A major national language too long neglected in the West with important similarities to other languages in northern India and to Urdu in Pakistan... it can benefit information retrieval in India and foster broader international co-operation and understanding,’’ flashed the Surprise Language Exercise command from sponsor Defense Advanced Research Project Agency (DARPA).
...

Hindi Pronunciation Guide हिन्दी उच्चारण

Hindi Pronunciation Guide
By Sunil Bhadekar

A collection of Links for learning Hindi maintained by Keith Skillicorn.

IT Terms in Hindi

Requires properietary 'Yuvraj' font (downloadbale from site).

द्वारे द्वारे ज्ञान संपदा

सूचना प्रौद्योगिकी विभाग, संचार एवं सूचना प्रौद्योगिकी मंत्रालय के मार्गदर्शन में सी-डॅक की 'द्वारे द्वारे ज्ञान संपदा' परियोजना द्वारा डिजिटल लाइब्रेरी की दस लाख पुस्तकें जन-जन तक पहुँचायी जा रही है |

पुस्तक मुद्रण हेतु फॉर्मेट की गई पुस्तकों का चयन, वेबसाइट से निम्नलिखित श्रेणियों के आधार पर किया जा सकता है:
� भाषा
� लेखक
� शीर्षक
इसमें हिंदी व अंग्रेजी की 350 पुस्तकें उपलब्ध हैं | जिन्हें वेबसाइट से डाउनलोड किया जा सकता है | यह वेबसाइट हिंदी व अंग्रेजी भाषाओं में उपलब्ध है |

Wired News: Pick a Language, Any Language
...
02:00 AM Jun. 07, 2003 PT

Like the elite group of government agents on the 1960s television show, a group of computer scientists and natural language experts were given a "mission" earlier this week: within a month, build a program that translates between English and a randomly chosen language.

The project, funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, challenges researchers to quickly build translation tools when unforeseen needs arise.

The exercise is designed to imitate the need for translation during a national security threat, like a terrorist act, war or humanitarian crisis.
The element of surprise in the project is critical. Since Monday, computational linguistics research groups from around the country have been gathering resources on the pop-quiz language, Hindi.
...
In theory, this Hindi-and-English system could be useful for the military or the media, for instance, who want to monitor the ongoing tension between Pakistan and India.

"You'd be able to read what the Indian newspapers are saying and what Hindi organizations are putting up on their websites -- whether they are terrorists or high schools, for example," said Eduard Hovy, director of the natural language group at the Information Sciences Institute.

"Every paper has a slant, and the slant that the local population is reading is important to understand if you may be going there," Oard said.

Still, the challenge is only an exercise for these researchers, and there are no plans to continue funding the system built this month.
...
Complete article..

hi_IN.UTF-8 - viewing the Hindi content

A help page for Unicode Devanagari installation on Windows and *nix systems. By Alok Kumar.

Glossary translated in Hindi Copyright NCST 2002

The English Class System by Sankrant Sanu on Sulekha.com

Also, English is by no means nuetral in the Indian context. Languages come with histories of words and meanings, very little of the English language is related to our history or culture. As soon as one starts studying words and languages from that angle one realizes that there is a huge cultural context that languages carry. This doesn't mean that we shouldn't learn English -- I advocate that throughout -- in a cultural sense it gives us a window into another culture, but we shouldn't become English and lose our own context of understanding, which is what English medium education does to us.

Virtual Hindi - Grammar Lessons

@ New York University Web Site

Linux PR: IndLinux.org announces launch of Hindi interface for computers

IndLinux.org's Milan software enables Hindi users to use computers in their own language, a major leap forward in bringing the benefits of information technology to Indian masses
IndLinux.org announced the launch of IndLinux Milan v0.37, a Hindi interface to Gnome, the graphical user interface (GUI) of the GNU/Linux operating system. The software is available as a free download from the Web site www.indlinux.org. With IndLinux Milan v0.37 installed, those who can read and write Hindi can now use computers in their own language.

The organization said that this is a major step forward in bringing the benefits of information technology to the 400 million people who speak the Hindi language. Prakash Advani, co-founder of IndLinux.org said that the organization has been working on localizing the GNU/Linux operating system to Hindi for the last three years. Localization involves changing the menus and other elements of the graphic user interface from English to Hindi.

"Hindi is the third largest language in the world, yet there are no operating systems available in this language. IndLinux.org therefore decided to make Hindi support available for free to create a revolution in Indian Language Computing," said Advani.

Bharat Me Angrezi Banam Hindi by Mark Tully (Hindi translation by Prem Pal Sharma)

How to easily use hindi in Windows 2000/XP

Shabdkosh

Urdu-Hindi shabdakosh in Shusha created by Suman K Ghai. A good resource for checking the meanings of Urdu words found often in shaayari.

Shaayarii--Urdu Poetry and Hindi Kavita - Nagari version of most of Nita's Urdu Poetry site

"On this page I have made an attempt to write the text in Hindi which already exists on Urdu Poetry Archive created by Nita Awatramani. She has made a tremendous effort to put the Urdu poetry on the Net. Even though I do not know Urdu but I do enjoy the poetry. So here I am trying to write it in Hindi."

Urdu Dictionary by Usman Qazi

"My objective is to come up with a (Urdu/Hindi)=>(Urdu/Hindi) thesaurus. I will keep developing the follwing list, which is partly my own and partly taken from a word-list by a Mr. Sitaraam Shastree. Then, with people's help, I'll try to get a thesaurus out of it. Etymology will also be added as time permits. As my formal Hindi is rudimentary, I need help in grouping Sanskrit words as well as in acurately identifying their more common synonyms. The grouping will be as follows (c) common bo:lcaal (e) educated speech (f) formal/bookish/poetic/pompous

"I have tried to follow the standard Sanskrit transliteration. Although we're limited to ascii. kh. , gh. and zh occur in words of Persian/Arabic origin. I don't know what to do with the two Sanskrit (sh) sounds as well as the several Arabic (t) and (z) sounds, etc. I'd leave them for higher order Maulaana/Pandit sahibs."
...

Writing Hindi (Devnagari) in Unicode

By Peer Wandel Hansen

Relations between Sanskrit, Pali, the Prakrits and the Modern Vernacalars
By Ramkrishna Gopal Bhandarkar, M.A.

Journal of the Bombay Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society
Vol.16, 1883, pp. 314-345

E.Tremel's new Hindi Opentype font named "shiDeva"

UTF-8 Sampler

Frank da Cruz
The Kermit Project - Columbia University
New York City
fdc@columbia.edu
Last update: Thu Jan 23 09:42:59 2003

A DOOR INTO HINDI
A very good multimedia beginner's guide to learn Hindi.
developed by Afroz Taj of North Carolina State University

About Hindi-Urdu
Excerpted from the Introduction to Afroz Taj's book Urdu Through Hindi: Nastaliq With the Help of Devanagari (New Delhi: Rangmahal Press, 1997)

...
What then defines a language? What makes a language unique? Its writing system? Its vocabulary? Or its grammatical structure? We should not make the mistake of confusing a language with its writing system. Often, unrelated languages share a common writing system, while any language can be transcribed into a new writing system without affecting its basic sounds and structure. Indeed most of the world's languages borrowed their writing systems from somebody else. For example, English, French, and Spanish borrowed their writing systems from Latin. The Latin alphabet was in turn derived from the Greek alphabet. Japanese adopted the Chinese word-characters. Both Indonesian and Turkish switched from the Arabic to the Roman writing system early in the Twentieth Century without being otherwise changed significantly. English can be written in Morse Code, Braille, binary computer code, or even in the Hindi writing system and it still remains English.

Vocabulary is likewise not characteristic of a language. Words are readily borrowed between languages like dry leaves blown about in the wind. No language can claim a pure, fixed and unchanging vocabulary. Indeed, it is often impossible to express oneself in English without using words borrowed from French, Latin, or even Hindi.

Thus it is only grammatical structure that can be said to characterize a language. No matter which writing system is used, no matter which vocabulary words are used, a language's grammar will follow regular and characteristic rules. These rules, which govern verb conjugation, noun declension, plural formation, syntax, etc., are largely consistent within a language but differ between languages. Thus a comparative study of these rules allows us to distinguish one language from another.

Therefore Hindi and Urdu, which share a common, identical grammatical structure, must be considered a single language: Hindi-Urdu.

How did Hindi-Urdu develop, and why does it have two names? Let's look at the linguistic condition of India about one thousand years ago. The Indo-Aryan language family, brought to South Asia by the Aryans in prehistoric times, had become firmly established in a belt running from the Persian Caucasus in the West to the Bay of Bengal in the East. The descendent languages of Sanskrit, including several dialects of early Hindi, Medieval Panjabi, Gujarati, Marathi, and Bengali, as well as their cousin tongue Persian were emerging in their respective regions. The Indian languages had adopted the ancient Sanskrit writing system, Devanagari, in various forms, while Persian had borrowed the Arabic writing system from its neighbors to the West. Hindi, in various dialects including Khariboli, Braj Bhasha and Awadhi, was spoken throughout North Central India.

Then, about seven centuries ago, the dialects of Hindi spoken in the region of Delhi began to undergo a linguistic change. In the villages, these dialects continued to be spoken much as they had been for centuries. But around Delhi and other urban areas, under the influence of the Persian-speaking Sultans and their military administration, a new dialect began to emerge which would be called Urdu. While Urdu retained the fundamental grammar and basic vocabulary of its Hindi parent dialects, it adopted the Persian writing system, "Nastaliq" and many additional Persian vocabulary words. Indeed, the great poet Amir Khusro (1253-1325) contributed to the early development of Urdu by writing poems with alternating lines of Persian and Hindi dialect written in Persian script.

What began humbly as a hodge-podge language spoken by the Indian recruits in the camps of the Sultan's army, by the Eighteenth Century had developed into a sophisticated, poetic language.
...

Languages of South Asia
by Anjani Kumar Sinha
...
Because of the fact that most major languages of India have a rich oral tradition and literature, they have survived in spite of the official patronage given to foreign languages such as Persian and English. However, almost all South Asian languages have enriched themselves by borrowing from these languages lexical items and, to a small extent, some sounds such as (f, v, z, x, k, and g) and syntactic features such as embedded relative clauses and reported speech. The contact with Europeans did not lead to the evolution of pidgins (a language that usually arises as methods of communication between groups with a greatly reduced vocabulary and a simplified grammar) and creoles (pidgin language that has become established as the native language of a speech community) the way it did in Africa and Southeast Asia. However, the contact of various tribes speaking Tibeto-Burman and Austro-Asiatic languages in the northeast India with speakers of Assamese, Bengali, Hindi and English, has led to the evolution of Nagamese, an Assamese-based pidgin which is now being creolized. The fact that Nagamese is structurally closer to English, and even to Hindi, than to Assamese is a significant linguistic point.

The South Asia language scene is thus fascinating not only because of the varieties of languages and dialects, but also because of the way they have enriched one another and survived even under the most adverse cicumstances. Behind the apparent linguistic conflicts and controversies, there is tolerance for the other person�s language and adaptability, which has led to bilingualism on such a large scale.

Web resources for learning Hindi

(A project for EdPsych387class at UIUC)
by Avatans Kumar

The aim of this project is to create a web-based resource site forlearning Hindi in a Foreign Language environment. This project involvescreating a learner oriented World Wide Web resource page for learning Hindi.It also includes socio-cultural-historical information relevant for learning Hindi.

The Devanagari Script
from IITM site

This prelude begins with an introduction to the Sanskrit letters. The writing system used for Sanskrit is known as Devanagari. Indian languages are phonetic in nature and hence the letters represent unique sounds. In Sanskrit as well as in other Indian languages, proper pronounciation of the words is quite important. Hence it is necessary to learn the sounds associated with the letters of the language.
...

Devanagari alphabet

Origin
The Nagari (lit. 'of the city') or Devanagari ('divine Nagari') alphabet descended from the Brahmi script sometime around the 11th century AD. It was originally developed to write Sanksrit but was later adapted to write many other languages.
...