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Preserving Linguistics in The Context of Architecture: Language As More Than A Means of Communication
Preserving Linguistics in The Context of Architecture: Language As More Than A Means of Communication
8/11/19
DESIGN DISSERTATION - SUBJECT OF RESEARCH
Challenges
India is one of the most linguistically rich countries. When we lose a language, it is a
loss of an entire universe, including its cultural myths and rituals. Ignoring languages
with fewer speakers will simply not do. Languages like Hindi have over 126
languages feeding into them. Cutting down on such roots will harm the larger
languages as well.
There is still hope. A language like Bhil has showcased an 85% growth in speakers
in the last 20 years. We need a new social contract where we seek to preserve the
orality and textual nature of languages using digital means. Such a practice would
keep India’s purported pluralism alive, giving it renewal.
LEXICON
Semantics:
Polyglot:
Pragmatics:
Language
Bibliography
https://www.thehansindia.com/posts/index/News-Analysis/2016-07-28/India-rapidly-losing-its-
languages/245117
https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/blogs/et-commentary/preserving-indias-endangered-
languages/
http://blogs.reuters.com/india/2013/09/07/india-speaks-780-languages-220-lost-in-last-50-years-
survey/\\
Site Selection
In all the states and union territories, invariably, there are at least 10 languages or more, but in urban
spaces, like Delhi or Bombay, or Hyderabad or Bangalore, nearly 300 language communities inhabit
that space in a very substantial number for each community. In the northeast, there are more than 250
languages.
Because of change in the sea farming technology, local people have lost their livelihood. They are no
longer into fishing, making of nets, ship breaking. They have migrated inward. So they have migrated
out of their language zones… Wherever people move from one livelihood to another livelihood, they
carry their language for a while. But in the second generation, or the third generation, a shift takes place.
The third generation no longer feels related to the earlier language the same way.
Nomadic communities. We had a very terrible law brought in by the British called the Criminal Tribes
Act, 1871 (Rescinded in 1952). Under that act, many communities were described as criminal by birth,
not criminal by act. So those communities got stigmatised. … They are mostly nomadic in habit, and
today in India those people are trying to move away from their cultural identity. They are trying to conceal
their cultural identity. Therefore they are giving up their language.
So this equation that the government will come, will do something, then language will survive, that has
to be taken out of all thinking. It is a cultural phenomenon.