• Dr. Moose@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Not to take away from this but often these 4 are very similar languages that could be easily interpreted as dialects if not the identity politics.

    • stappern@lemmy.one
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      1 year ago

      you could say the same about italian-spanish-french-romanian they still counts as separate languages

    • emergencyfood@sh.itjust.works
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      1 year ago

      It is complicated. India has at least four language families - Indo-European, Dravidian, Austroasiatic and Sino-Tibetan. So Hindi (I-E) is closer related to English or Greek than to Tamil (Dra), Santali (AA) or Zeme (S-T). While it is rare for people to speak languages belonging to all four families, I know at least three people who can passably speak six languages from two or three families.