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0 sats \ 15 replies \ @cryotosensei OP 19 Aug \ parent \ on: Parent’s Corner: 大人 vs 小人 mostly_harmless
Electronic dictionaries aren’t in vogue these days?
Oh they are. Just referring to the number of entries here, regardless of the format. Electronic or paper.
To be fair, Korean in nr 2 (after Tamil) also comes from the inclusion of north Korean dialects.
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What's the story behind so many entries for Tamil?
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A very good question!
Seems like this is because Tamil is one of the oldest, in fact the second oldest after Sanskrit, has so many synonyms for every word.
I'm not from the place is where Tamil is spoken. I'm from North India and Tamil is very specific to South India only.
But, I know one or two things about Sanskrit. Let me tell you. Sanskrit is one of the richest languages in the world, it has more words than in any other language. At present, Sanskrit dictionary has “102.78 billion” 🤷words! This is possible only because there are innumerable synonyms in Sanskrit for every word. So, Sanskrit isn't spoken mother of all languages for nothing. I've studied Sanskrit in my school and I can confirm you this.
I'm surprised that Wikipedia hasn't included Sanskrit dictionary in the list.
You can confirm it here.
https://satyaagrah.com/sanatan/dharm-sanskriti/2315-sanskrit-dictionary
Link of online Sanskrit dictionary:
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Forgot to tag another SN resident Indian (I think).
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Now there are a few more as well.
@IamSINGLE @TheMorningStar
@Athena
@BitcoinGuru
@DoctorD
@Beast_Vstar
There are a few more but they haven't come to life on SN till now but I hope they would be coming once we make Stackers News very popular in India.
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Slow but steady. Quality over quantity. Don't wanna get too many satsfarmers too quickly. I like the current quality of Indian contributions, you guys are doing a good job at promoting it with the right people. And SN incentive structure is doing the rest :)
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Exactly that's been my motive. But, sometimes some of them join enthusiastically only to know that it's not like other platforms where shit is served or tolerated. So far, I've referred 20+ people to SN but only 4 or 5 have stayed and returned everyday. Some have been vanished after writing their bio!
In this regard, we also have to thank SN incentive structure which doesn't allow anyone to do satsfarming without providing quality.
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Most Indians speak Tamil in Singapore. I always thought it is a minor n obscure language - today, I learnt about how influential it actually is!
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It's the mother of all Dravidian group of languages. It's at least 500 BCE Old language.
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I asked my Indian colleague.
He told me that in a sense, Sanskrit is actually based on a very limited number of roots (around 2,000) and that the innumerable number of words are just coming from a very systematic application of specific grammar rules to apply "inflections" and "derivations".
But he says it appeals to the nationalistic nature of people to claim it contains several millions of words (he doesn't know where the number of 100 billion words comes from)... but in reality, the actual uniqueness of words lies in the roots rather in the inflections or derivations.
This could be a reason for not including it at nr 1 in that Wikipedia page. At the same time, you are free to add it... maybe it's a simple omission.
In the end, I guess both sides are valid. It's just a disagreement on how to count a word as being truly unique. It's a matter of definition.
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Very interesting! Thank you for verifying!
It seems immature to me for people to be proud of a 100 billion word language even if the number was true. The pride comes solely from a "big number better than small number" primitive reasoning, while a language can be judged objectively superior if it's able to achieve complexity from a simple basis. Having innumerable words as derivations from a limited root and consistent grammar rules is something Sanskrit can be really proud of. I actually like English because it achieves the same effect.
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You got it all wrong!
I never said that I'm proud of Tamil and Sanskrit for "big number better than small number". No, I also like English much more than these languages mostly because it achieves far better effect with only 120 root words.
If you ask me, I'm proud of Sanskrit for being the mother of all languages, especially Indo-Aryan Group of Languages. This group includes most of European languages and Hindi as well. The spritual tests (the oldest known) Vedas are another reason to be proud of Sanskrit.
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I never said that I'm proud of Tamil and Sanskrit for "big number better than small number"
I never said nor mean to infer you did. I was commenting to, and referring to @south_korea_ln observation from his colleague:
But he says it appeals to the nationalistic nature of people to claim it contains several millions of words
I know well what Sanskrit can boast of, hence my comment on why I consider dumb to fabricate unnecessary and rather childish "merits".
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Okay, so you mean to say that Tamil and Korean have that many unique words? I think they also don't have so many root words.
For Sanskrit having so many similar words of synonyms lies in the fact that it was spoken in numerous dialects. The synonyms gave come from all those dialects.
The reason for not including Sanskrit there on the may also be because Sanskrit isn't spoken anymore. It's very much like Latin!
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I love how you got other stackers to chime in. SN is truly a microcosm of the world!
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