Dan Goodman wrote:
> Doug Freyburger wrote:
>
>> "Indian" is a language for the same reason "Chinese" is a language -
>> There are "dialects". There is no expecation that two people speaking
>> it will be able to udnerstand each other. Oh wait. That's how the
>> difference between languages is defined. ;^)
>
> Not exactly. Chinese is considered by the government of China to be
> one language. The government of India does not treat the various
> Sanskrit-derives languages of India the same way.

Chinese is mandated by their government to be called a language even
though it is not. They work at it by brutally suppressing the use of
any of the other languages than Mandarin. Tiosin may not even exist any
more except among US speakers who left China long ago.

That's very different treatment than how the government of India teaches
Hindi in schools but otherwise does not suppress their other
languages, dialects or whatever term gets used.