Unknown language #21
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This morning I received the following link without any accompanying explanation: link is embedded here. As soon as I started to read through the text, it seemed as though it were Hindi-Urdu, or some other northern Indic language, but it was so jumbled with English and jargon that I couldn't really make full sense of all that it was saying. Moreover, it was written in romanization, not Devanagri or Perso-Arabic. I had studied a summer of Hindi-Urdu about 60 years ago, but that was in the two native scripts, and I had become quite proficient in Nepali from having lived in the eastern Himalayas from 1965-67. Nepali was also written in Devanagari and was full of Indic cognates, but also had plenty of Persian and Arabic borrowings.
Not being able to read the entire romanized text, I asked my friend, Sunny Jhutti, who is from the nearby state of Punjab, where Punjabi is spoken and where Hindi, the national language, is widely familiar to most Punjabi speakers.
Sunny somehow figured out a way to get Google Translate to read the romanized text and, relying on that, came up with this relatively smooth English version:
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I still don't know what phrases like "apna future banana" ("their own future banana") mean.
Selected readings
- "Learn Nepali" (9/21/16) — if you search for || my name Language Log Nepali ||, you'll find many more posts about Nepali
- "Unknown Language #7" (2/27/13) — 173 comments; Nepali is mentioned repeatedly
- "Devangari" (10/26/20) — not a mistake
rct said,
December 20, 2025 @ 9:34 pm
A quick Google translate tells me that "apna future banana" means "creating your future," and a Duck Duck Go search shows a couple spellings of "banaana" instead of "banana." I also found "बनाना" as a spelling in devanāgarī. From there, I found https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E0%A4%AC%E0%A4%A8%E0%A4%BE%E0%A4%A8%E0%A4%BE, which points to "bannā" ("to become").
Jonathan Smith said,
December 20, 2025 @ 9:40 pm
Internet says Hindi banānā means 'make, build'. So re: "apna future banana chahte hain" cf. e.g. ChatGPT —
वह अपना भविष्य बनाना चाहता है।
vah apnā bhaviṣya banānā cāhtā hai
"He wants to build his future."
Also cf. ChatGPT Nepali:
ऊ आफ्नो भविष्य बनाउन चाहन्छ।
ū āphno bhaviṣya banāuna cāhancha
"He wants to build his future."
Neil said,
December 21, 2025 @ 12:48 am
I think this is very standard Hinglish. It all seems very comprehensible. And agree with all of the above re banaana. I presume your point is that if romanised Hindi is becoming a thing, a faithful and consistent orthography would be beneficial. I.e why banana? Why even banaana? Surely banaanaa.
Victor Mair said,
December 21, 2025 @ 5:36 am
I probably should have known "banana" from Nepali banā'unu बनाउनु ("build"), but the presence of English "future" as the object of the transitive verb threw me off.
Thanks for mentioning "Hinglish". Though you refer to it as "standard" in the first sentence, you contradict yourself by what you say in the following sentences. Maybe "typical".
Philip Taylor said,
December 21, 2025 @ 6:54 am
ChatGPT's rendering thereof :
Philip Taylor said,
December 21, 2025 @ 7:10 am
I might add that despite having being extremely sceptical of AI not so long ago, I now routinely use ChatGPT [*] to carry out such varied tasks as : translating English into "good idiomatic Vietnamese", "good idiomatic German", etc; designing and typesetting visually attractive food/drink menus; creating illustrations depicting activities (such as coffee cultivation) in a specified location (Vietnamese central highlands) and at a specific period (late 1800's); etc. It can be frustrating (I gave up trying to get it to produce an elliptical 6-node bamboo picture frame, having to settle for a 4-node version and then creating a 6-node version therefrom using Adobe Photoshop) but overall I am now rather impressed, although I still shuffer when I learn that someone has asked ChatGPT a question concerning British contract law and is happy to rely on its answer without further research / "due diligence" …
Six examples of ChatGPT's "illustrations depicting activities …" in a bamboo frame at https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/0tlls1bb7pnvvpm5hsk0a/Vietnamese-coffee-chronology-in-bamboo-frame-on-rice-paper-ground-no-bleed.pdf-A4.png?rlkey=rrd4790ywtpkz1w861x2thq50&dl=0
——–
[*] Statutory disclaimer : other AI systems are available.
AntC said,
December 21, 2025 @ 3:32 pm
I still shuffer …
A cunning portmanteau of 'shudder' with 'suffer'? Or a mere typo: 'f' is next to 'd' in QWERTY.
Philip Taylor said,
December 21, 2025 @ 4:34 pm
The latter, Ant, but I really didn't want to bore people with ∀ "f" IN "shuffer" DO s/f/d OD
DDeden said,
December 21, 2025 @ 9:34 pm
I requested Grok to picture a 'primitive dome hut', it provided lots of conical huts of various colors and styles all based on a tipi form, not a single dome.
Neil said,
December 22, 2025 @ 2:35 am
@Victor Mair
I don’t see what I wrote as a contradiction. I do think that when said orally / heard aurally, it is standard Hinglish for an English-educated urban Indian. But the orthography is anything but standardized, since, as you’ll know, there is no pinyin-esque generally agreed romanisation.
Victor Mair said,
December 22, 2025 @ 6:56 am
When said orally / heard aurally, it is typical Hinglish for an English-educated urban Indian, but not standard. You're right that "the orthography is anything but standardized." Would that it were.