THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Santhosh Kumar R, an assistant professor at Mahatma Gandhi College here, has developed a new parallel number system in Hindi to overcome difficulties with comprehending the traditional Hindi number system, especially for those not having Hindi as their mother-tongue.
“The conventional numbering system in Hindi is distinctly different from one to 100. But in most other languages, there is a uniform pattern for numbering system that makes it easy to comprehend,” said Santhosh Kumar.
This forced the professor to develop a parallel number system and prepare a paper discussing the chances of including a parallel system in Hindi. In his paper, Santhosh recorded his alternatives for numbering from one to 1,000 with only 21 conventional numbers.
“Though the system is very easy for the experienced users of the language, it is very difficult for beginners and foreigners. For overcoming these difficulties, my proposed numbering system will be very useful,” he said.
M S Muralidharan, secretary of the Kodungaloor-based Hindi Prachar Kendra, welcomed the parallel system. “If you do not learn the language in an early age, it sometimes gets difficult to understand Hindi, especially when it comes to numbers. It is a good thing that youngsters like Santhosh Kumar are working on the language to make it simpler for the masses,” Muralidharan said. The paper was published in the May 2014 edition of the ‘International Journal of Language and Linguistics’ of the Science Publishing Group, USA. Santhosh Kumar plans to present his paper in the next Indian Science Congress seeking approval from the scientific community.
