Strange GAKT for यहूदी

[TheFifty9Sound]

I just registered यहूदी, which I've translated to "Hebrew" or "Jewish" using various translation tools.

However, the GAKT for this term is 14800, which seems pretty high for a Hindi term. The Google Translation of "Facebook" into Hindi only brings up 14800 searches and "Google" 9900.

When I view the term in Google trends, it has याहू, Yahoo and याहू मेल, Yahoo mail as related searches. So I was wondering if anyone who knows the language a little better than I can shed some light on this mystery? Does यहूदी somehow happen to be a typo or something of याहू?

Thanks in advance!

[squirrel]

Go here

http://translate.google.com/#auto/en...A4%A6%E0%A5%80

and press the speaker button

[TheFifty9Sound]

So.. basically Hindi speakers are just wandering about thinking that they're using a Jewish search engine?

Mazel tov.

[squirrel]

No lol

यहूदी sounds like 'Yahooti'. It's most probably a typo of Yahoo.

In India, people use virtual keyboards (i.e. http://gate2home.com/Hindi-Keyboard ) to type in their native language, but some people also use 'phonetic' input methods, whereby ascii text is transformed into, say, Hindi according to the phonetics of what is being typed. Try one here : http://www.google.com/inputtools/cloud/try/ . You see widgets like that in comment sections of blog posts etc. Because Indian languages typically suffer from lack of proper hardware,(i.e. no physical Hindi keyboard) a lot of people prefer that type of input method. I'm pretty sure for instance that the most popular input method for Bengali is a phonetic IM.

Now if you go to Google India and use the Hindi interface, you'll see that Google Instant implements that automatically (If you type in english, Google Instant will try to match the phonetics of what you are typing to a Hindi keyword). If you start to type the 'Yahu' you'll see the word for Jew is the first suggested keyword.

[TheFifty9Sound]

Ahh.. Gotcha. Thanks for the explanation!

[blastfromthepast]

Why don't Indians install proper input systems on their comptuers, or have them by default on installs, rather than relying on 'web based' input systems built into websites?

[domainguru]

Originally Posted by blastfromthepast

Why don't Indians install proper input systems on their comptuers, or have them by default on installs, rather than relying on 'web based' input systems built into websites?

That's a great question but I think it would need a local to give a decent answer. My crap uninformed answer would be:
a) Historically, and yes I mean historically, computers in India were used by people that could type English
b) Diversity in languages in India meant virtual keyboards were a necessity
c) (Wild guess) Some languages used in India might not be suitable for physical keyboards

But yes, great question. Do modern Indian PC's come equipped with dual Hindi / English keyboards, and if not, why not?

What about Indian Macs? Thai Macs have dual Thai / English keyboards, I wonder if Indian Macs do .... I'll research

[domainguru]

umm interesting:

Chrome apparently natively supports *no* Indic languages (apart from Gurmukhī):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:Mu...support_(Indic)

As for the Mac, it supports Devanagari through two methods:

1) what they call the "Devanagari-QWERTY keyboard", which is not a physical keyboard but a phonetic input method, and
2) A native virtual keyboard, which quite interestingly has 4 layouts: normal, shift, option, and option-shift.

http://deimos3.apple.com/WebObjects/...2618536082.pdf

The virtual keyboard having 4 layouts suggests a reason why physical Devanagari keyboards might not be used, because the language is just a bit too complex for a standard ASCII keyboard. You don't really want 4 characters on a single key, on top of the English ..... that would be up to 6 chars per key, which is too many. Having 4 on my Thai/English keyboard is quite enough !!

But I think we need a Devanagari language expert to let us know whether physical Devanagari keyboards are in use, and also what % of people choose the phonetic QWERTY input method vs the actual Devanagari character input method, and their reasons for choosing one over the other.

[blastfromthepast]

That's what I'm getting at. Indians don't seem to have the software input systems installed on their computers, and rely on websites to do the work for them, which is an odd situation.

I'm not sure why this came about. But basically it means that Indian users are unable to propperly enter text in their own language in most situations. Thinking of the URL bar especially.

[Jay]

Well that would explain the crap traffic for Hindi names.

[TheFifty9Sound]

What kind of traffic do the top Hindi names get, does anyone know?