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Indoeuropean linguistics?
Thread poster: Deschant
Maria Rosich Andreu
Maria Rosich Andreu  Identity Verified
Spain
Local time: 20:53
Member (2003)
Dutch to Spanish
+ ...
another good book Jul 6, 2005

I recommend "Arqueología y lenguaje : la cuestión de los orígenes indoeuropeos", by Colin Renfrew. (sorry I do not have the original title, but I guess it shouldn't be hard to find with the name of the author).

 
Quintillian
Quintillian
English to Latin
Articles in Indo-European. Dec 24, 2005

Greetings! I found this site a few hours ago through Wikipædia when I was looking up Proto-Indo-Eurpoean. I am not an academic, but did ten years of Latin and Greek as I grew up, and have kept them up. Primordial language has always fascinated me, but I regret that the pressure of a very active life has prevented me from devoting more time to the subject than I could wish. Further, I prefer to be surrounded by books and interested friends, rather than racing through the labyrinths of academic b... See more
Greetings! I found this site a few hours ago through Wikipædia when I was looking up Proto-Indo-Eurpoean. I am not an academic, but did ten years of Latin and Greek as I grew up, and have kept them up. Primordial language has always fascinated me, but I regret that the pressure of a very active life has prevented me from devoting more time to the subject than I could wish. Further, I prefer to be surrounded by books and interested friends, rather than racing through the labyrinths of academic buildings, but with no prejudices to those than can endure such a life!
I wish to comment on the matter of articles. Any of us few who have actually spoken Latin and Greek at school and with friends - I have my regular correspondents and local classical cronies - will have a completely different view of ancient languages than those who have not had the experience. I hasten to say that there is no snobbery in this; it is simply that the educational systems of most countries have deprived students of a golden opportunity. There are still a few people living who would be delighted to have new friends who speak the old tongues, by the way. The point is, first, that, as was mentioned in the - er - case (pardon the pun) of Russian, not to mention many other languages, such as, for instance, Lithuanian, case is easily imitated by children; Quintillian (which is why I chose that name for this site) talks about the teaching of cases at length in his Instutes of Oratory. My native language is English, but I have never had trouble with either declension or conjugation in any language that I have learnt, probably because I started very young - Greek at five, and Latin at six.
Secondly, the matter of articles. In addition to the modern languages that do not use them, such as the Slavic ones, the Baltic ones, Persian, the Indic ones, - in fact, the majority of modern Indo-European languages! - the context is subsumed into the dialogue. Further, it was mentioned that the article is used in ancient Greek: true, but LATER Greek, and, even then, the Doric dialect used them much more sparingly than the Inoic, which includes the Attic that is normally all that students learn for their first two years. If, however, one consult the glorious language of Homer and Hesiod, a mere few hundred years older than the earliest Attic, one will find no articles at all. The first five verses of the Iliad are worded in such a way that articles tend not to be needed in translation, but the lack of articles explodes upon one's being in the sixth verse, and I remember the experience very well when I was five and cut my teeth on Homer. Other examples. If one read the first few verses of Beowulf in the original Anglo-Saxon, one is stuck by the brutal simplicity of the language by the lack of articles, and this is fifteen hundred years after the latest date assigned to Homer. Dim memory of long-forgotten reading of the earliest Welsh and Irish texts again revealled a lack of articles. In other words, only the later Greek, the later Latin, the later Celtic, and the later Nordic branches, out of all of the panoply of the wide Indo-European mouth ever developed articles, the Greek about 500 B. C., the Latin about 700 A. D., and the Celtic and Nordic about the same time. Where the idea came from, I have no idea, but think that it may have been some influence of the Semitic languages upon the Greek originally, since the Semitic languages have articles. The Greek then influenced the Latin, which probably influenced the Celtic and the Nordic. That is my humble theory, at any rate. And, of course, the introduction of articles into Latin meant the creation of the Romance languages out of Latin.
So, in essence, articles are an extremely late developement in Indo-European, and, in my view, the result of foreign, that is, Semitic, influence upon the Western branch of Indo-European with Greek, which I consider "west central", thrown in by way of being the recipient of the original influence.
I may be old-school, and, if so, I am proud and glad of it, but I decry the modern tendency to deprive children of the opportunity to learn the root languages of their culture WELL, but, as one classicist friend put it, "It is better to start late than never, and it is better to learn something than nothing." Yet the words of Horace resound loudly, "Versate nocte, versate diu", meaning that persistence becoming passion becoming love of the old tongues will pay rich rewards to all that devote themselves to the arduous labour. If nothing else, it will teach us Western Indo-Europeans that we may get on quite well without articles.
An interesting old game is to see how much space is taken up by some passage that is translated into several other languages; the Romance languages always take up the most space, because of their extensive use of articles, German comes next, then Greek, then Welsh, then Irish, and the shorest is inevitably Latin. English falls about midway, after Greek. I bring this up because the Romance, German, and Greek usage of the article is greater, and sounds very odd to an English ear. At the same time, I was told by a student of one of my private Latin classes that Latin "sounds like a tribal language; bare and blunt!" Her native language was, indeed, Portuguese, yet, although her English was perfect, her ear remained Portuguese, used to lots of articles. Well, the Romans invented tribes, after all!
The point is that much more may be said in an - er - disarticulated language in less time, the contextual details being simply left out. As long as the hearer knows the conventions, there is no lack of perspicuity and purpose. How odd that skeletal Latin should give birth to her opposite, the rich Romance tongues, which, by their nature, contain what the less voluble would call unnecessary froth, yet here again there is no lack of perspicuity and purpose as long as the hearer knows the conventions. In learning these conventions, much time is necessary, whereas it is ultimately much easier to learn Latin, because the nuances, after the first almost unscalable wall at the beginning, recede to nothing. In the Romance languages, the mountain keeps rising! And all because of articles!

Flavio Ferri Benedetti wrote:


One thing however - a characteristic of Indo-european languages is the use of indefinite/definite articles


Not necessarily. Latin does not have articles, for instance

Flavio
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Flavio Ferri-Benedetti
Flavio Ferri-Benedetti
Switzerland
Local time: 20:53
Member (2003)
Spanish to Italian
+ ...
Fascinating, Quintillian Dec 24, 2005

Quintillian wrote:

Greetings!



Dear Quintillian,

what a fascinating post Thanks for all the interesting info.

What surprises me is the very early age when you started with Latin and Greek. Would you like to explain us how was it possible? Was it in your family context, or did you go to special schools?

It is very interesting

Flavio


 
Quintillian
Quintillian
English to Latin
Feliz Navidad! The Classics at Any Early Age. Dec 25, 2005

¡Querido Señor!
Many thanks for your kind words.
My mother had been a simultaneous conference translatrix for the U. N. in six languages; how she did it, nobody knows! My father also had six languages. My mother was of Swedish extraction, and so I was born into a Babel of English, Swedish, and French, both of which latter I regret that I am now losing for lack of practice. I happened to be taken to see one of the old Steve Reeves "Hercules" films, and became so enthralled w
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¡Querido Señor!
Many thanks for your kind words.
My mother had been a simultaneous conference translatrix for the U. N. in six languages; how she did it, nobody knows! My father also had six languages. My mother was of Swedish extraction, and so I was born into a Babel of English, Swedish, and French, both of which latter I regret that I am now losing for lack of practice. I happened to be taken to see one of the old Steve Reeves "Hercules" films, and became so enthralled with ancient Greece that, at five, I began to clamour for a Greek tutor. My parents said that such a tutor would be provided IF I did something that I loathed more than anything, namely, appear in a play at church, Dickens's the Magic Wishbone, which, in itself, is not bad, but I abominated the thought of appearing before the public. Well, I capitulated, actually enjoyed the play and ultimately became a stage actor, a profession since rather abandoned because I find the actor's life tedious, and, what is most important, got my Greek tutor, who agreed with me that Homer would be more interesting to a sword-brandishing five-year-old than the dicussions of court intrigues that begins Xenophon's Anabasis.
When I started school, Latin was still mandatory ab initio, and I was in the last form that required Greek before Greek was abolished. Latin was very easy after Greek, and Greek was easy because I had already progressed far in it. I left school at fifteen in order to go on the stage and play Shakespeare, but I have never lost my love of the Classics. Many people thought me odd because, at rehearsals, I passed the time between appearances by reading Max Müller, Bentley, Meillet, Sayce, and others in my hunger to understand the origin and progress of language.
So, to answer the question, I was very lucky to be in circumstances that enabled me to cultivate my love of the Classics, but it was all self-driven in a fertile field of relatively noncompulsory activity. Indeed, I was early known for a pertinacity in such studies, such as my insistence on writing everything in the classical languages, and in giving what I still feel to be the true pronunciation of those tongues, with the quantities distinctly audible. Fellow students found that this made their work easier, because the usual pronunciation of Latin and Greek ignores the quantities, making the putting of the macra on the correct vowels a mnemonic nightmare, and versification impossible. I arrived after the "school pronunciation" had replaced the English system of pronouncing Latin, which is beautiful in its own right (I wish that we had something like La Société des Amis de la Prononciation Françcaise du Latin), and the said "scholl system", which is a monster of political compromise that is supposed to be classical, but is actually a jumble of nonsense enforced before Professor Allen of VCambridge compiled his masterly Vox Latina and Vox Græca, which, as far as I know, are the touchstones of the calassical pronunciations of the Golden Age of Athens and that of Rome respectively. Because of this school system, people pronounce the classical languages in a manner unknown to anybody dead or alive, and, in addition, destroy the proper English pronunciation of words imported from Latin and Greek as long ago as the first millenium. Some examples. Dædalus is pronounced by these pundits in Latin as die-duh-luhs, and in English the same way, when, in good Latin, it ought to be Die-da (distinct a) - lus (u as in put), and, in English, Dee - dah -luhs. Thanks to Thirlwall and other pedants, this idiotic rendering of Greek names as if the transliteration be correct uglifies English and massacres Greek, for Greek did, and ought, to come into English through Latin, which is a closer relation. Because of this pedantry, Heracles - streseed, or, at least, higher in tone, on the last syllable - is real classical Greek, which became Hercules, stressed on the first syllable, in Latin, which came into English fifteen hundred years ago in that form, which is the usual and correct English spelling, pronounced, by usual anglicisation, Her (as in her) - kyoo - leeze. The pundits write the English as Herakles, and pronouonce it Hair - a - cleeze, accented on the first syllable: thus, this very ugly spelling, uncouth to good English, is neither good Greek, Latin, or English, but merely some crank's misbegotten invention. I apologise for the rant, but it is necessary. You fortunate speakers of romance languages have been spared this mangling of classical words! Although you were victimised in the 1850's by the spelling reforms that destroyed the identity of classical words, especially the horror of putting an f for a ph. This horror has crept into English, espeically in the barbarous spelling of sulphur that the cranks have forced on some, namely, as sulfur, which is an abomination, derived from the worst Latin, and against all historical principles. Besides, it is inelegant, for every good Augustan knows that a little Greek flavour improved certain old Latin words, such as sulpur, the original spelling of the ord, vastly improved by the Greek touch of adding the h, which has been standard, as far as I know, from at least the time of Sulla, if not earlier. Yet, to a Cato, or speaker of the real old Latin, sulpur would look and sound better!
A philologist, blessfully relieved of mediocre "spelling reforms", can read the strata of philological history in the very spellings of the words, is like a geologist, who can read the strata of time in the rocks. Any educational bureacrat who dares deprive future generations of that right and privilege is a criminal, and there have been too many deprivers like them in recent times. We have before us a good part of human history in our languages, right before our very eyes every time we read, and in our ears every time we speak or hear, and these "reformers" would deny us that pleasure. Why was it that children educated two hundred years ago knew more and had more skill than university-educated adults nowadays? It is because what is important has been reduced to trivia, and trivia have been uplifted to importance!
Again, I rant, and I apologise.
This is a fascinating site, and I am now going to indulge in some reconnoitring!
Have you ever heard anybody SPEAK Indo-European? At least, read Schleicher aloud with a good pronunciation and some degree of fluency (gained, at least, by memorising Owis and practcing?)?
Otra vez, Feliz Navidad!
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Flavio Ferri-Benedetti
Flavio Ferri-Benedetti
Switzerland
Local time: 20:53
Member (2003)
Spanish to Italian
+ ...
Indoeuropean Dec 25, 2005

Thanks for the fascinating story!

For the pronunciation of Greek, we still use Erasmus' rules, which works fine. For Latin, although we have romance languages, there are very diverse tendencies out there.

In Italian they still prefer to read it "at the Italian manner", that is, the ecclesiastical pronunciation. Spanish schools prefer the scientific, classical pronunciation.

Quintillian wrote:
Have you ever heard anybody SPEAK Indo-European? At least, read Schleicher aloud with a good pronunciation and some degree of fluency (gained, at least, by memorising Owis and practcing?)?
Otra vez, Feliz Navidad!


Not really. As far as I know, the reconstruction of Indo-Europan *texts* is somehow a utopy - let alone its pronunciation! And the more so when we do not know for certain what IE was.

I am happy enough with the roots that have been deducted from IE languages.

Best wishes!
Flavio (an Italian living in Spain)


 
Quintillian
Quintillian
English to Latin
Viva Voce. Dec 29, 2005

Illustrisimo!
There is nothing "wrong" with the Italian, or Ecclesiastical, Pronunciation of Latin, in my opinion; it was fairly well established as early as the 3d. Century A. D. Nor, in my view, is there anything wrong with the various local pronunciations, provided that they come from the local traditions of speaking Latin. Have you ever heard a Latin-speaking Romanian? VERY interesting: Those posted to Dacia tended to feel isolated, and so kept up the very "classical" kind of Latin
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Illustrisimo!
There is nothing "wrong" with the Italian, or Ecclesiastical, Pronunciation of Latin, in my opinion; it was fairly well established as early as the 3d. Century A. D. Nor, in my view, is there anything wrong with the various local pronunciations, provided that they come from the local traditions of speaking Latin. Have you ever heard a Latin-speaking Romanian? VERY interesting: Those posted to Dacia tended to feel isolated, and so kept up the very "classical" kind of Latin, with the result that Romanian-Latin has many interesting survivals of pure Augustan pronunciation.
I object, however, to slovenly half-hearted theoretical innovations that are carried out in a feeble and mediocre manner, which, I regret, is the result of very slovenly habits cultivated in linguistic training since the 1920's. "Scientific" pronunciation, which has spewed out into other walks of life, is what I inveigh against. In other words, if one is going to use Latin as Latin, then use the Augustan pronunciation with fullness. All of these things are minor matters, easily learnt in a few days, and, with but a little practice, vastly improve both the pronunciation, and the usage. I insist on proper quantities: if a macron be found over a vowel, long means L O N G in time. Many languages now spoken rely on quantities, such as Bohemian, Hungarian, ITALIAN (usually with the stress, and herein even English), &c., and several possess that phænomenon, like Latin, in which an unstressed syllable carries a long quantity, or a stressed syllable carries a short. Hungarian, Finnish, Japanese, &c.
I inveigh against bad "scientific" or "pseudoclassical" pronunciation being carried over into another language, presumably for the display of ignorance or ill-breeding, an example of which I cited in my earlier posting. I am all in favour of naturalised Latin if naturalised naturally!
As far as Greek be concerned, the "Erasmian" pronunciation has some virtue in that Erasmus made the first coherent attempt to revive classic Greek pronunciation, developed party by his connexions with the exiled learned of Constantinople, who were, of course, of a Hellenistic cast, pronunciationwise. I am sure that there were as many was of pronouncing Greek in Antiquity as there were and are dialects of Greek, and so, since the great ante-Alexndrian redactions took place at Athens, including that of Homer, it is to the Golden Age of Athenian literary efflorescence that we ought to look if we wish to speak hoity-toity classical Greek. Within a hundred years of the passing of Alexander, elegant Greek collapsed into the levelling of the Hellensitic pronunciation that has continued almost unaltered since that day, with several objectors who arose even to the 7th. century A. D., when the accents were developed to mark the "old-time" pronunciation for the benefit of the æsthetic, at least.
It is to be noted that many consider ancient (not merely Classical) Greek to have been much more influenced by pitch than stress, those, in the school of Sturtevant (early 20th. century) saying that Greek was much more like Sanscrit, Japanese, or French. I think that this is only half of the truth, for stress does not have to be emphatic to exist, nor does musical pitch mean the absence of stress. An example of emphatic stress and great variety of pitch with semantic import nearly would be Norwegian, or even Erse, Swedish being a much - pardon the pun - toned-down version of stress and pitch in coöperation. The school of Sturtevant thus does not recognise the natural stress that subsists even in very musical tongues, nor, as far as I have read in his books and those of his followers, the fact that phrases and words may change stress and pitch depending on a variety of circumstances, such as size of phrase, accidental form, and emphasis. And, indeed, evidence of stress in emphasis is so great in Greek as to offer no other coherent explanation of the change in form from, say, So (long) - cra )stress) - tes (long) in the nominative to So (long) (stress) - cra (short) - tes (short) in the vocative.
My opinion, then, is that the accents do mark the pitch, which is still audible in Modern Greek, in the diphthong omicron + ypsilon, for example, which is a definite circumflex, which non-Greeks tend to render as "oo" without change in tone. English has many diphthongal glides in pitch which are reminiscent of what I think ancient and classical Greek possessed, which glides are by no means absent in modern Greek.
So, in my view, let one either use the Hellenistic pronunciation, or spend a month (it does take practice) to learn the Attic pronunciation, which is very beautiful. I am consulting on a project at the moment that has to do with the spread of this pronunciation.
Once again, I inveigh against those who would barbarise their native tongues by mangling Greek in mock-=transliteration upon importation. To replace hydrocephalus in English with hydrokephalos, which people have even worse trouble pronouncing because it looks so foreign to an English eye, hydrocephalus being much more assimilable, is pedantry at its worse. The proper way to bring Greek into any Western Indo-Eurpoean language is through Latin (or a Celtic tongue), which makes it digestible to the Nordic palate. People constantly thank me for firmness on this point, especially those who have little Litin and less Greek.
No, with regard to Indo-European, proto or otherwise. First, I say that it is far better to have some kind of verbal pronunciation than nothing at all. Ægyptologists long ago realised this, and, because they had no idea how to put vowels into some words, decided upon a convention of adding "e", as in "met", after every consonant, even though this was manifestly wrong by comparison with survivals in Coptic, so that they might at least be able to read the words. And everybody does read the words, even "silently", and so having some kind of vocalisation was better than none, if nothing more than to aid the memory. The idea of "reading" a language only is very ;imiting even to the developement of one's fluency in it. To HEAR Virgil recited well is "like reading Shakespeare by flashing of lightning".
So, for Indo-European, it is uncouth enough to follow the phonetic writing, let alone know how to pronounce it, I think. I have played with imitating the pronunciation from the explanation of it, and must say that the language has a charm about it. Now, has anybody ever tried to reduce Indo-European to the International Phonetic Alphabet? One of the few "international" things that actually makes sense and works!
And a few more technical points. Did sandhi, at its most extreme in Sanscrit, but certainly a strong feature in Latin, Greek, and, indeed, every other Indo-European langauge, exist in Indo-European?
Secondly, has any intelligible work been done on Indo-European and her children to investigate the CAUSES of the changes in sounds? Newton's Third Law of Physics seems, I think, to apply equally well to philology, namely, that an object at rest will stay at rest unless influenced by another object, or stay in motion unless disrupted by another object? In other words, I have often heard it expressed, and believe the truth in it, that a language will remain static unless some external influence change it. This phænomenon is widely perceptible to-day in the wholesale ruination of languages across the globe by misplaced globalism, whereby nobody really learns his own language in the rush to accomodate to the plethora of ill-understood external influences, with the result that all languages are losing their clarity, character, and meaning by amalgamation into one ugly stew of truncated, lifeless pieces of other languages, reminding one of the beginning artists who mixed up all of the colours on the palette and produced a deathlike grey with a mottling of the moribund hues of expiring colours.
Of the old tongues, the Celtic seem to have been the most influenced, especially by the developement of initial mutations that became grammatical in their influence. I have read, I think in Owen's masterful Germanic Peoples, that this may have arisen by their being what seems to be the most travelled of the original Indo-Europeans, and that the changes came about by their sojourn in the vicinity of the tribes of Central Asia, Sarmatian seeming to be the direct influence, whatever Sarmatian was. Interesting that King Arthur is now supposed to have been Sarmatian, brought to Britain by the Romans after their defeat of the Sarmatians.
By this hypothesis, the first alterations of Indo-European pronunciation and dialects were the result of external influence, and that external influence continued its developement to the very present.
Buon Anno!
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drkpp
drkpp
Local time: 01:23
English to Sanskrit
+ ...
Indo european & sanskrit Feb 21, 2006

I am a great fan of sanskrit language. I do a some translation work in sanskrit too.
I am interested in knowing to what extent sanskrit has contributed to the development & branching of indo european tree of languages?


 
Nordicgirl
Nordicgirl
Local time: 20:53
English to Finnish
+ ...
Native 'amateur' on Finnish cases Jul 25, 2006

Maria Rosich Andreu wrote:

I would be very interested to know about Finnish, which I think has even more cases than Latin or Russian. Are all of them still used?


Dear people of this forum,

I am by no means a 'pro' on linguistic matters, but I think I can answer the question about Finnish language/usage of cases since I am a native Finnish speaker.

It appears Finnish language has 15 cases! Yes, you read correctly -- 15 cases, which all are in ACTIVE usage (well at least with my use of words they are).

These are (translated from Finnish to English without expertese so forgive me if I make a mistake):

nominative, genetive, accusative, partitive, essive, translative, inessive, elative, illative, adessive, ablative, allative, abessive, comitative, and instructive.

We do not, as explained here earlier, have any articles nor pronouns (at, to, in, on, etc -- just in case I made another translating mistake) so the usage of the cases is more or less compulsory.

If somebody's interested, hereunder a brief explanation how to use these cases with the word 'kirja' (book) as an example word. Please note that every case has both singular and plural form (that's why there are two in every case). And here we go then:

nominative: kirja, kirjat
genetive: kirjan, kirjojen
accusative: kirja/kirjan, kirjat
partitive: kirjaa, kirjoja
essive: kirjana, kirjoina
translative: kirjaksi, kirjoiksi
inessive: kirjassa, kirjoissa
elative: kirjasta, kirjoista
illative: kirjaan, kirjoihin
adessive: kirjalla, kirjoilla
ablative: kirjalta, kirjoilta
allative: kirjalle, kirjoille
abessive: kirjatta, kirjoitta
comitative: kirjoineen, kirjoineen (same in s and pl)
instructive: kirjoin

Hmmm...now that I look at that list, I do wonder how I was ever able to learn that all by heart...In addition, I do feel sorry for any foreigner who has to learn Finnish!

I hope this answered your question.


 
Ben Gaia
Ben Gaia  Identity Verified
New Zealand
Local time: 08:53
French to English
+ ...
Welsh Aug 3, 2006

Eva Moreda wrote:



Owis Ekwôskwe
Gwrrêi owis, kwesyo wl@nâ ne êst, ekwôns espeket, oinom ghe gwrrum woghom weghontm, oinomkwe megam bhorom, oinomkwe ghmmenm ôku bherontm.
Owis nu ekwomos ewewkwet: "Kêr aghnutoi moi ekwôns agontm nerm widntei".

Ekwôs tu ewewkwont: "Kludhi, owei, kêr ghe aghnutoi nsmei widntmos: neer, potis, owiôm r wl@nâm sebhi gwhermom westrom kwrnneuti. Neghi owiôm wl@nâ esti".

Tod kekluwôs (Wedi clywed in welsh=heard)

owis agrom ebhuget.



[The] Sheep and [the] Horses
On [a] hill, [a] sheep that had no wool saw horses, one [of them] pulling [a] heavy wagon, one carrying [a] big load, and one carrying [a] man quickly.
[The] sheep said to [the] horses: "[My] heart pains me, seeing [a] man driving horses".

[The] horses said: "Listen, sheep, our hearts pain us when we see [this]: [a] man, [the] master, makes [the] wool of [the] sheep into [a] warm garment for himself. And [the] sheep has no wool".

Having heard this, [the] sheep fled into [the] plain.


[Edited at 2005-01-11 23:23]


Sounds like Welsh to me when spoken aloud. Aren't Welsh, Urdu and Gaelic very close to ancient Indo European?

[Edited at 2006-08-03 18:46]


 
András Kiss
András Kiss  Identity Verified
Hungary
Local time: 20:53
English to Hungarian
+ ...
Dnghu.org Mar 4, 2008

Revival of Proto-Indo-European to be used as a lingua franca for the EU: www.dnghu.org

 
Bruno Parga
Bruno Parga  Identity Verified
United States
Local time: 15:53
English to Portuguese
+ ...
Sanskrit and the I.E. family Sep 28, 2008

drkpp wrote:

I am a great fan of sanskrit language. I do a some translation work in sanskrit too.
I am interested in knowing to what extent sanskrit has contributed to the development & branching of indo european tree of languages?


A long time has passed and drkpp hasn't received an answer... so here it is.

Basically, it's almost the other way round: Sanskrit and the languages derived from it are part of the Indo-European family. At some point, millenia ago, there were the early Indo-European-speaking tribes. It is not know for certain where did they last live before splitting into different groups, but the research seems to point to Ukraine and southern Russia. From this homeland, groups would emigrate and their language would thus differentiate from the other groups'. Through complex processes of migration and contact with non-IE-speaking peoples, some IE branches would form such as Italic and Hellenic (in Europe) and Indo-Iranian (south and east of the Caucasus). Indo-Iranian further subdivided into an Iranian branch, which includes the languages of modern Iran and Tajikistan, and an Indo-Aryan branch. Sanskrit, first recorded in the Vedas, is the classical Indo-Aryan language; most of the languages of India are Indo-Aryan, with Sanskrit influence. Examples would be Hindi, Marathi, Punjabi, Gujarati, Oriya, Bangla, Urdu. Some Indian languages which are not Indo-Aryan (not Indo-European, actually) are Kannada, Malayalam, Telugu and Tamil.

Even though Sanskrit, as explained, is not at the "root" of Indo-European, being itself a branch, the fact that it has a wealth of oral and written recorded texts means it is one of the bases upon which the very existence of the Indo-European family was discovered. As was mentioned earlier in this thread, the first generations of Indo-European scholars would compare basically Latin, Greek and Sanskrit, since these are the oldest recorded languages in the family.


 
Gewitter
Gewitter
United States
Local time: 15:53
Hmmm. Jun 27, 2009

This may be unrelated, but i'm and indo-european skeptic, since all the languages have been so close and always spreading their words into each other, i find it so unlikely that there is a common ancestor to Germanic, Celtic, Italic and Slavic and so on. I've seen the so called 'roots' of the words in each family, and their so called 'shifts' into different sounds. Words like "gwhre" somehow translates to "breathe" in English. Grammatical, conflictions are also a great backup for my arguement. ... See more
This may be unrelated, but i'm and indo-european skeptic, since all the languages have been so close and always spreading their words into each other, i find it so unlikely that there is a common ancestor to Germanic, Celtic, Italic and Slavic and so on. I've seen the so called 'roots' of the words in each family, and their so called 'shifts' into different sounds. Words like "gwhre" somehow translates to "breathe" in English. Grammatical, conflictions are also a great backup for my arguement. Cultural backgrounds of each language family are also a big backup for my disagreement. Most of the language families hated or at least, always fought with groups of the other language families. How could the language families just forget their common past. Another example is English having taken in som many Latin words. How come we can't understand German and Latin as easily as our own language now. If Italic and Germanic are related, how come English had so many compatibility issues with its inflection and declension system when the French raped it with Latin. I know someone will argue this, and i don't care, but just think hard on what i think. When i first learned of IE, i looked at examples of it, thought hard, and cam to this conclusion. Argue if you want. I won't listen anyway. Have a great day.Collapse


 
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Indoeuropean linguistics?






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