Sanskrit echoes around the world

Christian Science Monitor ^ | July 5, 2007 | Vijaysree Venkatraman

[Lorianne]

The rise of India's economy has brought an eagerness to learn the ancient 'language of the gods' – and a great-great aunt to English. ___ Deep inside the Massachusetts Institute of Technology on a Wednesday evening recently, a class of about a dozen students were speaking an arcane ancient tongue.

"It is time for exams, and I play every day," says one.

"Perhaps, you should study, too," counters another at the conversation table. The others laugh.

No, this isn't Latin 101 – that would be easy. This is Sanskrit, a classical language that is the Indian equivalent of ancient Greek or Latin.

Today, spoken Sanskrit is enjoying a revival – both in India and among Indian expatriates in the United States. There is even evidence of Sanskrit emerging in American popular culture as more and more people roll out yoga mats at the local gym and greet one another with "Namaste."

[Darkwolf377]

a class of about a dozen students

English = Ashheap-of-History-bound! ;)

[Maceman]

I don’t think so.

[grey_whiskers]

Like, *PING*, you lovable troll, you.

[CarrotAndStick]

Hmm, saw it. You’ve a couple more. Try again.

[SunkenCiv]

thanks to Cronos and Carrot-and-Stick for these cool graphics:

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[SunkenCiv]

To all -- please ping me to other topics which are appropriate for the GGG list. Thanks.

Please FREEPMAIL me if you want on or off the
"Gods, Graves, Glyphs" PING list or GGG weekly digest
-- Archaeology/Anthropology/Ancient Cultures/Artifacts/Antiquities, etc.
Gods, Graves, Glyphs (alpha order)

[SunkenCiv]

Translate Samoan, Sanskrit, Scottish, Slovak, Star Trek or Swahili.
http://searchenginez.com/translates.html

[SunkenCiv]

http://www.ethnologue.com/family_index.asp

http://www.lib.umt.edu/guide/lang/skrith.htm#Sanskrit

http://guindo.cnice.mecd.es/~jmag0042/alphaeng.html

http://www.ancientscripts.com/ws_atoz.html

[null and void]

A surprisingly large number of English words have Sanskrit roots...

[null and void]

ping

[CarrotAndStick]

Not really surprising. Both languages are related, and this has been known since the 1800s, if not before.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indo-European_languages

[CarrotAndStick]

Introduction: What is (Proto-)Indo-European?

Nineteenth century comparisons of older languages such as Greek, Latin, Sanskrit, and Gothic showed that similarities among word forms with similar meanings were so systematic and so arbitrary as to rule out chance or borrowing as an explanation. Such systematic similarities, it was argued, could only have resulted if the speakers of these languages once formed a community that then broke up as groups of its speakers migrated to different places. Because these languages ranged geographically from Europe to India, their prehistoric ancestor was called (Proto-)Indo-European, German (Ur-)Indogermanisch.
The Indo-European Languages are divided into branches, which are traditional groupings of the languages for which texts are attested: IE (Sample) Texts.

Indo-European & Non-Indo-European Languages

At the same time that scholars were discovering genetic relations among Indo-European languages such as Welsh, Irish, German, Hindi, and Bengali, or Finno-Ugric languages such as Finnish, Hungarian, and Estonian and Kartvelian languages such as Georgian, or Altaic languages such as Turkish, some also noticed typological similarities among the linguistic structures of genetically unrelated languages such as Japanese and Turkish. Studies of geographical culture areas such as the Ancient Near East further show that culturally-linked regions share non-genetic similarities. The page, IE Linguistics, leads to linguistic traits of Indo-European languages such as their sounds, word formation, grammar, and lexicon.

Hypotheses about the nature of prehistoric (Proto-)Indo-European are based on comparisons of attested language data. Reconstructed proto-words or roots of words PIE Roots are related to Carl D. Buck's semantic categories in the Semantic Fields section, all making up parts of the IE Lexicon. Semantic categories represented by words in the attested languages are likely to reflect IE Culture and the culture of areas where Proto-IE was once spoken.

Early landmark findings concerning the regularity of correspondences are excerpted here under Lehmann's Reader, while the Journal of Indo-European Studies, among other journals, contains ongoing studies of Indo-European language and culture. The Scholars' Publications begins to list authors and publication titles relating to subparts of Indo-European together with authors' email addresses, while the Early IE Languages Online project is creating lessons to make texts in the older IE languages more accessible, while the Publications Index begins to index publications about Indo-European by topic, in particular those dealing with language typology.

Updated: 11 Jan. 2007 AJC; 22 Jan. 2007 CFJ

http://www.utexas.edu/cola/centers/lrc/iedocctr/ie.html

[CarrotAndStick]

In fact, certain Greek words whose meanings were lost in antiquity were re-determined, using the significant similarity it had with Sanskrit, in terms of vocabulary.

Like how most English/French/German etc language dictionaries have a Greek/Latin root explanations, most Greek dictionaries on the other hand have Sanskrit as a secondary language to explain their etymology.

[Lorianne]

Thanks!

[null and void]

In fact, certain Greek words whose meanings were lost in antiquity were re-determined, using the significant similarity it had with Sanskrit, in terms of vocabulary.

That part I didn't know!

[SunkenCiv]

You’re most welcome.

Aryan likin’ the topic so far? [rimshot!]

[Gengis Khan]

I have heard that to. There is a lot of Sanskrit research going on in Greece. Even the current President is a Sanskrit scholar. I have heard some of Homer’s passages were reconstructed from Sanskrit since not only because the languages have similar root but also because of Alexander’s invasion, coins and scriptures written at the time had inscriptions both in Sanskrit and Greek.

[null and void]

Perhaps we own more than we know to the world’s largest democracy?

[Gengis Khan]

According to that language tree it seems the Germanic branch is very different from the “Aryan” branch. This proves that the Germanic (Nordic) were a race different from the Aryans who are basically Indo-Iranians.