languages common origin

8/11/2019 Languages Common Origin

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The first systematic theory of the relationships between human languages began whenSirWilliam Jones, "Oriental Jones," proposed in 1786 that Greek and Latin, the classical languagesof Europe, and Sanskrit, the classical language of India, had all descended from a commonsource. The similarities between the languages had already been noted in 1768 byGastonCurdoux , who informed the French Academy. The evidence for this came from (1) the

structure of the languages -- Sanskrit grammar has detailed similarities to Greek (and, as wouldlater be seen, Avestan), many similarities to Latin, and none to the Middle Eastern languages,like Hebrew, Arabic, or Turkish, interposed between Europe and India[note] -- and (2) thevocabulary of the languages. Thus, "father" in English compares to "Vater" in German, "pater"in Latin, "patr" in Greek, "pitr." in Sanskrit, "pedar" in Persian, etc. On the other hand, "father"in Arabic is "ab," which hardly seems like any of the others. This became the theory of "Indo-European" languages, and today the hypothetical language that would be the common source foall Indo-European languages is called "Proto-Indo-European." The following table shows agenealogy for two "knowing" roots, which in modern English turn up as "know" and "wit."

Words that are related to each other by descent from a common source are called "cognates."

English "wise" and Sanskrit "veda" are thus cognates. Note that descent can become confusedwhen words are subsequently borrowed. English has borrowed "idea" and "agnostic" fromGreek, "video," "visa," and "cognition" from Latin, "vista" from Spanish, etc.

Another striking example of cognates are all the following words for "is" -- modern French andPersian pronunciation is given in parentheses. By a series of simple steps, we see the relationshi between "is" in English and"ast" in Persian.

Traditionally, all Indo-European languages were

divided into "centum" and"satem" languages, afterthe Latin and Avestan words for "100," respectively. This is an "isogloss" (like an "isotherm" or"isobar" in meteorology) that distinguishes languages where, in certain environments, an Indo-Europeank has remained ak and where it has turned into ans or ch (andg to j, etc.), that is,velars are palatalized into sibilants or affricatives (e.g. Latinrex/regis, "king," Sanskritraja ).Most importantly, the Indo-Iranian (Sanskrit, Persian, etc.) and Slavic languages are "satem"languages. However, this particular isogloss is now no longer taken to reflect a fundamentaldivision indescent . In the chart above, Russian, the principal Slavic language, will be seen to bemore closely related to German and to Latin than to Sanskrit; and Greek, a "centum" language, more closely related to Sanskrit (perhaps) than to the others. What has happened is that morefeatures have been taken into account and the overall greater similarities between Greek andSanskrit outweigh a lesser point that Sanskrit seems to share with Slavic languages. On the othehand, the whole picture of branching descent, while perhaps appropriate for organic evolution,may not be as appropriate for languages, which can borrow features from evenunrelated languages in geographical proximity. The Slavic and Indo-Iranian languages, because of theirgeographical proximity (in Southern Russia), thus may well have shared a certain sound changeeven while retaining closer affinities to other groups.

English German French Latin Greek Sanskrit Persian

is ist est

()est esti asti ast

()
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The following chart demonstrates a way other than descent to look at the relationships of theselanguages. I originally saw a diagram like this when I took an Indo-European linguistics classwith Raimo Anttila at UCLA in 1970. I recently found a similar diagram inThe Oxford Introduction to Proto-Indo-European and the Proto-Indo-European World by J.P. Mallory andD.Q. Adams [2006, p.73]. Unfortunately, Mallory and Adams actually do not discuss the

individual isoglosses. The present diagram is thus basedon one by Thomas Pyles andJohn Algeo [1993], though Ihave added the tenth glossfor the reason given below.

What we see here looks verymuch like adialect map oflanguages that occur neareach other and so exchange

influences with adjacentlanguages. The theory thatgoes with it is called the"wave model," thatinnovations spread out acrossthe field like waves in a

pond. The line marked#1 inred surrounds the Satem languages. The line marked#2 inblue surrounds Greek and the Italic languages (like Latin), where we have voiceless sounds for IndoEuropean voiced aspirates, i.e.ph in Greek andf in Latin for Indo-Europeanbh (Germanic languages haveb). The line marked#3 inlight green surrounds the Italic and Celtic languages,which have passive forms of the verb in-r, e.g. Latinlaudor, "I am praised" (activelaud). Theline marked#4 inlight purple surrounds the "North-West" group of languages, which sharesome common vocabulary that does not occur elsewhere among Indo-European languages. Theline marked#5 indark green surrounds the south-eastern languages that have a prefixed vowelin the past tense or aorist, e.g. Greeklipon, "I left" (presentlep). The line marked#6 ingray surrounds northern languages where (according to Pyles and Algeo) "medial schwa [an indefinivowel] was lost." The line marked#7 inorange surrounds the western languages that share somecommon vocabulary not found elsewhere. The line marked#8 inlight blue surrounds northernlanguages that have a dative plural in-m, e.g. Gothicdagam, "to/for days" (nominative singulardags, dative singulardaga -- Modern German now has-n in the dative plural,den Tagen, but-m in the [masculine/neuter] singular,dem Tag), or Russiandnyam, "to/for days" (nominativesingulardyen [with the final "soft" sign], dative singulardnyu). The line marked#9 indarkpurple surrounds the Indo-Iranian languages, i.e. the Indic and Iranian, where (according toPyles and Algeo) "schwa becamei" -- though there are many features that unite the Indo-Iraniangroup, including vocabulary items, e.g. the godMitra in Sanskrit andMi ra in Iranian(Avestan, Persian). Finally, the line marked#10 inyellow surrounds Greek and Armenian, whereMallory and Adams say, "[T]here were close contact relations between Greek and Armenian"[p.79].
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In a dialect map, we are usually looking at variations across a language that geographically stayin place. With the diagram for the Indo-European languages, we may be looking at fossil evidence of when the languageswere dialects of a language in a particular geographical area, probably Eastern Europe, stretching down into the Balkans and out into the Ukraine. From theUkraine, the Indo-Iranian group took off across the Steppe (following Tocharian). Once

separated, the language groups can experience changes that will not be reflected in any otherrelated languages, for instance that the Indic group acquires the retroflex consonants that figurein the unrelated Dravidian languages but not elsewhere in Indo-European, or that New Persian (like Urdu) borrows a large vocabulary from Arabic, a consequence of Iranians converting toIslam. The absence of Tocharian and the Anatolian languages (Hittite, Luvian, etc.) from thediagram is significant. Tocharian, from people who advanced across the Steppe all the way toChina and ultimately show up in India as the Kushans, could be expected to orginate from theeast side of the language community and thus most likely be a Satem language. But it wasn't. Itthus may well be that Tocharian speakers left the dialect area before palatalization occurred inthe Satem languages. Hittite, the earliest attested Indo-European language, and its relatedAnatolian languages, seem to have left the dialect area even before Tocharian. Hittite retains

very archaic features of Indo-European, like laryngeals (or pharyngeals, though exactly whatthese were is still unclear -- they would be like sounds that still exist in Arabic, and are to befound the earliest in Ancient Egyptian), but then it is missing many features that may havedevelopedlater in the dialect area.

Greek, Sanskrit, and Closely Related Languages

Tense and Aspect in Greek

The Spread of Indo-European and Turkish Peoples off the Steppe The Germanic Languages

The Slavic Languages

Philosophy of Science, Linguistics

Philosophy of Science

Philosophy of History

History of Philosophy, Indian Philosophy

History of Philosophy

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Copyright (c) 1998, 2000, 2008 Kelley L. Ross, Ph.D. All Rights Reserved
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Greek, Sanskrit,and Closely Related Languages

The Sanskrit language whatever be its antiquity, is of a wonderful structure; more perfect than the Greek, more copious than the Latin, and more exquisitely refined theeither, yet bearing to both of them a stronger affinity, both in the roots of verbs and inthe forms of grammar, than could possibly have been produced by accident; so strongindeed, that no philosopher could examine them all three, without believing them tohave sprung from some common source, which, perhaps, no longer exists.

Sir William Jones (1746-1794), speaking to the Asiatick Society in Calcutta, February 2, 1786.

The following chart zeroes in on the relationship between Greek and Sanskrit, with the closelyrelated Iranian and other Indo-European steppe languages, and the modern descendants of themall. Greek can be seen to radiate into a number of dialects, later to be consolidated into thekoin or "common" dialect of the Hellenistic period. The nameYuzhi, "Moon Tribe," was given bythe Chinese to an Indo-European group who came off the eastern end of the steppe. Latter, under pressure of Turkish or Mongol peoples -- especially a defeat by the Hsiung-nu in 170 BC -- they

fell back into the Tarim Basin (the "Lesser"Yuzhi, ) and Transoxania (the

"Greater"Yuzhi, ). The latter eventually descended into India, as the Kushans (1stcentury AD). The texts that survive in the Tarim Basin, in languages usually called "Tocharian,"attest this obscure branch of Indo-European[note]. The Iranian group of languages also includesthat of a people, the Saka, who had previously (1st century BC) also ended up in India, providingthe benchmark historical era for India (79 AD). Otherwise we see several modern descendants ofIranian languages, from Modern Persian and Kurdish all the way to the unique survivor of the North Eastern group, Ossetian, in the Caucasus (though this is now North West of the others).Iazyges were settled in Britain by Marcus Aurelius, and Alans spread across Gaul and Spain aftercrossing the Rhine in 407 AD. Although students of both Greek and Latin may be impressedwith their similarities, Latin does not have a dual number, a middle voice, or an aorist tense,which both Greek and Sanskrit share. These features, and others, draw Greek away from Latin,to be more closely associated with the Indo-Iranian languages. In general, this is the mostconservative branch of the Indo-European languages. My Indo-European linguistics professor aUCLA said once that you can get a sort of "instant Proto-Indo-European" by combining Greekvowels and Sanskrit consonants.
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East of the Caspian Sea, the Indo-Iranian group of languages came down into the Middle Eastand India. The furthest penetration west into the Middle East was by the Mitanni, who providethe earliest texts using Vedic gods and other Indo-European words. The Mitanni, however, donot last all that long, and it is Persian and Avestan (the language of the Zoroastrian book, the Avesta) that produce most of the Indo-Iranian inscriptions and literature. A difference in pronunciation of the name of the Vedic god Mitra is indicated in the chart, between India, theMitanni, and Persian. Meanwhile, the rya had descended into India, c.1500 BC, the first Indo-European group to do so (before the Sakas & Kushans). As discussed elsewhere, the rya plunged India into its Dark Ages, until around 800 BC, when an alphabet was borrowed from thMiddle East.
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The map shows the present distribution of the Indo-Iranian languages, from Kurdistan to Sri Lanka.Ossetic (Ossetian) is all the remains of the formerIranian presence on the Steppe, being derived fromScythian and Alan, which used to dominate the

European Steppe in and around the Ukraine. TheSakas, who were on the Asiatic Steppe, are long gone,though their invasion of India is remembered there. The Dravidian languages, which are not Indo-European, are shown because their outliers bespeaktheir former presence in the North, as well as the

South, of India, while features of Dravidian languages (like the retroflex sounds) influenced theIndic languages, starting with Sanskrit itself.

The wordrya, which later simply meant "noble" in Sanskrit, was of course used in Europeantheories of the "master race," the "Aryans" -- as we even see in the writings of Friedrich

Nietzsche. This had one curious consequence.Airya was the form of the same word in Avestan,and Irn is its modern Persian descendant. When Shh Rez Pahlavi heard that the "Aryans"were supposed to be the master race, he thought, "Hey! That's us!" The official name of hiscountry was then changed from Persia to Irn. This ended up being an unfortunate move for himIn World War II, he was more than a little sympathetic for the "Aryans" of Nazi Germany, andthe result was that he got overthrown and Irn was occupied by British and Russian forces.

In the Indian Dark Ages, a sacred oral literature developed, the Vedas. The language of theVedas can then be called theVedic language, and Indian history from c.1500 down to c.400 BCcan be called theVedic Period. Even though the Vedas could be written down after 800 BC, theyhave always been taught and remembered orally, and have always been thought of as essentiallysound -- in contrast to Jewish beliefs about theTrah and Moslem beliefs about theQur'n, thatthey were essentiallywritten. The Vedas are still taught orally.

Once the Vedas came to be written, a disturbing thing was soon noticed. The spoken languagewas diverging from the written language. Language, indeed, changes all the time, but this maynot be noticed in an oral tradition. When it was noticed, the reaction was horror, for the beliefwas that the Vedas had to be remembered with absolute accuracy for them to be rituallyeffective. The result was an effort to describe and fix the language of the Vedas so that it wouldnever change again. The process culminated about 400 BC with the grammar ofPn.ini.

The language that resulted was tidied up a bit and not precisely identical to the survivinglanguage of the Vedas. It was calledSam.skr.ta, Sanskrit, which means "prepared," "cultivated,""polished," "correct." The language based on Pn.ini can be called "Classical Sanskrit," and thaof the Vedas "Vedic Sanskrit." Classical Sanskrit remained the language of religion, philosophyand high literature in India for centuries, and survives today as the indispensible language ofreligion and serious scholarship.

Meanwhile, the spoken language had not only changed but split up into dialects that eventuallygrew into separate languages. These new spoken languages are called "Prakrits," fromPrkr.ta ,
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"natural," "ordinary," "common," "vulgar." The first examples of written Prakrit words are inSanskrit texts where someone is speaking, e.g. from a Once Born caste, who is not allowed tospeak Sanskrit. Eventually, however, some Prakrits developed their own literature. When thecanon of essential Buddhist texts was set down in Sri Lanka, the Prakrit Pli was used -- hencethe "Pli Canon." That has suggested to some that the Buddha himself spoke Pli, but this does

not seem to have been the case. The Buddha probably spoke Mgadh.From the Prakrits, most of the modern languages of India are derived. The exceptions are thelanguages of the Dravidian group, largely spoken in the south. Some examples of Dravidianlanguages, and discussion of the relationship of Hindi to Urdu, can be found elsewhere.

The oldest alphabet used in India was theBrhm script. Later, other alphabets developed, likeKharos.t.hi; but Sanskrit is written in an alphabet especially

designed by the grammarians for

it: Devangar . This is also used with some modernlanguages, like Hindi, and is the source for many more,

including the alphabets for Burmese, Thai, and Cambodian. Actually,Devangar is not a true alphabet but a syllabary. It writes syllables, and it does so on the basis oa couple of odd conventions. For one thing, even though Sanskrit has many consonant clusters,every syllable is written ending with a vowel. This means that all the consonants, even ones fro preceding words, are piled on to the beginning of the following syllable.

The word Sanskrit itself has three syllables. Most Devangar letters have ahorizontal line on top and a vertical line at the right. The plain form for each letterautomatically is read with the vowela. In the word at right, therefore, readingfrom left to right, we first have the letters, which is readsa. Over it is a dot,transcribed as an "m" with an underdot, which stands for the nasal sound found asthe "n" in the French wordon. This is very common in Sanskrit. The second syllable in the wordis skr., where ther is given an underdot to show that it is avowel . Both "r" and "l" can be vowelsin Sanskrit -- though no longer in Hindi (r. is prouncedri). The basic form of the syllable is theletterk . Attached to the front of it is the letters, which we've already seen, without its verticalstroke, and under it is attached a hook that indicates the vowelr. . For the final syllable we writet, which is given the vowela. A short finala, it should be noted, is not pronounced inHindi: thus, Sanskrit words likeyoga and names likeArjuna can now actually be found pronouncedyog andArjun.

Another Sanskrit word to consider might be that for the supreme Being of theUpanishads: Brahman. Here there are two syllables and a final consonant. Ininflection, the finaln is ordinarily going to be lost or written with the followingsyllable; but we can add a diacritic to show that it is without a vowel. In the firstsyllable,bra, there is a little complication.R , even when it is a consonant andnot a vowel, is written more like a vowel, with a diacritic. The basic form ofb isa loop with a line through it. Ther is indicated with a diagonal stroke attached tothe bottom of the loop. The vowela is then understood. Anr that precedes, rather than follows,another consonant, is written with a hook at the top of the letter. The second syllable,hma, posesanother problem.H is one of the letters that does not have a vertical line at the right, as it is
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shown written independently belowBrahman. Combiningh withm requires running themtogether, as shown. The form of this combination is conventional and cannot always be predicted. It must simply be learned. The full form ofm can be seen in the next example, below.Finally, the absence of a vowel on the finaln is indicated with the diagonal stroke at the bottomof the vertical line.

Next, we can examine a whole sentence. This is the famoustat tvam asi,"Thou are that," one of the four Great Sentences of the Upanishads. Thisconsists of three words, but four syllables, where the final consonant in the firsttwo words is attached to the first syllable of the following word.Ta is familiar.The second syllable,ttva, involves a conventional combination. When twot'sare stacked on each other, one straightens out into a horizonal line. This can beseen in thetta combination given below the sentence.Va itself is just a loop,likeb without the line through it (the similarity is no accident;v andb were both recognized as"labials," i.e. letters that use the lips). The third syllable isma, where we simply write the formfor m, with the understood vowel. Finally, the form fors is familar, but this time we must

indicate that it has the voweli rather than the vowela. This is done by adding another verticalline to the left of the letter and connecting it to the letter with the loop at the top.

Finally, we might consider the sacred syllableOm, as found in the Mn.d.kyaUpanis.ad . Here, at left, we have the independent form of the lettera with a diacritic(vertical line and stroke) indicating that it has the vowelo (originallyau). M followswith the diacritic indicating no vowel. A more compact form of the word, however,can be written. If them is considered to be the nasalizedm., it cansimply be written with a dot over theo. Them is a realm, buteverybody knows that anyway, so the more compact form can be

written for convenience.

Since the syllableOm is written down frequently, for good luck and as a blessing, it is not surprising that abbreviated forms have developed. In the one at right preservesrecognizable parts of the fully written (though already reduced) form.

Some more examples of Devangar writing can be seen in the essay on karma.

In many Sanskrit words, like the name of the Mn.d.kyaUpanis.ad , it will be noticed that the letterst, d, n, ands mayhave underdots (written on the line here, i.e.t., etc.). These are aseparate order of letters from ordinaryt, d, n, ands. The ordinaryt, etc. are what in linguistics are called "dentals," because thetongue touches the teeth (#1 in the diagram). The underdott.,etc., are called "retroflexes," because the tongue curls up towardsthe roof of the mouth (#3 in the diagram). This makes for verydistinctive sounds, which Sanskrit and the descendants of theVedic language share with Dravidian languages, but not with anyother Indo-European languages. Curiously,t, d, andn in Englisharenot true dentals. The tongue touches the gums above the
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teeth, the alveolus, rather than the teeth (#2 in the diagram). This makes them "alveolars" ratherthan dentals. In India, this sounded to people more like the retroflexes than like the dentals.English words borrowed into Hindi, like "doctor," are thus pronounced with the retroflexes --d.oct.or. At the same time, Hindi has lost separaten. ands. sounds.N. occurs as a dentaln, ands. occurs as an ordinary palatalsh (often written for Sanskrit as an "s" with an acute accent on it).

The name of Krishna in Sanskrit isKr.s.n.a, but this then is just pronounced in Hindi as, of allthings,Krishna.

At right is the entire Devangarsyllabary. In an alphabetinvented by grammarians, it isnot surprising to see it laid outaccording to phonetic principles.Thus, the alphabetical order begins with the vowels, then

runs through the diphthongs, thestops, the semi-vowels, thesibilants, and finallyh. Thevowels, when syllabic, haveindependent forms; when not,they are, as we have seen,indicated with diacritics.

The stops, which means soundswhere the vocal tract closes, pose some pronunciationchallenges.K is pronounced asin Englishskit, andkh as inEnglishkit. This is thedifference between anunaspirated and anaspirated stop -- one has nobreath coming out, the other does. Similarly,t is pronounced as in Englishstop, andth as in Englishtop. The "th" sounds in English "thin" or "that" do not occur inSanskrit.P is pronounced as in Englishspot, andph as in Englishpot. "Ph" is never pronouncedf . Sanskritc is like thech in English, but isunaspirated , making it unfamiliar. Thevoiced stops(g, j, d, d., & b), where vocal chords vibrate, all also have their corresponding aspirates. Insounds likegh, jh, etc., however, the breath coming out is alsovoiced . Consequently, the voiced"aspirates" are also calledmurmur stops, since the sound is more like murmuring than breathing.These are sounds rarely seen in other world languages.

Several of these phonetic characteristics of Sanskrit can also be found in the(unrelated) Mandarin Chinese. Notice that "swastika" is a word from Sanskrit(svastika). In the Nazi version, the top bar points to the right. In India, or inBuddhism, the top bartends to point to the left, but traditionally this is not alwaysthe case and both right and left handed swastikas can be found. It was not just a
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coincidence that the Nazis liked this symbol. They saw themselves as the heirs of therya.

"Knowing" Words in Indo-European Languages, Note

A conspicuous feature of Indo-European grammar is the original extensive inflection of nounsand verbs. In the table are the cases that occur in the inflection of nouns in a selection of Indo-European languages.

The vocative (Voc) occurs when someone is being addressed -- which is whyShakespeare has Caesar say Brute ratherthan Brutus when addressing Brutus. Thenominative (Nom) is the subject of asentence. The genitive (Gen) can mean

possession, "of" or "from." The accusative(Acc) is the direct object of a sentence ormotion towards. The dative (Dat) is theindirect object or means "to" or "for." Theablative (Abl) means "from" or motion awayfrom. The instrumental (Ins) is the agent forthe passive voice or the means. And thelocative (Loc) means "at" or the location ofsomething.

All these languages actively inflect nouns

and adjectives for case, gender, and number,except English, where there is only a remantof the system, mainly in the pronouns. Thus,he/his/him, she/her/her, and it/its/it, give usthe most complete inflection that Englishstill possesses. Sanskrit, on the other hand,retained nearly the full Proto-Indo-European

system, including inflection for the dual number (like Greek) as well as the singularand plural.

English German Greek Latin Russian Sanskrit

Voc Voc Voc Voc

Nom Nom Nom Nom Nom Nom

Gen Gen Gen Gen Gen Gen

Acc Acc Acc Acc Acc Acc

Dat Dat Dat Dat Dat

Abl Abl

Ins Ins

Loc Loc

Sumerian

Absolutive

Ergative

Genitive


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Except for the vocative, German still has the same cases as Greek, but there is agreat deal of ambiguity in the case endings, whose identity must often bedetermined from context. See the discussion of Nietzsche's language. As prepositions come to be used more extensively, they can have different meaningswhen used with different cases, or they can be fixed to take a particular case, which

happens a lot in German. In English, all prepositions simply take the accusative,though in usage people are often confused and use the nominative "I" with prepositions after a conjunction (e.g. "between you and I").

It is always important to keep in mind, not only what something is, but what it isn't.Indo-European languages, with cases like nominative and accusative, arenot "ergative" languages, like Basque, languages in the Caucasus, or Sumerian (which beats out Sanskrit withten cases for its nouns, as seen at right). In an ergativelanguage, the subject of anintransitive verb and theobject of atransitive verb takethe same case, the "absolutive." The subject of a transitive verb then takes theergative case. While this all seems strange, the division is natural enough. Only the

subject of the transitive verb is actuallydoing something (Greekrgon is "work") tosomething else. The difference between nominative-accusative languages andergative-absolutive serves to mark fundamental differences in language families.

Return to Text

Greek, Sanskrit, and Closely Related Languages, Note

The word "Tocharian" is often said to be used"as the result of a mistaken identification"[Winfred P. Lehmann, Historical Linguistics,Third Edition, Routledge, 1992, 1997, p.81].The word was taken from Greek historianswho were talking about a people, theTokharoi, of the Fergana Valley (in theheadwaters of the Jaxartes [Syr Darya] River, between the Pamirs and the Tian Shanmountains) who converted to Buddhism andmigrated to India. This does sound like theKushans, but may have nothing to do eitherwith them or the LesserYuzhi of the TarimBasin.

Now, however, it turns out that among theTocharian manuscripts is one written inUighur, which is close to Turkish and represents thenext wave of nomadic migrants into central Asia (c.600 AD). The Uighur text says that it was

Locative

Dative

Comitative

Ablative

Terminative

Directive

Equative
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translated from a language calledtwghry -- the lack of vowels is an aritfact of Uighur using thealphabet from Syriac, which, like Arabic and Hebrew, typically doesn't write vowels.Twghry looks close enough toTokharoi to now properly motivate the identification. So it must not have been mistaken after all.

Return to Text Suggestions of similarities between Indian and European languages began to be made byEuropean visitors to India in the 16th century. In 1583 Fr. Thomas Stephens, SJ, an EnglishJesuit missionary in Goa, noted similarities between Indian languages, specifically Konkani, andGreek and Latin. These observations were included in a letter to his brother which was not published until the twentieth century.[3]

The first account to mention Sanskrit came from Filippo Sassetti (born in Florence, Italy in1540), a Florentine merchant who traveled to the Indian subcontinent and was among the firstEuropeans to study the ancient Indian language Sanskrit. Writing in 1585, he noted some word

similarities between Sanskrit and Italian (these included deva/dio "God", sarpa/serpe"serpent", sapta/sette "seven", aa/otto "eight", nava/nove "nine").[3] However, neither Stephens'nor Sassetti's observations led to further scholarly inquiry.[3]

In 1647 Dutch linguist and scholar Marcus Zuerius van Boxhorn noted the similarity amongIndo-European languages, and supposed that they derived from a primitive common languagewhich he called"Scythian". He included in his hypothesis Dutch, Greek , Latin, Persian, andGerman, later adding Slavic, Celtic and Baltic languages. However, van Boxhorn's suggestionsdid not become widely known and did not stimulate further research.

Gaston Coeurdoux and others had made observations of the same type. Coeurdoux made a

thorough comparison of Sanskrit, Latin and Greek conjugations in the late 1760s to suggest arelationship between them, about 20 years before William Jones.

The hypothesis reappeared in 1786 when Sir William Jones first lectured on the strikingsimilarities between three of the oldest languages known in his time: Latin, Greek , and Sanskrit, to which he tentatively added Gothic, Celtic, and Old Persian. It was Thomas Young who firstused the term Indo-European in 1813,[4] which became the standard scientific term (except inGermany[5]) through the work of Franz Bopp, whose systematic comparison of these and otherold languages supported the theory. Bopp'sComparative Grammar , appearing between 1833 and1852, counts as the starting point of Indo-European studies as an academic discipline.

The Sanskrit Connection: Keeping Up With the Joneses The discovery of Indo-European first started with a British judge named William Jones who wastationed in India in 1780. Jones, a bright fellow with classical training in Greek and Latin, haddetermined to master the ancient Sanskrit tongue. He wanted to brush up on native Indian lawcodes--many of which were written in Sanskrit script--before administering British law in theregion.
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c_languagehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanskrithttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_languagehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latinhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Jones_(philologist)http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Gaston_Coeurdoux&action=edit&redlink=1http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baltic_languageshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celtic_languageshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavic_languageshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_languagehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persian_languagehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latin_languagehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_languagehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_languagehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scythianhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcus_Zuerius_van_Boxhornhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_peoplehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indo-European_languages#cite_note-auroux-2http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indo-European_languages#cite_note-auroux-2http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanskrithttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filippo_Sassettihttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indo-European_languages#cite_note-auroux-2http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Konkani_languagehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goahttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesuithttp://www.friesian.com/cognates.htm#text-2http://www.friesian.com/trees.htm#semitic


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Jones was shocked to discover a regular pattern of similarities between ancient Sanskrit wordsand ancient words in classical Western languages. Here are some examples:

Meaning: Sanskrit Latin:

"three" trayas tres

"seven" sapta septem

"eight" ashta octo

"nine" nava novem

"snake" sarpa serpens

"king" raja regem

"god" devas divus ("divine")

Other Sanskrit words were similar to Greek terms. For instance, the Greek wordtrias ("three") isclose totrayas andtres in the chart above. The Greek word pente ("five") is close to Sanskrit panca ("five"), and so on. Jones began systematically charting the similarities, finding literallythousands of such parallels between Sanskrit, Greek, and Latin. He presented his findings onFebruary 2nd, 1786, to the "Asiatick Society in Calcutta." He declared boldly that Sanskrit had

. . . a stronger affinity than could possibly have been produced by accident; so strong, indeed, that nophilologer could examine them all three without believing them to have sprung from some commonsource, which perhaps no longer exists.

What Jones had uncovered, without realizing it initially, was the existence of a lost mothertongue, what scholars call proto-Indo-European--a single, ancient, prehistoric language that ledto the development of many languages in Europe, India, Russia, and the Middle East. It requirenearly ninety years of comparative linguistics to fill in all the gaps.

Before Jones, earlier scholars had long ago noted that many languages shared such similarities. was no news, for instance, that Romance languages shared cognates with each other. Spanishcaballo (horse) was a cognate for Portuguesecabalo (horse), Italiancaballo (horse), Provenalcaval (horse), Frenchcheval (horse), and Englishcavalry (horse-riding troops). Scholars hadlong known that all these words ultimately came from the vulgar Latin termcaballus (horse), andthat French and Spanish and other Romance languages had developed from Roman provincialspeech--with some voiced/v/'s changing to unvoiced/b/'s, or some hard velar stops (/k/ sounds)changing to aspirated's. Likewise, Germanic languages like Low and High German,Frisian, Dutch, Swedish, and Norse shared many cognates with each other in much the sameway, tracing their origins back to a proto-Germanic tongue in prehistoric times.
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What astonished linguists was that Sanskrit had cognates to more than just Latin and Greekwords. Philologists found that Dutch, German, Old Norse, Gothic, Old Slavic, and Old Irish hadsimilar patterns of words with Sanskrit. These cognates had a related meaning and they alsosounded similar to each other either in terms of vowels or consonants (or both!). For instance,consider the words for "father" and "brother" in a variety of Indo-European languages:

"father" "brother"

o pitar (Sanskrit)o pater (Latin)o pater (Greek)o padre (Spanish)o pere (French)o father (English)o fadar (Gothic)o fair (Old Norse)o

vader (German)o athir (Old Irish--with loss of original

consonant)

o bhratar (Sanskrit)o frater (Latin)o phrater (Greek)o frere (French)o brother (Modern English)o brothor (Saxon)o bruder (German)o broeder (Dutch)o

bratu (Old Slavic)o brathair (Old Irish)

It's hard to escape the conclusion that these words must have come from a common source--especially if you chart the words out on a map of where each language is spoken. In the case ofthe words for father , a linguist can almost visually see the unvoiced/t/ sounds changing tovoiced/d/ sounds as people migrated westward across the map, and then these letters changing t as they moved north through Europe along the Germanic branch. In the case of the wordsforbrother , the same sort of linguistic change is occurring with unvoiced/t/ and voiced/d/

sounds, but another pattern is happening simultaneously with voiced/b/ and unvoiced/p/ sounds.Multiply the examples above for a few thousand other words, and the evidence looks fairly air-tight.

All that remained for scholars to do was(1) to trace what rules governed these changeslinguistically--a task taken up by Jakob Grimm and later Karl Verner, and(2) to reconstruct asfar as possible what this original language must have sounded like and how it functioned. This itricky, given that proto-Indo-European is a prehistoric language existing before the written word but not impossible given the wealth of linguistic information we can garner from survivinglanguages today

ANTI-SEMITIC LITERATURE: Literature that vilifies Jews or encourages racist attitudestoward them. Much of the religious literature produced in medieval and Renaissance Europeunfortunately engaged in anti-Semitism to one degree or another. This is due to a series ofsociological causes too lengthy to discuss here. Typical allegations accused Jews of killing andcannibalizing Christians, secretly poisoning wells, spreading plague and leprosy among non-
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Jewish neighbors, kidnapping Christian children, defiling communion wafers, and engaging invarious economic crimes.

The irony is that, although Jews were blamed for various outbreaks of plague and thecontamination of water supplies, in many such communities there were no Jews present at all.

They had often been kicked out of the country long before the "crimes" took place. In 1182Philip II banished the Jews from France, causing many Jews to flee to England, where manyother Jews had sought shelter in the eleventh century. Anti-Semitic violence intensified after thecrusades, culminating in the church's Fourth Lateran Council of 1215, which passed lawsrequiring Jews to wear distinctive clothing and forbidding them from holding political office inChrstian-controlled lands. Local bishoprics and principalities embraced these new laws, andoften added their own twists, such as requiring Jews to pay additional taxes, or requiring themost senior Jewish Rabbi to submit to various ritual humiliations before the community atEaster. (In one French city, for instance, the most prestigious Rabbi had to appear on thedoorsteps of the bishop's cathedral on Easter afternoon to receive a ritual blow and communalrejection.) Other secular authorities followed the ecclesiastical example by making it illegal for

Jews to own land or to labor in an occupation that would compete with local Christians.Ironically, this policy forced Jews to train themselves in highly skilled professions such as law,medicine, accounting, gem-cutting, and whatnot. These lucrative professions only furtheraroused the envy and ire of less-skilled, less educated, and less wealthy citizens of the Europeankingdoms. In 1275, Edward I began to default on the loans he owed Jewish moneylenders, and 1287, he imprisoned some 3,000 Jewish subjects, whom he ransomed to their families for cash.In spite of the Jewish payment in good faith, he issued an edict in 1290 banishing all Jews fromEngland and confiscating all their properties. After Jews were allowed to return to France,French King Philip IV expelled them again in 1306, forcing them to flee to Germany. Mass burnings and executions of Jews took place in Germany in 1349 after an outbreak of plague, anso on--right up to the Holocaust of World War II, in which the genocide was horrifying not forits novelty, but rather for its continuation of a centuries-long tradition with the added efficiencyof modern technologies like gas chambers and incinerators.

Such occurrences affect the literature of a culture as well.The Legends of the Holy Rood , forinstance, recounts an Anglo-Latin story of how Jewish blasphemers drown in Christ's blood afteentering a Christian church. In the tale, the doors slam shutting locking the Jews inside. Thecross begin bleeding profusely until the liquid filled the entire structure. The Anglo-Saxon poem Elena (St. Helen) describe the way the pious mother of Constantine tortures reluctant Jews inorder to locate the remains of the true cross, which the Jews had sneakily hidden away from herin order to conceal the truth of Christ's resurrection. In Middle English, we see that Chaucer's"Prioress' Tale" likewise depicts Jews as manipulative evildoers who murder a saintly youngchoirboy. In the Renaissance, Shakespeare'sThe Merchant of Venice presents a Jewish lawyer,Shylock, as the villain scheming to extract a pound of flesh from his poor Christian victim, andso on,ad nauseum.

Occasionally, it is ambiguous whether readers should accept the anti-Semitism readily. Forinstance, the Prioress' earlier depiction in Chaucer's General Prologue suggests she has misplacesecular priorities, so Chaucer might not intend for her to be a very authoritative or holy figurewhen she tells her tale. Likewise, Shakespeare does a marvelous job of transforming Shylock


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into an indignant and injured human being rather than a moustache-twirling, two-dimensionalstereotype in Shylock's "If they prick us. . . ." speech and in his soliloquies discussing the wayChristians have subtly mocked him, cheated him, and insulted his family. However, such literarmoments are rare in which an author questions the common anti-Semitism of the era. Thus, whewe do find material that suggests a more tolerant attitude, we must approach it with a skeptical

eye to make sure we are not misreading historical intent.European scholarship in Sanskrit, begun by Heinrich Roth (1620 1668) and Johann ErnstHanxleden (1681 1731), is regarded as responsible for the discovery of the Indo-European language family by Sir William Jones. This scholarship played an important role in thedevelopment of Western linguistics.[citation needed ]

Sir William Jones, speaking to the Asiatic Society in Calcutta (now Kolkata) on February 2,1786, said:

The Sanskrit language, whatever be its antiquity, is of a wonderful structure; more perfect than the Greek , more copious than the Latin, and more exquisitely refined than either, yet bearing to both of them astronger affinity, both in the roots of verbs and in the forms of grammar, than could possibly have been produced by accident; so strong, indeed, that no philologer could examine them all three, without believing them to have sprung from some common source, which, perhaps, no longer exists.

Suggestions of similarities between Indian and European languages began to be made byEuropean visitors to India in the 16th century. In 1583 Fr. Thomas Stephens, SJ, an EnglishJesuit missionary in Goa, noted similarities between Indian languages, specifically Konkani, andGreek and Latin. These observations were included in a letter to his brother which was not published until the twentieth century.[3]

The first account to mention Sanskrit came from Filippo Sassetti (born in Florence, Italy in1540), a Florentine merchant who traveled to the Indian subcontinent and was among the firstEuropeans to study the ancient Indian language Sanskrit. Writing in 1585, he noted some wordsimilarities between Sanskrit and Italian (these included deva/dio "God", sarpa/serpe"serpent", sapta/sette "seven", aa/otto "eight", nava/nove "nine").[3] However, neither Stephens'nor Sassetti's observations led to further scholarly inquiry.[3]

In 1647 Dutch linguist and scholar Marcus Zuerius van Boxhorn noted the similarity amongIndo-European languages, and supposed that they derived from a primitive common languagewhich he called"Scythian". He included in his hypothesis Dutch, Greek , Latin, Persian, andGerman, later adding Slavic, Celtic and Baltic languages. However, van Boxhorn's suggestionsdid not become widely known and did not stimulate further research.
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17/17

Gaston Coeurdoux and others had made observations of the same type. Coeurdoux made athorough comparison of Sanskrit, Latin and Greek conjugations in the late 1760s to suggest arelationship between them, about 20 years before William Jones.

The hypothesis reappeared in 1786 when Sir William Jones first lectured on the striking

similarities between three of the oldest languages known in his time: Latin, Greek , and Sanskrit, to which he tentatively added Gothic, Celtic, and Old Persian. It was Thomas Young who firstused the term Indo-European in 1813,[4] which became the standard scientific term (except inGermany[5]) through the work of Franz Bopp, whose systematic comparison of these and otherold languages supported the theory. Bopp'sComparative Grammar , appearing between 1833 and1852, counts as the starting point of Indo-European studies as an academic discipline.
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