[nukkad] For those interested in spoken langs..others ignore :)

[Asha Anand <>]

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Hi Gang,

Some stuff I found about languages... WARNING -
Lenghty one!

http://hinduwebsite.com/general/sanskrit.htm - origin
and evolution of Sanskrit language.

http://voi.org/books/ait/ch32.htm - ORIGIN OF THE
LINGUISTIC ARGUMENT

http://www.darrylsplace.com/thai/alph/thai_alphabet.html
- Origin Of The Thai Alphabet (Something very similar
to Sanskrit)

http://indoeuro.bizland.com/archive/article3.html -
interesting!

http://language99.tripod.com/ - English Words You
Speak from Sanskrit 

http://www.bartleby.com/186/9.html - How Languages
Influence Each Other 

I got the below from some site I forgot :(. Sorry,
this posting is really a HUGE one!My apology!

1. How Languages Change Europeans once believed that
Hebrew was the first language, and that Greek and
Latin were descended from Hebrew. After all, Hebrew
was the language of the Old Testament, the language in
which the creation of the world was described.
Scholars labored mightily to find connections between
Hebrew and Greek and Latin, but their labors bore
little fruit. One scholar suggested that since Hebrew
was written from right to left, and Greek from left to
right, Greek words could perhaps be traced back to
Hebrew by being read from right to left. But that
suggestion, too, proved unavailing. 

In the late 1600’s, the philosopher Leibniz became the
first to argue that Hebrew wasn’t the first language.
Leibniz urged missionaries and travelers to make notes
on the languages they encountered; Leibniz inspired
the scientific study of language. Travelers in North
America noticed that American Indians spoke many
different languages, and that these languages changed
rapidly. Linguistic variety is caused by political
fragmentation; rapid linguistic change occurs when a
language is spoken by a small community, and when it
isn’t stabilized by a written literature. 

The Chinese language has been remarkably stable, since
China had a high degree of political unity and a long
literary tradition. Since Chinese has changed little,
it still has the characteristics of a primitive
language. Like all primitive languages, Chinese is
composed of nothing but monosyllables; it requires no
effort to find the root of a Chinese word, because
every word is a root. Like all primitive languages,
Chinese has no grammar. The plural form of a Chinese
word is formed by adding a word that expresses
plurality; the past tense of a Chinese word is formed
by adding a word that expresses past time. In short,
Chinese words don’t change to express a certain
grammatical form; rather, they’re combined with other
words that express number, tense, etc. 

Unlike Chinese words, Greek and Latin words have many
different forms, depending on their grammatical
function. The Romans began studying grammar in order
to facilitate the study of Greek. Soon grammar became
a passion among educated Romans. Caesar wrote a book
on grammar during his Gallic campaign; in fact, Caesar
invented the grammatical term “ablative.” 

It would be wrong to suppose that grammar is a sign of
growth, and that Greek and Latin are more advanced
than Chinese since they have a more elaborate grammar.
Actually, grammar is a sign of decay. All grammatical
forms were once independent words, words that
gradually decayed into mere endings. Take the English
past tense, for example. In English, the past tense is
usually formed by adding ed to a verb. This ending was
once an independent word, it was once the word did;
instead of saying “I loved,” English-speakers once
said “I love did.” 

The French adverb is another example of a grammatical
form that was once two independent words. The French
adverb is formed by adding ment to an adjective. This
ending, this ment, was originally a separate word,
mens or mente, meaning mind. For example, fortement
(strongly) was originally forti mente (with a strong
mind, or strongly). 

The process by which independent words coalesce into
grammatical forms is sometimes called “phonetic
corruption.” Phonetic corruption allows native
speakers to speak with less effort, but often makes it
harder for foreigners to learn a language. For
example, “I loved” is easier to say than “I love did,”
but a foreigner may find “I love did” more distinct.
When Africans were brought to the U.S. as slaves, they
often expressed the present tense with “do” and the
past tense with “done”; for example, instead of saying
“I love” and “I loved,” they would say, “I do love”
and “I done love.” 

2. Sanskrit Just as Europeans were puzzled by the lack
of connections between Hebrew and Greek and Latin, so
too they were puzzled by the numerous connections
between Sanskrit and Greek and Latin. In the late
1700’s, a Scotch writer, Lord Monboddo, noted that
“the words in the Sanskrit for the numbers, from one
to ten, are, ek, dwee, tree, chatoor, panch, shat,
sapt, augt, nava, das, which certainly have an
affinity to the Greek or Latin names for those
numbers.”(1) Sanskrit was an ancient literary language
in India, just as Latin was an ancient literary
language in the West. Sanskrit is as closely related
to Greek and Latin as French is to Italian and
Spanish. Some Europeans couldn’t believe that a
dark-skinned colonial people in faraway India could
have an ancient literary tradition, and a literary
language as close to Greek and Latin as Sanskrit was;
one scholar argued that Sanskrit, and Sanskrit
literature, were a forgery, a modern attempt to
imitate European languages and European literature. 

In the early 1800’s, the German writer Frederick
Schlegel became the first to argue that Sanskrit,
Greek and Latin were part of the same language family,
a family that also included German and Celtic
languages; this language family has become known as
the Indo-European family. The Indo-European language
family originated among Aryan peoples, probably in
Central Asia, and was spread to India, Iran and Europe
by Aryan migrations. (The word “Iran” means Aryan.) 

3. Dialects Every language is originally a collection
of dialects. Each village has its own dialect, and the
further apart villages are, the more their dialects
differ. Once a dialect is written down, it becomes the
standard form of a language, and may supplant other
dialects. Latin, for example, was once merely one of
the dialects spoken in Italy, but after it was written
down, it became a standard language. Germany was home
to many different dialects, but after Luther
translated the Bible into a dialect known as
High-German, High-German became the standard form of
German. 

If a written language becomes ossified, and fails to
change and grow, it may become a “dead language”;
instead of supplanting the dialects around it, it may
be supplanted by those dialects. Thus, Latin was
eventually supplanted by its dialects, the Romance
Languages. This process may be termed “the revenge of
the dialects.” 

English was originally a German dialect, one of the
so-called “Low-German” dialects. English grammar is of
German origin; English pronouns, prepositions, etc.
are also of German origin. But while English is
fundamentally a Germanic language, two-thirds of the
words in an English dictionary are of Latin or Greek
origin. While English monosyllables can usually be
traced to German, polysyllables can usually be traced
to Latin or Greek. 

4. Origin of Language Language has its origins in
sound. Language originated in primitive man’s attempt
to represent his thoughts and feelings by sounds. One
can still see a connection between sound and meaning
in such words as gloomy, cheerful, dark, light, sad,
happy, fat, skinny, etc. 

5. Four Sources of Names Surnames usually come from
one of four sources: occupation, descent, locale or
characteristic. Examples of surnames that come from
occupation are Carpenter, Tanner, Fuller, Tinker,
Sawyer, Smith, Wright, Mason and Weber, which is
German for weaver. Examples of surnames that come from
descent are Johnson, Robertson, Thompson, Davidson,
Wilson, O’Brien, McDonald, Larsen, Ibsen and
Fitzpatrick, which means natural son of Patrick.
Examples of surnames that come from locale are Forest,
Lake, Hill, Mount and Kierkegaard, which is Danish for
churchyard. Examples of surnames that come from
characteristic are Swift, Strong, Short, White, Brown
and Black. Some surnames come from more than one of
these sources; an example is Kleinschmidt, which is
German for little smith. 

Rohit, thanks for the info about Sanskrit, was very
helpful.
Just curious, does anyone know Hebrew? 

Asha


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