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You mean “What did ancient European languages sound like” perhaps? I would submit that Samskruta (NOT the anclicised Sanskrit) sounds exactly like how it did in
by gpraghu 5y ago
You mean “What did ancient European languages sound like” perhaps? I would submit that Samskruta (NOT the anclicised Sanskrit) sounds exactly like how it did in ancient times. How come there is no discussion of that at all?
- poisonarena 5y agoThe article is about Indo-European languages, that includes 'indic, iranian, and slavic'. You can write a blog about Samskruta.
- imbnwa 5y agoSamskruta is an Indo-European language.
- poisonarena 5y agoI didn't say it wasn't...
- tweaktastic 5y agoAre you saying Samskruta is not an Indic language?
- tweaktastic 5y agoAre you saying Samskruta is not an Indic language?
- poisonarena 5y agoNo, I didn't say that.
- imbnwa 5y agoA discussion of that would have to also include a discussion of why Lithuanian has also not changed much since the vocabulary is filled with Samskruta cognates that Lithuanian does NOT share with Slavic languages like Russian or Polish, some examples from Wikipedia: - S: sunus, L: sunus (son) - S: avis, L: avis (sheep) - S: padas, L: padas (foot) - S: viras, L: vyras (man, also compare Latin vir [pronounced weer]) - S: dhumas, L: dumas (smoke) - S: antaras, L: antras (other, second) - S: vṛkas, L: vilkas (wolf) - S: yuñje, L: jungiu (I join) - S: jántis, L: gentys (tribes, also compare Latin gentes [a/the people]) - S: dantas, L: dantis (also compare Latin dentes) - S: naktis, L: naktis (also compare Latin noctes)
- KhoomeiK 5y agoLithuanian in general is considered one of the most conservative IE languages. There isn't really any clear reason that historical linguistics has produced for whether languages change quickly or slowly afaik.
- imbnwa 5y agoMy understanding was that the isolation of the Baltic speakers was a big contributor, though off the top of my head I wouldn't know the geographical obstacles, hence also why they were the last to Christianity in Europe
- vkazanov 5y agoKnowing Russian, Lithuanian and bits of Polish I would also add that it's amazing how lithuanian is very similar to slavic languages in grammar structure but radically different phonetically. I.e. a direct translation, word to word, works (with some style issues), but it's hard to recognize the sentence when pronounced. This makes me wonder how sanscrit sounds... Also, the language is quite complex, probably more complex than polish or russian, which is typical for archaic languages, afaik.
- hallarempt 5y agoNo, it doesn't. End of discussion.
- gpraghu 5y agoCould you elaborate please? How do you establish that?
- KhoomeiK 5y agoI agree with the sentiment but ironically your transliteration of the name of that language reveals that it certainly has undergone at least some sound changes. Why do people in the north pronounce the vocalic "r" as "ri" while in the south they use "ru"? Why do people in the north drop word final schwa but in the south they add a nasal bilabial? While it's very easy to pronounce Samskrta in a way similar to what was likely used in classical times, there have definitely been sound changes to an extent.
- gpraghu 5y agoIn classical recitation, with ghanapatha and other techniques, I would expect that pronunciation is strict, meters are accounted for, and things have remained relatively unchanged in the way the Vedas and Upanishads are recited. Unfortunately, there is little exposure of the rigorous training in the Western world.
- fooker 5y agoExactly. This transliteration, in eastern India would be 'Shongskrito'. Which is no more right or wrong compared to saying 'Sanskrit'.
- gpraghu 5y agoSonguahkrito is not Samskruta but Bengali. So what’s your point?
- stan_rogers 5y agoWhile there is an element of truth to that, it's largely because the language was deliberately fossilized for religious reasons, while the "real" language that people actually used day to day continued to evolve around it.
- gpraghu 5y agoHow fossilized? While it is not used as an everyday language, there is a yet growing library of literature, and vigorous philosophical debate that happens in Samskruta. BTW, an unrelated rant, the other thing that grinds on me is that the Ganga river is ALWAYS referred as Ganges (another anglicization)! Ganga is easier to pronounce, so why did that get anglicized, I wonder?
- Causality1 5y agoGanges is what the Hellenic Greeks called it. Most English words for Indian things come from Greek.
- hassancf 5y agoI think it is really hard for speakers of European languages to believe that a language could have the same pronunciation that it had centuries ago. Obvious example: Arabic from at least the 7th century AD: As an Arabic speaker, I can totally read a text the way it was pronounced 14 centuries ago and also perfectly understand it. You cannot say the same thing for European languages. Probably the same for sanskrit.
- anthk 5y ago> As an Arabic speaker, I can totally read a text the way it was pronounced 14 centuries ago and also perfectly understand it. I may be able to do something similar in Spanish. I've read Emilianensian /Glosas/ in Navarrese-Aragonese and understand near the 95% of it. That being a close Romance to Castillian Spanish. Scroll down and compare, you don't need to understand Spanish: https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glosas_Emilianenses https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glosas_Emilianenses Also, I can perfectly read Don Quixote. My main issues would be the old Medieval slang with things that do not exist anymore or they changed a lot. But without the footer annotations, I had no issues at all to understand the 80% of it. But, spelling it? Heck, it didn't change at all, our Spanish standards (Nebrija's grammar) date back to that era.
- prosody 5y agoIt's been a long time since I've done anything with Sanskrit so please forgive any misunderstandings, but didn't Vedic ळ become Classical ड, as in नीळ and नीड ?
- FlyingSnake 5y ago> Vedic ळ There is strong evidence that the ळ came from Substratum languages (Dravidian or Munda) and many Indo-Aryan languages still retain it e.g. Marathi, Gujarati.
- KhoomeiK 5y agoYes but it's still present in Vedic, literally in the second word of rgveda 1.1.1.
- chakkepolja 5y agoVedas were not passed unmodified since they were originally written. Neither were the purānas.
- FlyingSnake 5y agoThe reason there's no discussion about Samskruta is that all the scholars of संस्कृतम are in India and most of the University departments lack the cultural and linguistic nuances that are needed to learn संस्कृतम. Unless Indians come and share their research with the world, there won't be any discussion on it. I also think this is so because the prevalent narrative is post colonial in nature and the (English) Internet is came out of Anglosphere. This is not a criticism of the prevalent order, it's just the way things have evolved naturally post WW2.
- ta___1254 5y agoIt's संस्कृतम् not संस्कृतम
- FlyingSnake 5y agoAnother casualty of transliteration keyboards.
- chakkepolja 5y agoLot of Sanskrit scholars are priests and their bias is shown a lot as well. They cry whenever something becomes slightly better offensive to 2000 year ago people.
- fooker 5y agoNo Sanskrit absolutely doesn't sound like it did in ancient the ancient times. Modern (north Indian) Sanskrit pronunciation uses Hindi/Urdu style of pronouncing vowels which was significantly influenced by Arabic and Persian. Ancient Sanskrit pronunciation was essentially similar to what we call the Prakrit language, which was a more colloquial version and spoken by most people. Bengali, Marathi and Gujarati are a bit closer to that pronunciation, but of course they have changed a fair bit too.
- FlyingSnake 5y ago> Modern (north Indian) Sanskrit pronunciation uses Hindi/Urdu style of pronouncing vowels which was significantly influenced by Arabic and Persian. This has to be the most far-fetched and absurd claim I’ve heard so far. Sanskrit has been orally transmitted since several millennia and there’s no change in its pronunciation and grammar since days of Panini. That robust oral tradition is well researched and proven to be fool proof.
- AbrahamParangi 5y agoThat would make it the only language in the world to be passed down unmodified, which seems... unlikely.
- FlyingSnake 5y agoI understand it comes across as jingoistic, but truly Sanskrit grammar and pronunciation hasn’t changed since Pānini. The word Sanskrit itself means “constructed” and there was a rigorous effort to prevent ambiguity.
- Ar-Curunir 5y agoWhile it’s very true that we have a much better idea of how Sanskrit was pronounced millennia ago than we do for most languages, we can’t make absolute claims like yours. No, that’s not true. there’s a bunch of varieties of Sanskrit, including Vedic Sanskrit, Classical Sanskrit, and various local dialects. Not all of these have been preserved in oral traditions. Second, even within the preserved oral traditions, pronunciations vary across schools. For example, the “kru” part in your Samskruta is pronounced differently in different parts of India; some people do say “kri”
- throwawaysea 5y ago> How come there is no discussion of that at all? Leaving aside the linguistic debate in the comments here, there’s often no fair or truthful or representative discussion of the ancient East’s legacy (or others) for reasons relating to imperialism, colonialism, and supremacist thinking. I don’t mean that in the explicit “we’re taking over your country way” but in the more subtle or implicit ways. Western world views and Eurocentric histories are everywhere, from academia to Wikipedia, and due credit or consideration isn’t given elsewhere. The problem persists even in the very countries we are talking about, like India, since their earlier “original” Hindu culture was changed by invasions (whether from the Islamic Middle East or Christian Europe). My understanding is that when the British finally left India, their academic culture still persisted in the form of Western education that replaced earlier forms of education, textbooks sourced from Western publishers, taxpayer funding into this system, and the adoption of languages like Hindi and English as the official languages (rather than say Sanskrit or Tamil). So to answer your question in the broader sense beyond this article and discussion, there is no discussion of these things in part because of the power of Western spheres and in part because Eastern spheres themselves haven’t retained their own knowledge or promoted themselves adequately either domestically or internationally.
- prox 5y agoAfaik the original culture (take India) has been massively influenced by the English occupation and Mogul occupation. Lots of the original way people thought, lived their culture and worshipped in their religion has changed.
- ummonk 5y agoWhich ancient times? It was only frozen after Panini’s time, but there had been changes from original rigvedic pronunciation by then. And your quibbling is indicative that there have been also been changes today as well - e.g. southern speakers tend to pronounce vowel r as “ru” while others say “ri” and at some point in time the pronunciation was likely more like American English r.
- chakkepolja 5y agoVedic Samskrutham was pretty much different I guess. And regular people didn't speak sanskrit in classical age. They spoke regional languages like Prakrit and Pali.
- gpraghu 5y agoVedic Samskrutam was a different language than Paninis classical Samskrutam. We need to recognize size that.
- gpraghu 5y agoThis has been an incredible discussion, thank you all for contributing. I hope my original point was made, which was that there is often bias when the western world talks about “ancient”, and I place the blame squarely on the imperialistic british for that. The other issue I want to point out is that there is a certain arrogance that the linguistic academia has as it relates to traditional scholars by regularly discounting their knowledge and assuming their own superiority. Not trying to change anyone’s beliefs, just an opinion I am expressing. I am going to drop out not for want of willingness to engage, but because this discussion is devolving into familiar patterns of debate. All I can say as a practitioner is that when I was taught, I was actually taught the “correct way” and the differences so I was always aware. There is an academic rigor in traditional teaching that Western academia seems to be unaware of.