Is Sanskrit really an Indo-European language???

[authun]

I dont see any cognates though. Their script is different and so is the sentence formation.

Word order and writing system have nothing to do with the classification of a spoken language and they vary a great deal in current IE languages anyway. When you look at older versions of any IE language, you'll see that they were very different too, just compare Old English and Modern English for example. Old English was highly inflected but, as the grammar became simplified, word order changed to give an ME sentance meaning. Although ME is SVO, OE allowed for a much freer arrangement of words. When you get to a very highly inflected language such as classical latin, you could almost arrange the words in any order because the inflections gave meaning to the sentance. As far as scripts are concerned, the first irish scripts are written in Ogham. It's still an IE language though.

 

[Vinnie]

While genetics aren't to be discussed on this forum. Haplogroup R1a1 says alot. Indo-European speakers are certainly genetically related to eachother.

 

[Alvaro Hans]

What the participants have said may be true earlier with the kind of A.D.1780 findings which were based on incomplete understanding of the languages of India. The latest findings/updates on Sanskrit by certain IE scholars has changed the scenario upside down.Please read the interesting answer https://www.quora.com/Why-are-there...a-Indo-Aryan-and-Dravidian/answer/Alvaro-Hans for an insight in this regard.

 

[authun]

What the participants have said may be true earlier with the kind of A.D.1780 findings which were based on incomplete understanding of the languages of India. The latest findings/updates on Sanskrit by certain IE scholars has changed the scenario upside down.Please read the interesting answer https://www.quora.com/Why-are-there...a-Indo-Aryan-and-Dravidian/answer/Alvaro-Hans for an insight in this regard.

When I saw your book title, ‘Proto-Indo-European Language-Face Unveiled !’ I was reminded of Mike Harper's The History of Britain Revealed: The Shocking Truth About the English Language. What is it about hobby linguists that makes them search for stuff every other academic linguistic researcher has missed but which is obvious to an unqualified amateur? And why do you use a pseudonym and not your real name? Authors of academic works are usually proud to be associated with their works. Good luck with the book sales.

 

[Linschoten]

That's absolutely hilarious, it speaks as if there had been no advance in linguistic knowledge and understanding since the late 18th Century, and that the idea that Sanskrit is an Indo-European language could be refuted merely by certain assumptions made by Sir William Jones! Shishir Thadani has no expertise or qualifications in comparative linguistics, and his paper (if one can even describe it as such) has neither been published in a peer-reviewed journal not been subjected to any academic examination. In other words, this is internet pseudoscholarship based on a political agenda. The superficiality of his analysis is immediately apparent: https://sites.google.com/site/kalyan97/divinity-of-vaak-sarasvati-videos?tmpl=/system/app/templates/print/&showPrintDialog=1

 

[Linschoten]

"It may also be noted that across India, both Sanskrit and Tamil derived languages use SOV (subject Object Verb) word order as a default. But several Indo-European languages such as English, French, Portuguese and Bulgarian use SVO word order.
However, in colloquial or theatrical speech, (or even in poetic/literary texts) Hindi (like Arabic) also permits VSO. Moreover, when repeated words are used all Indian languages permit the omission of the subject and the word order becomes flexible - either OV or VO.

Word order also becomes flexible in the context of question and answer exchanges. Thus in Hindi "Gaye the Tum?" (Went did you?), "Tum Gaye The?" (You went did?) and "Tum Gaye?" (You went?) are all possible. Replies to where did you go could be equally varied from the standard SOV "Main Allahabad gaya tha" (I Allahabad went) to an OVS "Allahabad gaya tha main" (Allahabad went I) or simply OV "Allahabad gaya tha" (Allahabad went) or even VO "Gaya tha Allahabad" (Went Allahabad)

In this respect, Indian languages are similar to each other but not to less flexible "Indo-European" languages like English. On the other hand, Russian and Czech (like Hungarian) do not require a fixed or default word order."

An extract from his article that illustrates the extreme superficiality of his argument and apparently of his understanding of linguistics; as though one could reach any conclusion whatever about the status of Sanskrit from that farrago!

 

[Devdas]

"It may also be noted that across India, both Sanskrit and Tamil derived languages use SOV (subject Object Verb) word order as a default. But several Indo-European languages such as English, French, Portuguese and Bulgarian use SVO word order.
However, in colloquial or theatrical speech, (or even in poetic/literary texts) Hindi (like Arabic) also permits VSO. Moreover, when repeated words are used all Indian languages permit the omission of the subject and the word order becomes flexible - either OV or VO.

Word order also becomes flexible in the context of question and answer exchanges. Thus in Hindi "Gaye the Tum?" (Went did you?), "Tum Gaye The?" (You went did?) and "Tum Gaye?" (You went?) are all possible. Replies to where did you go could be equally varied from the standard SOV "Main Allahabad gaya tha" (I Allahabad went) to an OVS "Allahabad gaya tha main" (Allahabad went I) or simply OV "Allahabad gaya tha" (Allahabad went) or even VO "Gaya tha Allahabad" (Went Allahabad)

In this respect, Indian languages are similar to each other but not to less flexible "Indo-European" languages like English. On the other hand, Russian and Czech (like Hungarian) do not require a fixed or default word order."

An extract from his article that illustrates the extreme superficiality of his argument and apparently of his understanding of linguistics; as though one could reach any conclusion whatever about the status of Sanskrit from that farrago!

Tamil is one of the four major Dravidian languages, Malayalam has links with Old Tamil but Kannada and Telugu had independent origin and development from Proto-Dravidian language. Secondly, although colloquial Hindi has some flexibility, such flexibility only applies to simple sentences. Sanskrit on the other hand has no such flexibility. like "I am going to home" would be Aham griham gachhami" only. Although a native Hindi speaker As a kid, I had always struggled with comprehending English while I found Dravidian languages like Kannada and Telugu far easier to learn, grammar is identical and many words are similar due to Sanskrit based vocabulary.

 

[authun]

Old english had much more flexibility in the word order than modern english. It is generally the case that the more heavily inflected the language, the less important word order becomes. The meaning is in the inflextion, not the position of the word in the sentance.

 

[Alvaro Hans]

When I saw your book title, ‘Proto-Indo-European Language-Face Unveiled !’ I was reminded of Mike Harper's The History of Britain Revealed: The Shocking Truth About the English Language. What is it about hobby linguists that makes them search for stuff every other academic linguistic researcher has missed but which is obvious to an unqualified amateur? And why do you use a pseudonym and not your real name? Authors of academic works are usually proud to be associated with their works. Good luck with the book sales.

Thanks for your comments.Sales is not the main aim of such publications than revealing to the world what I know that is not published so far.I have multiple talents and Etymology is one.Each talent is expressed through an apt pseudo-name that serves to boost it.Ultimately it's the stuff that matters more than the labels.

 

[Bart Dale]

Tamil is one of the four major Dravidian languages, Malayalam has links with Old Tamil but Kannada and Telugu had independent origin and development from Proto-Dravidian language. Secondly, although colloquial Hindi has some flexibility, such flexibility only applies to simple sentences. Sanskrit on the other hand has no such flexibility. like "I am going to home" would be Aham griham gachhami" only. Although a native Hindi speaker As a kid, I had always struggled with comprehending English while I found Dravidian languages like Kannada and Telugu far easier to learn, grammar is identical and many words are similar due to Sanskrit based vocabulary.

Word order is a poor indication of whether languages are related or not. Word order can change with time, and even though English is considered a SVO (Subject-Object-Verb) language, it still has phrases in it that are SOV, like the common phrase "I thee wed", reflecting an earlier time when English was not so strongly SVO. Gaelic, and Welsh are definitely considered Indo-European languages, yet have a VSO word order

Among natural languages with a word order preference, SOV is the most common type (followed by subject–verb–object; the two types account for more than 75% of natural languages with a preferred order).[3]

Languages that have SOV structure include Ainu, Akkadian, Amharic, Armenian, Assamese, Aymara, Azerbaijani, Basque, Bengali, Burmese, Burushaski, Cherokee, Dakota, Dogon languages, Elamite, Ancient Greek, Gujarati, Hajong, Hindi, Hittite, Hopi, Ijoid languages, Itelmen, Japanese, Kazakh, Kyrgyz, Korean, Kurdish, Classical Latin,...Subject–object–verb - Wikipedia .

In highly inflected languages like ancient Latin, ancient Greek, and Sanskrit, word order isn't as important as in English, but they are all considered to be SOV languages. Regardless of word order, the sentence will remain the same, while in English a different word order will change the meaning. "Dog bites man" is not the same thing as "Man bites dog", but in Latin and Sanskrit, the order doesn't matter, since the inflections on the words will tell you the meaning.


Since Dravidian languages such as Tamil and Indo-European languages like Hindi, are spoken next to each other, over the centuries it is not surprising if they did not come to resemble each other a little over the centuries.