Re: Old Languages
| From: | Amber Adams <amber@...> |
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| Date: | Thursday, October 4, 2001, 3:01 |
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Interestingly, but perhaps not surprisingly, most Indians who are not
familiar with linguistics believe that all Indian languages came from
Sanskrit.
This is probably due to Sanskrit's prominence, as well as the fact that
a large number of loanwords were passed back and forth between it and
the Dravidian languages. Hindi, Panjabi, and the other northern languages
of course can trace a more-or-less direct lineage back to Sanskrit.
On Wed, Oct 03, 2001 at 08:04:50PM -0500, Thomas R. Wier wrote:
> To oversimplify it: Sanskrit is a basically Indo-European language
> that, due to long exposure to Dravidian languages of South India,
> has acquired quite a few loan words, and maybe even grammatical
> structures, although I'm not sure on that. As for languages of the
> subcontinent: yes, some are IE-based, some are Dravidian, some are
> isolates (Burushaski); some are Austro-Asiatic (e.g. Asuri); some
> are Sino-Tibetan (e.g. Balti); and probably others. India is a
> giant pastiche of language.
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