Re: Old Languages

Colin Halverson wrote:


>I was wondering- how many people here speak dead languages, especially
Latin,
>Ancient Greek, Ancient Hebrew.  Also, not quite on the subject how does
>Sanskrit fit into Indian languages.  I've heard some are European based,
some
>Dravidian??  Can someone explain?
Not I, except an occasional Ave Maria in Latin when in an airliner at
takeoff......I cover all bases.

A "dead" language with a considerable and fascinating literature, all but
unknown in the West, is Old Javanese.  It's relationship to modern Jav.
seems to be about the same as literary Old English to modern Engl., or Latin
to Romance langs.-- closely related, but not the direct ancestor.  It is
still used (though probably as memorized) in performances of the
shadow-puppet plays in Java and Bali.   The script is elegant.  (I had a
couple professors who were able to speak it, more or less.)

Sanskrit (the literary language that has come down to us) probably stands in
the same relation (close but not direct ancestor) to the modern IE languages
of India, which descend from spoken versions (the Prakrits; I may be
mistaken, but Pali may be a literary version of one of the Prakrits-- I
recall that Buddhist monks in Vietnam and Cambodia learned their scriptures
in Pali, and my impression was that it was still used in much the same way
Latin is used in the RC Church, so not totally "dead".)

Dravidian is another language family altogether, not related to
IE/Sanskrit-- though there has been a lot of influence back and forth over a
very long time.   There is interesting discussion on this general topic
lately on Cybalist (a yahoo!group); one Indian participant has suggested a
lot of Munda influence in early Sanskrit as well, and he proposes that the
language of the Indus Valley Civilization was likely a Munda-type language,
not a Dravidian one as is widely held.  (Munda is yet another language
family, IIRC part of Austro-Asiatic, so ultimately related to Khmer and
Vietnamese.)

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