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Assimil Sanskrit - good news | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Programs, Books & Tapes |  | |
| Hampie Diglot Senior Member Sweden Joined 6658 days ago 625 posts - 1009 votes  Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: Latin, German, Mandarin | Message 17 of 36 27 May 2012 at 5:19am | IP Logged | |||||
No offense, but that article is only interesting if you're studying pseudo-linguistics or is into a good laugh. For political reasons Sanskrit and Tamil is used as weapons in theories that, for reasons I don't know, state that they're the oldest, have been in India forever, society and civilization came from India, the Aryans never invaded India, they came from India, etc. etc. This is utter poppycock and the scientific community show no support for politically driven people who try to force evidence into their shrewd reality. Sanskrit is Indo-european, very much so, there's no debate whatsoever regarding this phenomenon. That neighboring languages though unrelated share treats is due to a well known phenomenon called Sprachbund. To state the writing system of Sanskrit that is in use today as evidence is ridiculous: A. Chinese and Japanese use the same system (almost..) and are not in any way related. B. All languages have syllables. Many languages use syllabic writing. C. Devanagari is based upon Korohti, itself based upon Brahmi, which is derived from Phoenecian or other Semitic writing. It's non-scientific bullshit. 10 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| sipes23 Diglot Senior Member United States pluteopleno.com/wprs Joined 4869 days ago 134 posts - 235 votes Speaks: English*, Latin Studies: Spanish, Ancient Greek, Persian | Message 18 of 36 28 May 2012 at 5:56am | IP Logged | |||||
alang, It's ok not to know which resembles Sanskrit the most, so thanks for being honest (because I don't think I could answer the question either). As for your linked article…well, if you believe a word of it, I've got a bridge in New York. Hampie, I think that's the only correct word to describe that article. I *almost* posted a very snarky comeback that suggested that the universe was 6,000ish years old as well. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| alang Diglot Senior Member Canada Joined 7220 days ago 563 posts - 757 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish | Message 19 of 36 28 May 2012 at 9:04am | IP Logged | |||||
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I wrote down it was interesting. Just like the idea all languages are actually from one language. It is too bad that the languages are used in a political agenda. The other language actually from the Indo-European branch I read to be close to Sanskrit is Bengali, but I am interested in which one a modern speaker sounds like Sanskrit the most with the least evolution. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Hampie Diglot Senior Member Sweden Joined 6658 days ago 625 posts - 1009 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: Latin, German, Mandarin | Message 20 of 36 28 May 2012 at 9:59am | IP Logged | |||||
Most languages evolve in some ways, those that are conservative in pronunciation might be very inventive when it comes to morphology and grammar, etc. etc. The best pronunciation, if you want it to be as original as possible, is to study what comparative philology and linguistics have discovered. I'm not sure that there are many people that, for say, can pronounce the vedic pitch accent as it once "was" just as most ancient greek scholars neglects it totally. 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Antanas Tetraglot Groupie Lithuania Joined 4811 days ago 91 posts - 172 votes Speaks: Lithuanian*, English, Russian, German Studies: FrenchB1, Spanish | Message 21 of 36 30 May 2012 at 8:30pm | IP Logged | |||||
Well, Lithuanian might fit the bill. It's alive and is as old or even a little older than Sanskrit :) Both Lithuanian and Sanskrit share a number of Proto-Indo-European traits. In fact, Lithuanian as well as Sanskrit are among the languages that provide scholars with important linguistic data for the reconstruction of Proto-Indo-European, in general, and its sound system, in particular. Here are some examples: http://www.lituanus.org/1982_1/82_1_01.htm I don't know if I could understand native Sanskrit speaker from Mahabharata times using common PIE vocabulary. But, provided PIE hypotheses is correct, my pronunciatian of Lithuanian today should be pretty close (at least closer, in comparison to other Indo-European languages of today) to the pronunciation of Sanskrit back then. Please, correct me if I'm wrong 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Juаn Senior Member Colombia Joined 5344 days ago 727 posts - 1830 votes Speaks: Spanish* | Message 22 of 36 31 May 2012 at 3:37pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I wrote to Assimil and they confirm they are working on a Sanskrit course to be released no earlier than 2013. According to their email they are also preparing a Khmer course!
They state the courses will only be available with a French base. With English base, Hebrew, Yiddish and Arabic are forthcoming. 5 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Random review Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5782 days ago 781 posts - 1310 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Portuguese, Mandarin, Yiddish, German | Message 23 of 36 01 June 2012 at 4:08am | IP Logged | |||||
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@ Alang: I didn't mean to imply that you were wrong about Tamil sounding more like
Sanskrit, merely that it was surprising. Quite apart from the well-known Sprachbund phenomenon some unrelated languages do seem to resemble each other on certain levels (be it phonetically, grammatically, whatever) as certain features just seem to hang together (I'm reminded of the concept of attractors in chaos theory). I'm being really vague here because it's an area where my understanding itself is still quite fuzzy, perhaps someone can state this more clearly for me, meanwhile perhaps an example will help: if Spanish suddenly died out I would rather learn the accent of 20th century European Spanish from a Modern Greek speaker than an Italian one, let alone a French or Portuguese one! Portuguese is most closely related to Spanish yet the sound system is completely different; Greek is less closely related, but the sound system is spookily similar to my ears. Edited by Random review on 01 June 2012 at 1:08pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| alang Diglot Senior Member Canada Joined 7220 days ago 563 posts - 757 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish | Message 24 of 36 01 June 2012 at 7:36am | IP Logged | |||||
@Randomreview, Tamil sounding more like Tamil? ;-P I guess the community will just wait to hear how the Assimil Sanskrit recordings sound like, but finding a sound reference is more difficult than I thought. I understand the point of your message. When I heard the old Latin Assimil course, there was no way I thought Latin sounded like that heavy French accent, even if it is a daughter language. 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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