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Lithuanian and Sanskrit | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| chucknorrisman Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 5447 days ago 321 posts - 435 votes  Speaks: Korean*, English, Spanish Studies: Russian, Mandarin, Lithuanian, French | Message 1 of 6 24 February 2010 at 2:11pm | IP Logged | ||
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These two languages are supposed to have retained the most features of Proto Indo European and are the most conservative of the IE languages, so I'm wondering how mutually intelligible they are?
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| Fat-tony Nonaglot Senior Member United Kingdom jiahubooks.co.uk Joined 6139 days ago 288 posts - 441 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Russian, Esperanto, Thai, Laotian, Urdu, Swedish, French Studies: Mandarin, Indonesian, Arabic (Written), Armenian, Pali, Burmese | Message 2 of 6 24 February 2010 at 4:46pm | IP Logged | ||
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Not in the slightest is the short answer. I think that Lithuanian is considered the most
conservative language and therefore is closer to the original PIE while Sanskrit, although very old, is relatively divergent, certainly in terms of idiom (going way beyond the SOV order) and sounds. Both of these factors had already been greatly influenced by the Dravidian languages by the time Sanskrit had started to be written down. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| chucknorrisman Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 5447 days ago 321 posts - 435 votes Speaks: Korean*, English, Spanish Studies: Russian, Mandarin, Lithuanian, French | Message 3 of 6 24 February 2010 at 4:51pm | IP Logged | ||
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Oh, okay. Thanks for correcting my misconception.
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| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 7155 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 4 of 6 24 February 2010 at 5:19pm | IP Logged | ||
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They're not mutually intelligible. There is still a misconception or even linguistic "urban myth" caused by confusing linguistic conservatism and minimizing the effects of linguistic divergence.
It also ties in to an off-hand (probably half-joking) quote by the linguist Antoine Meillet:
However no modern Lithuanian could honestly say that he or she understands Proto-Indo-European or Sanskrit as if it were some sort of Lithuanian dialect or "old" form of Lithuanian. Here's a comparison of Lithuanian with Sanskrit and Proto-Indo-European using the Lord's Prayer (Lithuanian) Tėve mūsų, kuris esi danguje, teesie šventas tavo vardas, teateinie tavo karalystė, teesie tavo valia kaip danguje, taip ir žemėje. Kasdienės mūsų duonos duok mums šiandien ir atleisk mums mūsų kaltes, kaip ir mes atleidžiame savo kaltininkams. Ir neleisk mūsų gundyti, bet gelbėk mus nuo pikto. Amen (Sanskrit) Bho asmākam svargastha pitah: tava nāma pavitram pūjyatām. Tava rājyamāyātu. Yathā svarge tathā medinyāmapi tavecchā sidhyatu. Śvastanam bhaksyamadyāsmabhyam dehi. Vayañca yathāsmadaparādhinām kṣamāmahe, tathā tvamasmākamaparādhān ksamasva. Asmāmśca parīksām mā naya, api-tu durātmata uddhara. Yato rājyam parākramah pratāpaśca yuge-yuge tavaiva (Proto-Indo-European reconstruction) Pater naseros cemeni, nomen tovos estu cventos, reguom tevem guemoit ad nas, veltos tevem cvergeto cemeni ertique, edom naserom agheres do nasmebhos aghei tosmei le todque agosnes nasera, so lemos scelobhos naserobhos. Neque peretod nas, tou tratod nas apo peuces. Teve senti reguom, maghti decoromque bhegh antom. Estod. (English) Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as in heaven. Give us today our daily bread. Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us. Save us from the time of trial and deliver us from evil. [For the kingdom, the power, and the glory are yours now and for ever.] Amen. Edited by Chung on 25 February 2010 at 7:21am 7 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Gamauyun Diglot Newbie United States Joined 5647 days ago 26 posts - 36 votes Speaks: English*, Russian Studies: Romanian, German | Message 5 of 6 24 February 2010 at 11:32pm | IP Logged | ||
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How would either of them compare to Ancient Greek or Latin, in terms of divergence?
Edited by Gamauyun on 24 February 2010 at 11:33pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| BartoG Diglot Senior Member United States confession Joined 5446 days ago 292 posts - 818 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: Italian, Spanish, Latin, Uzbek | Message 6 of 6 26 February 2010 at 11:50pm | IP Logged | ||
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Gamauyun,
Just to take one example, we're pretty sure that Proto-Indo-European had a lot of cases. So we think that Lithuanian (with seven) and Sanskrit (with eight) probably did a better job of preserving PIE morphology than Latin (with five) and Classical Greek (with four). The divergence question is a tricky one, though. We don't have any tablets or inscriptions to go on here, so the search for Proto-Indo-European is not, in fact, an effort to figure out how a primitive civilization at an as-yet undetermined location talked thousands of years ago. Rather, it's about creating a construct which, if manipulated according to carefully defined rules consistent with what we know about how languages can change, will somehow yield up the older languages within the various Indo-European families. We build that construct by working back from what we know about languages that are actually documented. As a result, the PIE we construct will be influenced by things like whether we believe that it's Sanskrit or Lithuanian that innovated when they differ. While we can make good guesses by looking across the various families, we cannot be sure. In many ways, it's like sketching a portrait of your great, great grandfather by looking at the common features shared by living family members and the oldest relatives whose photographs are in the family photo album. You'll have a good picture of what he might have looked like, but it's a stretch to look at it and say, "Oh look, cousin Sally has his eyes!" This may be true in reality, but it's true in the picture because that's how you made the picture. Based on available evidence, we can be fairly sure that Latin and Greek innovated by simplifying noun morphology (among many other things). You're probably looking at a divergence at least equal to the distance between early Latin and the modern Romance languages. But that's just my gut sense, and I'm not sure you can really quantify this. That's not to say that people don't try, but their conclusions are always subject to revision when new evidence comes along. Swadesh lists and glottochronology are the keywords to start with if you're really curious about how people determine linguistic divergence and how much confidence you can put into this sort of venture. 9 persons have voted this message useful |
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