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Sanskrit: Closest Indian Language? | ||
Tags: Sanskrit | Linguistic relationships | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| dekaglossai Newbie United States youtube.com/user/dek Joined 4193 days ago 19 posts - 59 votes  | Message 1 of 21 16 April 2013 at 2:07am | IP Logged | ||
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What modern Indian languages are closest to Sanskrit in the following aspects: pronunciation, grammar, vocabulary?
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| leroc Senior Member United States Joined 4105 days ago 114 posts - 167 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German | Message 2 of 21 16 April 2013 at 2:52am | IP Logged | ||
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I've always heard that Latvian and Lithuanian are the closest to Sanskrit, being among the most conservative IE languages (along with Sanskrit)
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| Cabaire Senior Member Germany Joined 5393 days ago 725 posts - 1352 votes | Message 3 of 21 16 April 2013 at 3:23am | IP Logged | ||
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I believe to have read that the Dardic languages are quite conservative and have preserved many archaic elements.
It is also a question of register. High-browed Hindi can be very sanskritized, while in the colloquial forms loan words and abraded words inherited from the Prakrits are more dominant. 7 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| vonPeterhof Tetraglot Senior Member Russian FederationRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4566 days ago 715 posts - 1527 votes Speaks: Russian*, EnglishC2, Japanese, German Studies: Kazakh, Korean, Norwegian, Turkish | Message 4 of 21 16 April 2013 at 6:45am | IP Logged | ||
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| Lykeio Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4038 days ago 120 posts - 357 votes | Message 5 of 21 16 April 2013 at 1:16pm | IP Logged | ||
Pronunciation I'd probably say Hindi or Marathi overall, Punjabi is close in some aspects but tends to resolve semivocalic sounds in vowels and otherwise cut out certain clusters in order to keep words short so kshastriya > khatria, śiṣya > sikha etc. However all north Indian languages have a ridiculous amount of vocabulary actually developed out (and therefore recoverable if you understand how sound changes work) or simply borrowed from earlier stages. That being said from the top of my head Bengali is closest overall but it's not a big deal. Grammatically and Syntactically...none are overall close, Punjabi retains some old morphological functions like the locative, instrumental etc and Marathi retains some stuff too but neither language you choose will be significantly different. If you wanted to learn, I'd say go with Hindi just for the sheer amount of literature it has. I don't know if Punjabi has much apart from oral literature and Marathi is an enigma to me beyond some grammar, phonology and varia lexica on the page. Bengali too is well served, though bear in mind that this is several thousand years after my time period of expertise. 10 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Medulin Tetraglot Senior Member Croatia Joined 4462 days ago 1199 posts - 2192 votes Speaks: Croatian*, English, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Norwegian, Hindi, Nepali | Message 6 of 21 16 April 2013 at 11:29pm | IP Logged | ||
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Hindi and Urdu are more distant in terms of vocabulary from Sanskrit than even Malayalam is (the most Sanskritized Dravidian language), because in everyday Hindi, there is a strong Persian element to the vocabulary.
Overall, I'd say Marathi, although it lost Sanskrit nasal vowels (which are retained in other Indo-Aryan languages), and it has somewhat Dravidianized grammar. Edited by Medulin on 16 April 2013 at 11:31pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Paco Senior Member Hong Kong Joined 4071 days ago 145 posts - 251 votes Speaks: Cantonese* | Message 7 of 21 18 April 2013 at 10:36am | IP Logged | ||
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There is a view that mastering daughter languages is one of the ways to help master the
classical languages. In the case of Ancient Greek, it will be Modern Greek. In the case of Latin, perhaps 1 or 2 romance languages might bring little help, but not much, for the Romance language family has evolved so much; Latin does not rely on word order at all. Is there any Indic language qualified to do the job (unlike the case of Latin)? If yes, which ones are potential candidates? Do they have a rich literary tradition? I do not mean I would learn a modern Indic language solely for that purpose, but rather I would choose one which as well gives my Sanskrit a discount. Edited by Paco on 18 April 2013 at 10:39am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6391 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 8 of 21 18 April 2013 at 12:25pm | IP Logged | ||
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Why not just learn Sanskrit? You're clearly more interested in it than in any modern Indian language.
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