The Credo: Indo-european Linguistics

ramana · 03-27-2007, 08:14 PM

Is there a revised timeline from the epic age to the modern age of India? I would like to see the timeline show the Vedic age from the Rigveda thru the epic Ramayana->Mahabharata age->Harappa age->post Harappa age->early ancient India->Jainism & Buddhism-> early historic kingdoms.

03-28-2007, 01:16 AM

QUOTEShouldn't we have a Saraswati thread as a sticky in the Indian history or Culture forum?
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ramana: There's a new thread on Sarasvati Civilization

QUOTE(ramana @ Mar 22 2007, 11:08 PM)kaly boss, We need a clear logical demolition of this AIT & PIE nonsense that ordinary aam janata can understand. The reason is the poison pen of Romila types has spread far and wide and to own the space Indians have to be able to state clearly and unequivocally that AIT and all that is hogwash.

I'd like to echo ramana's sentiments here and request gurus here to go a bit slow so that mere mortals like moi can catch up.
What exactly is IEL?
How does it fit into our Indic culture?
Who created it?
Does it have legs? What's Grimm's law?
What's it's goal? How faithfully has it served the desired goal?
Who are the proponents of it? Opponents? Reason for differences in opinion?
Others can contribute to the list of questions..

Some tips for experts posting in this thread: please use 'quotes' when quoting someone so that it's easier to read and understand the context.
Shorter posts if possibly split over multiple posts too might help.

09-22-2007, 08:45 AM

QUOTE(ramana @ Mar 27 2007, 10:44 AM)Is there a revised timeline from the epic age to the modern age of India? I would like to see the timeline show the Vedic age from the Rigveda thru the epic Ramayana->Mahabharata age->Harappa age->post Harappa age->early ancient India->Jainism & Buddhism-> early historic kingdoms.
[right][snapback]66186[/snapback][/right]

Ramana, check this website documenting Swami Prakashananda Saraswati's works. I've yet to read it, the work is most interesting, might order his book.

Any volunteers for documenting a timeline chart would be most appreciated. Do it for us here at IF or for your own website or blog - who cares.
Just do it and share it with all.

(Shambu: Thanks for this article/book recommendation in other thread)

Shambhu · 09-22-2007, 10:37 AM

QUOTE(Viren @ Sep 22 2007, 08:45 AM)(Shambu: Thanks for this article/book recommendation in other thread)


Thank you for following it up, Virenji! That site really is eye-opening (Well, Kaushalgaru's Indic Studies site was the real eye-opener for me, but this site is very well documented scripture wise. Except for the anti-evolution part, that is! I don't think evolution can't fit into our Kalpa system..)

Husky · (This post was last modified: 10-01-2007, 05:04 PM by Husky.)

Not really related (except perhaps very tangentially?) Just found the following amusing. Something I observed.

You know all those 'question' words - don't know the term for them in English, but I'm talking about the set of { what, where, who, when, why, which, how }. Most of them start with the same sound of "wh" in English. At least one exception I can think of with 'How'.
That's English. And of course it got it from Dutch/German. (English's 'How' is closer to Dutch than German.)

Similarly, you can find in the Romance language of French { qui, quoi, quel, quand }. Exceptions include { comment, ou } and possibly others.

In Japanese, I hear { Nanda, Nani, Naase } and there might be more.
In Tamil there's { Yedde, Yaare, Yenge, Yeppo, Yenniki, Yen }.
Not sure how to use Roman letters for Tamil. But you get the picture.

I am sure there must be other languages of which this is true. Certainly N-Indian languages since they're considered part of the IE club.
Mudy, you know the words in Korean? Do they also follow a similar pattern? Any other examples? I am curious to know, since I'm wondering if it's a peculiar characteristic of human thinking.

Bodhi · (This post was last modified: 10-01-2007, 07:54 PM by Bodhi.)

Husky, v. interesting.

my random ramblings (speculations i often indulge in)

As in AIT thread a few months back we were discussing, I feel pronouns are the deepest rooted words in any language. Nouns and Verbs may be acquired from influence, and proverbs may change or be modified with time, but pronouns tend to retain their original-ness, more or less. Pronouns must have been the first and the foremost developments when our proto-ancestors must have learnt speaking. This, That, There, he, then (or idi, tat, tatra, sah, tada) must have been the first of the words developed. As it makes sense for the basic most building block of communication.

Then all the "question-words" are extensions of pronouns. these are the requests to fill the vacant information about the pronouns, after all. this/that -> what (idah -> kah); there becomes where (itra-> kutra), then becomes when (tada -> kada), he -> who (sah -> kah/kaa)

So, like the first pronouns have a link, the first vacancies of the pronouns (the question words) have a link together too!

=============
I thought I noticed some words in Awadhi/Bhojpuri (but not in Hindi) - which are common to Tamizh and can be seen even in Japanese.

Seri/Seriya in tamizh, means 'ok'?. in awadhi, we have a noun 'sariya-rik', which means fine. and verb sariya - which means making something ok. (like sorting out the papers on the table is 'kaagad sariya-na' in awadhi).

In Japanese, Seiri is the first S of the 5 famous S-es of lean manufacturing or of Kaizen. It means tidiness or organization. Exactly same sense as in Awadhi, and in Tamizh.

Now I am not yet aware of a Hindi word or Sanskrit that comes close to this word. Sreya is closest I can think of. noble, desirable etc.

there are some more words that I have come across that link Awadhi, Japanese, (and some times Tamizh).

The second S of lean is 'seiton'. means orderliness. In Awadhi we have seyt and Hindi less frequent saheT. means the same things.

The third S is Seiso, means cleanliness. How closely does it resemble 'swachha'!

all speculation only not to be taken seriousely.

Husky · (This post was last modified: 10-05-2007, 02:27 PM by Husky.)

My observations on Japanese:
- Like Tamil (and Telugu, Kannada) and Samskritam, has a general tendency to end on vowels. Syllabic language.
- I've noticed a lot of names that sound like/sound similar to Indian names. Muroga, Maaya (might be a Buddhist name), Ashtaka (spelled Ashitaka, but they pronounced it Ashtaka) and more
- Some Japanese people - like Bengali and Tamil people do - turn 'v' into 'b'. (Many letters that are 'b' in German have become 'v' in Dutch. An example off the top of my head is DE glauBen -> NL geloVen.)
- Japanese is the only non-European language I can recall where people sound (some) 'u' as the Dutch and Germans do. They also have the 'u' sound we know (as in HindU)
- Also, other than Japanese I know of no language with the English 'w' sound. Germans and Dutch don't have the English 'w'. In NL and DE they pronounce 'w' as the English do the 'v'. And the Dutch pronounce the 'v' as the French do, and the Germans alternate sounding it between the Dutch pronunciation of 'v' and an 'f'. (That is, in German, Vater is pronounced either with a V as in Dutch - which is the usual case; or as Fater.)
- Japanese has an 'h' sound like Samskritam and consequently Hindi. Some Japanese pronounce this as something close to an 'f' but a very strangely beautiful 'f'-like sound it is, I must say. Actually, having heard it again, it's somewhere half-way between an 'f' and an 'h'.
However, it seems they have no 'f' sound officially although they are able to make something like it. (It's like they don't have an L officially, but some Japanese consistently sound an L whilst others sound an R, whilst yet others randomly sound Ls and Rs):
http://www.commelec.forces.gc.ca/pub/history.doc
QUOTEKatakana and Harigana are Japanese phonetic writing systems. There are 71 individual characters each representing a simple Japanese phonetic sound and 36 digraphs representing single syllables. Groupings of characters could approximate most Japanese and many other language words. Note that there is no "L" and no "F" sound.
And here's a Japanese person (with Roman-sounding handle 'Flaminius') writing on his language during some otherwise 'IE' discussion:
http://www.yourdictionary.com/cgi-bin/agor...;num=1127550628
QUOTEIt does not matter how [ph] and [f] sound similar for English speakers. Labio-dental and bilabial are not allophones in Japanese since there has been no [f] in that language.

I repeat: no [f] in Japanese

be it the result of "p to f change" or a legacy phoneme.

If you stick to your point that [ph] and [f] are allophones, could I prevail upon you to ask for online materials that point to the existence of [f] in historical Japanese (some foreign words are incorporated into Modern Japanese with their legacy [f]s)?

Nitpickeous FlaminiusAnd here's the same Japanese person Flaminius again, explaining their 'f'-like sound:
QUOTEon Sep 24th, 2005, 5:49pm, brian_costello wrote:
<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE[P to f chnage] also occured in your native language, Japanese.Don't expect me to tell you everytime that the sound represented by "f" in Japanese is bilabial fricative, whereas those in your other examples are labio-dental.
And again, what is your point?</div>So the nice sound the Japanese make is what's called 'bilabial fricative' is it... Whatever, sounds very lovely.

F P thing in some other languages:
http://www.dannychai.com/short/short3.html
It states:
QUOTEthere's no f sound in Korean
Apparently the same is the case in Turkmenistan, and in one or more Indonesian tongues:
http://home.unilang.org/main/forum/viewtop...7a9334c27748cf2
QUOTEBahho wrote:
<div class='quotetop'>QUOTEIn Turkmen there's no F sound for example they use P instead. Thank God,I haven't mixed up these two yetÂ I don't know whether the Turkmen understand a P instead of an F when they hear something foreign.
This is very common in Indonesian, so that some people say and write:
Pebruari
Nopember
And saying poto and pÃ¨lem for foto and film is pretty common.</div>
Afghan case. (Some?) Afghan tribes pronounce P as F, because they don't have 'f'. I've been told how those Afghans in TSP are made fun of for not being able to pronounce Urdu properly.
http://blogs.cricinfo.com/pakspin/archives..._the_rescue.php
QUOTESahibzada Shahid Ali Khan Apridi (there is no "f" sound in proper Pushto) or Shahid Afridi if you prefer, Also, wackypedia on the "Pashto language" says about this "IE->Indo-Iranian->Iranian->SE Iranian" language: no f nor h in this IE language.
QUOTEThe sounds /f/, /q/, /h/ are present only in loanwords. Less educated speakers tend to replace them with [p], [k] and nothing, respectively.So wacky thinks it's "less educated" to not be able to pronounce sounds that don't occur naturally in one's own language....
(Regarding Q there should be no difficulty - it is generally just the k sound anyway, so that's no probs. It's when writing Chinese with Roman letters that Q sounds different: it often has the 'ch' sound.)

http://www.nvtc.gov/lotw/months/february/pashto.html ("Languages of the World is brought to you by the National Virtual Translation Center")
QUOTEPashto, also known as Afghan, Pushto, or Pashtu, is a member of the Iranian branch of the Indo-European language family. It is spoken by over 2.7 million people in Afghanistan, most of whom are ethnic Pashtuns who constitute over a third of the country's population. In Pakistan, Pashto is spoken by 9.7 million ethnic Pashtuns who live on the other side of the border with Afghanistan (Ethnologue).
[...]
In Pakistan, Pashto has no official status and is not taught in schools. Pashtun children are educated in Urdu.Now that's real language suppression, unlike the fictive Japhetic-Hamitic (Oryan-Dravidian) one of "Samskritam must have suppressed Tamil because my missionary boss tells me so...".
At the bottom of that page, there's a link to: "Voice of America broadcasts in Pashto" Meh? And there's BBC news in Pashto too.

10-05-2007, 05:59 AM

Continued from above.
On page http://www.yourdictionary.com/cgi-bin/agor...;num=1127550628 again,
there's some quaint (unsubstantiated) IE-derived speculation: an amateur IE hanger-on discussing Grimm's law of IE-change from p to f, uses this to argue that Parsi to Farsi was perhaps natural evolution and supposedly not due to Arabic. This is then argued/refuted by another poster:
QUOTEQuote:<div class='quotetop'>QUOTEThis is particular piece of information that would tend to cast doubtÂ on the change of Parsi (Parsee) to Farsi in Modern Persian as the result of an Arabic influence.
This particular piece of information tells us the contrary (which means that we probably will have to move away from "particular pieces of information"):
Persian pardis > Arabic firdaus > (back loan) Persian firdaus.</div>

12-27-2008, 12:32 AM

Free preview of
A grammar of modern Indo-European: language and culture, writing system and phonology, morphology, syntax
Published by Carlos Quiles Casas, 2007
ISBN 8461176391, 9788461176397
389 pages

02-13-2009, 10:07 PM

The Sanskrit Texts of the Indus Civilization are for free download. Might be this is interesting for you: http://www.indus-civilization.info
<img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/india.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='india.gif' />

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