tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-201733842012-02-16T21:02:01.059+05:30Bloghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09797175671919103000noreply@blogger.comBlogger11100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20173384.post-86787064847827648192009-06-21T09:13:00.016+05:302009-06-21T11:49:18.886+05:30It has been researched beyond any shred of doubt that almost all the world's languages have evolved from one Mother language. This Mother of all languages is technically called PIE/PIG, or Proto-Indo-European/Proto-Indo-Germanic root. The languages that are not connected to any other language (and eventually PIE) are said to fall in the '<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_isolate">isolated language group</a>'. Korean is the most illustrious member of the this group, and Basque comes a close second.<br /><br />Long before the idea of PIE came through, it had been established that all Romance/European languages had evolved from Latin. The link between Indo and European languages however was established by a genius philologist named William Jones. Apart from being a hyperpolyglot with working knowledge of close to thirty languages, he also founded the Asiatic Society in Calcutta. The thought of a possible connection between Sanskrit and Latin occured to him while translating Kalidas's <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Recognition_of_Sakuntala"><span>अभिज्ञान</span> <span>शाकुन्तलम्</span></a> to English. He came across the word <span style="font-style: italic;">ashva </span><span>(meaning horse) </span>in the Sanskrit text, and realized that the Latin for horse (<span style="font-style: italic;">eqqus</span>) linked linguistically to the Sanskritic word.<br /><br />During my recent foray into learning German language, I came across the word <a href="http://dict.tu-chemnitz.de/dings.cgi?lang=en&amp;service=deen&amp;opterrors=0&amp;optpro=0&amp;query=sammeln&amp;iservice=&amp;comment=&amp;email="><span style="font-style: italic;">Sammeln </span></a>while listening to a <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Btn-slYNxI">popular song</a> by <span style="font-style: italic;">Ich und Ich</span>. Looking up the word I was surprised to find that it means 'a gathering' in German (as a noun) . The Hindi - and possibly Sanskrit - word for 'gathering' is also spelled like its German counterpart - 'सम्मेलन' (the English-transliterated form being <a href="http://www.shabdkosh.com/en2hi/search.php?ts=1245560372787&amp;e=%E0%A4%B8%E0%A4%AE%E0%A5%8D%E0%A4%AE%E0%A5%87%E0%A4%B2%E0%A4%A8"><span style="font-style: italic;">Sammelan</span></a>). The pronunciation however is a bit different. Anyone with knowledge of Hindi will concur that this finding reinforces PIE hypotheses!<br /><br />Another interesting note: William Jones' father was a brilliant mathematician who is accredited with using the Greek letter <span class="mw-headline">'π'</span> for the first time to symbolize the mathematical constant 'pi'. Little did he know that his son will attain fame for his work on its homonym.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/20173384-8678706484782764819?l=apurvadubey.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Bloghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09797175671919103000noreply@blogger.com1