Deep connection between Sanskrit and Russian languages?

[Altair]

Recently I was reading a couple of books about Russian linguistics and the authors kept mentioning the book India & Russia - Linguistic & Cultural Affinity (Chandigarh, India: Roma Publications, 1982) written by Indian linguist Weer Rajendra Rishi. I was able to find only a small part of it and from what I read the linguistic connection between Sanskrit and Russian might indeed be much deeper than between Sanskrit and any other Indo-European language. So here are some interesting excerpts:

As mentioned in the preceding chapter both Russian and Sanskrit belong to the satem group of the Indo-European family of languages. This, however, creates one misunderstanding in one’s mind that the relation between Sanskrit and Russian is as distant one as that between Sansksit and other Indo-European languages. As will be explained in this chapter, the relation between these two languages is very close and correspondence between these two languages is so minute that, to use Dr. Sidheshwar Varma’s words, it cannot be a mere chance. The facts unfolded in this chapter are compulsory enough to lead us to conclude that during some period of history, the speakers of Sanskrit and Russian have lived close together.

In the sphere of vocabulary, there is such a large number of words which are common to these two languages that it has
not been possible to mention all of them in this chapter. Only a list of basic words common to both these two languages has
been given. Moreover, as explained in the succeeding paragraphs of this chapter many of the grammatical rules are
common to both these languages and the number of words common to these two languages formed after the application of
such common grammar rules could be further multiplied. This is not so when we compare Sanskrit with any other language
belonging to the Indo-European group, leaving aside Iranian and Persian...

That the melodiousness of the rhythm of the Russain folk lore and the Sanskrit verse synchronises with each other is confirmed by a news item published in the Soviet Land (No. 2 of January 1968) published by the Information Services of the Embassy of the USSR in India, New Delhi. It is stated that the style of the verse of Russian folk legends and Puskin's tales is closer to the rhythm of Sanskrit verse. Professor Smirnov (1892- 1967), the reputed Sanskritologist of the Soviet Union has translated Mahiibharata into Russian in this type of verse...

The origin of the Russian word gorod (Old Slavonic grad) meaning 'city' can also be traced. Originally in ancient Russia and in India the cities were built to serve as forts for protection and defence against aggression from an enemy. The corresponding word in Hindi is gadh which actually means 'fort'. In modern Russian the suffix -grad and in modern Hindi the suffix -gadh is used to form names of cities e.g. in Russia Leningrad (the city of Lenin), Peterograd (the city of Peter) and in India Bahadurgadh (the city of the Braves), Fategadh (the city of Victory).

In addition to the common vocabulary and common rules of grammar, even the methods of expression are common e.g. in Russian the word for 'year' is god. When used with numerals 'five' or more. the plural god used is let (which means 'summer'). 'He is hundred years of age' will be expressed in Russian as emu sto let (literally he is of hundred summers). This is also the case in Sanskrit. Varsha is the Sanskrit word for 'year'. But in Vedic hymns the plural word used for this is sarada (literally meaning 'autumn') e.g. in a prayer hymn it is said j'ircma sarada satam {May we live for hundred years - literally hundred autumns).

Both the Russian and Sanskrit languages are inflective i.e. nouns, pronouns, adjectives etc. are inflected or declined to give meanings of different cases in both singular and plural. Similarly, the verbs are also conjugated for use with 1st, 2nd and 3rd persons, singular and plural. Owing to this, the word order is more elastic and variable than in English, French or German. Inversion of sentence order i.e. object first, then verb and subject does not make any difference viz. in Russian malchika lyubili vse (all loved the child). Here the object malchika declined in accusative case has come first followed by the verb lyubili (loved) and the subject vse (all) in the end. This sentence could also be written in the usual order i.e. subject, verb and then the object vse lyubili malchika and also lyubili vse malchika etc. Similar is the case with Sanskrit...

Similarly to express means of transport, the noun is used in the instrumental case in both Russian and Sanskrit. In Russian "by train" will be translated poezdom (instrumental case of the noun poezd) and in Sanskrit 'by chariot' will be translated as rathena (instrumental case). Similarly both in Russian and in Sanskrit instrumental case is used in sentences like on pishet perom (he writes with a pen). Here perom is used in the instrumental case. In Sanskrit the sentence 'he plays with dice' will be expressed as akshai kri<fati. Here also akshai is in the instrumental case...

We will now examine the grammar rules which are common to both Russian and Sanskrit

Alphabet

The Russian alphabet contains tvyordi znilk (hard sign) 'ъ' This is also called 'separator' in English and is used mainly after prefixes ending in a hard consonant before the letters ya. ye, yo and yu. It indicates that the preceding consonant is hard (non-palatized). It is found in the middle of a word only, before a soft vowel (in compound words), where it shows that this soft vowel is sounded as a pure vowe] and that its softness has not been absorbed by the consonant before the tvyordi znak sign. In some texts this 'ъ' is replaced by an apostrophe (') in Roman transliteration e.g. ob'yasnit (to explain), ob'yom (size), sub'yekt (subject). Sanskrit has also got a similar sign 'S' called avagraha or 'separator'. This is used in printed texts to mark the elision of initial a after final e or c...

It is interesting to see that the separation sign both in Russian and Sanskrit are represented by almost identical signs 'ъ' in Russian and 'S' in Sanskrit and both are replaced by apostrophe (') in Roman transliteration.

Nouns pronouns and adjectives

Both in Russian and in Sanskrit nouns, pronouns and adjectives are declined into various cases according to number, singular and plural. It may be pointed out here that Sanskrit has in addition dual number (for two persons or things). The use of dual number is found in Old Slavonic but has disappeared in Russian as a regular grammatical feature.

Russian has the following cases:

Nominative Genetive Dative Accusative Instrumen and Locative

Sanskrit has the following cases : Nominative Accusative Instrumental Dative Ablative Genetive Locative Vocative

It will be seen that Russian has no ablative case. In Sanskrit ablative case is used to denote the sense of 'separa tion' e.g.' the flowers are falling from the creeper'. Here the 'creeper' in Sanskrit will be declined into ablative case. This sense is conveyed in Russian by using genetive case. In Russian, the vocative or exclamation case, has now been merged in the nominative. Only a few nouns have retained the vocative case e.g. Bog ! (god, nominative) and Bozhe !; (O God in vocative case) ; Gospod (Lord in nominative case) and Gospody, (O Lord in vocative case), Khristos (Christ in nominative case) and Khriste (O Christ in vocative case).

There are many· similarities between the Russian and Sanskrit declensions of nouns and pronouns. The similarities are enumerated as under.






Prefixes



Suffixes




Relations (Russian - Sanskrit - English)






This small excerpt from the book (it's only the 2nd chapter) can be found here.

 

[Altair]

There are also several articles on this topic written by a Russian linguist Constantine Borissoff.

Sanskrit, Russian, Lithuanian and Latin conjugations compared

In my previous post I gave a list of some Sanskrit-Russian cognate verbs which showed a remarkable phono-semantic affinity. This closeness also extends to grammatical endings. I would like to demonstrate it here taking as an example one Sanskrit verb jīvati ‘lives, is or remains alive’. For Russian I chose a less used form живать živat‘ which in modern Russian is predominantly used with prefixes e. g. про–живать pro–živat‘. It is an exact analogue of Sankrit jīvati and Avestan ǰvaiti. To make the comparison more obvious I also included Lithuanian and Latin cognates. Hopefully, this comparison is self-explanatory.

Some notes:

There are many theories on the nature of verbal systems in the ancient dialects that are commonly referred to as ‘Indo-European’ and ‘proto-Indo-European’. As I have already written in the comments, I do not accept the idea of a uniform ‘proto-language’. I do use these terms but only as ‘umbrella terms’ meaning a certain simplified generalisation.

There is a general consensus that ‘Indo-European’ verbs were conjugated (at least in the present tense) by person (First, Second and Third) and by number (Singular, Dual and Plural). These grammatical categories were expressed by means of special endings which were added to the verbal stem . It should be noted that ‘verbal stem’ as well as ‘verbal root’ are abstractions. For example, ancient Sanskrit grammarians did not single out the root. Instead they operated with dhātu ‘constituent part, ingredient, element’. The notion of a verbal root was brought in by Western scholars inspired by Semitic monosyllabic CVC (consonant-vowel-consonant) roots. So when we see in a modern dictionary a root jīv, according to Pāṇini, this would be a dhātu jīva ‘living, existing, alive’. From the point of Western linguists it would be viewed as a CVC root jīv + a so-called ‘thematic vowel‘ –a. Together they would form a ‘stem’ which may be taken as an equivalent of dhātu. For convenience I mark the root in italic, thematic vowel in blue and the personal ending in red. I also added hypothetical (reconstructed) thematic vowels and personal endings based on a more traditional interpretation of Fortson (Indo-European Language and Culture. Blackwell Publishing. 2004).

Transliteration:

Sanskrit j is [ɟ͡ʝ] (similar to j in jam], ḥ is a visarga ‘sending forth, letting go, liberation, emission, discharge’. It is a voiceless ‘breath out’ like an energetic [h]. In certain positions at words conjunctions visarga becomes /s/ or /r/. Long vowels are marked with a bar above so ī is [i:]. Because Russian stressed vowels are primarily characterised by length, I transliterate them in the similar manner so ā is a stressed a . By the way, Sanskrit a अ should be pronounced as [ɐ] or [ə] which exactly corresponds to the Russian unstressed a.

I transliterate here Cyrillic using the same system of Latin transliteration as commonly used for Devanāgarī so Russian ш [ʂ] commonly transliterated as š or sh, appears here as ṣ. This is particularly justified because Sanskrit ṣ is also a retroflex sibilant. Also I transliterate here ж [ʒ] (ž or zh) as j. However, Lithuanian j is [j]. Lithuanian g is [g] and y is [iː].




Russian – Sanskrit verbs

This is a short list of some most obvious Russian – Sanskrit cognate verbs. Since one should compare similar forms, I give Russian verbs in the same format as Sanskrit verbs are presented in traditional dictionaries (for example in Monier Williams’ Sanskrit-English Dictionary): verbal root – 3rd person, singular, Present Tense form. For a comparison of conjugation paradigms see my other post. See also the Russian – Sanskrit nouns

Transliteration.

Sanskrit: ā, ī, ū – long sounds; ṛ = ri (a short i similar to Rus. soft рь/r‘); c=ch; j similar to j in “jam”; ṣ similar to sh; ś a subtler sort of sh, closer to German /ch/ as in ich .

Russian: š = sh; č = ch; ž is similar to the g in genre. Vowels generally correspond with the exception of ɨ which is a sort of ‘hard’ i sounding somewhat similar to unstressed i in Eng. it . Stressed vowels are lengthened and resemble Sanskrit ‘long’ vowels.

Russian is a fully Satem language and most of Russian sounds have direct correspondences in Sanskrit. There are a few exceptions, though. Sanskrit does not have the sound z so Russian z corresponds to either Skr. h (Rus. zima = Skr. hima ‘winter’) or j (Rus. znati = Skr. janati ‘to know – (he) knows’). Russian is similar to Avestan in this respect. As it regularly happens in Sanskrit, sounds rand l are often interchangeable : Rus luč = Skr. ruc ‘ray – shine’. Russian shares with Sanskrit such a feature as the iotation of vowels. Any vowel can be iotated by merging with a preceding palatal approximant /j/. Traditionally, Sanskrit iotated vowels are transliterated as ya, yo, ye etc. while their Russian analogues – as ja, jo, je… . To avoid confusion with Skr j (sounding similar to j in jam), I transliterate Rus. iotated vowels here in the Sanskrit way also as ya, yo, ye. etc.





Russian – Sanskrit nouns

Еhis is a list of some most obvious Russian – Sanskrit cognate nouns. It is only a short-list in which I give only the generally accepted cognate pairs having the rating 5 & 6. Since one should compare similar forms, I give Russian nouns in a special transcription, approximated to Sanskrit Latin transliteration.

Transliteration and transcription

See the full transliteration table: Abbreviations & Transliteration

Crash course:

Sanskrit: ā, ī, ū – long sounds; ṛ = ri (a short i similar to Rus. soft рь/r‘); c=ch; j similar to j in “jam”; ṣ similar to sh; ś a subtler sort of sh, closer to German /ch/ as in ich and Rus. щ

Russian: ш = š = sh = ṣ ; ч =č = ch = c; ж = ž = zh = j, щ = šč = ś (a subtler sort of sh, closer to German /ch/ as in ich). Vowels generally correspond with the exception of ɨ which is a sort of ‘hard’ i sounding somewhat similar to unstressed i in Eng. it . Stressed vowels are lengthened and resemble Sanskrit ‘long’ vowels.

In the Russian transcription y after a consonant stands for a soft sign. It renders the consonants ‘soft’. The opposition between plain (hard) and soft consonants (e.g. t – t’) resemble the opposition of dental and retroflex consonants in Sanskrit (e. g. t – ṭ). In fact, there are some interesting correlations between Russian soft consonants and Sanskrit retroflex consonants. Compare Rus. рать rat’ (rāty) ‘war, battle ‘ and Skr. राटि rāṭi ‘war, battle ‘ (root rāṭ).

Russian is a fully Satem language and most of Russian sounds have direct correspondences in Sanskrit. There are a few exceptions, though. Sanskrit does not have the sound z so Russian z corresponds to either Skr. h (Rus. zima = Skr. hima ‘winter’) or j (Rus. znati = Skr. janati ‘to know – (he) knows’). Russian is similar to Avestan in this respect. As it regularly happens in Sanskrit, sounds rand l are often interchangeable : Rus luč = Skr. ruc ‘ray – shine’. Russian shares with Sanskrit such a feature as the iotation of vowels. Any vowel can be iotated by merging with a preceding palatal approximant /j/. Traditionally, Sanskrit iotated vowels are transliterated as ya, yo, ye etc. while their Russian analogues – as ja, jo, je… . To avoid confusion with Skr j (sounding similar to j in jam), I transliterate Rus. iotated vowels here in the Sanskrit way also as ya, yo, ye. etc.








See the full list in the source article.

 

[Altair]

Sanskrit and Russian cognates compared in respect of Lithuanian, Greek, Latin, Gothic and Old German

I would like to demonstrate here the remarkable phonetic affinity between Sanskrit and Russian taking two dozen of unquestionable cognate pairs as examples. It is well known that all Indo-European languages contain a greater or lesser number of common words but only Slavonic and, to a lesser degree, Baltic languages approximate Sanskrit to such an extent that in me instances the difference between certain Slavonic languages could be greater than between some Slavonic languages and Sanskrit.

Take the word for `spindle’: Sanskrit vartana, Russian vereteno, Bulgarian. vretе́no, Slovenian vreténo, Czech vřeteno, Polish wrzeciono, Upper Sorbian wrjećeno and Lower Sorbian rjeśeno. The phonetic shape of cognates in other Indo-European languages differs considerably.

A good example is the word `alive’: Sanskrit jīva, Russian živ, Lithuanian gývas, Greek bíos, Latin vīvus, Irish biu, Gothic qius, Old High German quес, and English quick.

Transliteration notes

Sanskrit: ā, ī, ū – long sounds; ṛ = ri (a short i similar to Rus. soft рь/r‘); c=ch; j similar to j in “jam”; ṣ similar to sh; ś a subtler sort of sh, closer to German /ch/ as in ich.

Russian: š similar to sh; č = ch; ž = like g in garage , the vowel y is a sort of ‘hard’ i sounding somewhat similar to unstressed i in Eng. it . the sign ‘ indicates softness and stands for a very short i. Vowels with j are iotated so ju would be similar to Eng. you and Skr. yu etc.



Note that we compare the attested languages and not hypothetical "reconstructions" however, according to Antoine Meillet:

“[..] Baltic and Slavic show the common trait of never having undergone in the course of their development any sudden systemic upheaval. […] there is no indication of a serious dislocation of any part of the linguistic system at any time. The sound structure has in general remained intact to the present. […] Baltic and Slavic are consequently the only languages in which certain modern word-forms resemble those reconstructed for Common Indo-European.” ( The Indo-European Dialects [Eng. translation of Les dialectes indo-européens (1908)], University of Alabama Press, 1967, pp. 59-60).

 

[Altair]

And there could even be some cultural connection. Constantine Borissoff compares Russian and Indian embroidery:


Going through some old Russian journals I came across an article by Svetlana Žarnikova (Zharnikova) “Kto my v ėtoj Evrope [Who are we in this Europe]”. Nauka i žizn’, Issue No. 5, 1997.

Žarnikova is known as one of the Russian protagonists of the controversial “Hyperborean theory” which develops the ideas of Bal Gangadhar Tilak expressed in his famous book The Arctic Home in the Vedas. Leaving aside this questionable theory I would like to quote a translation of this interesting passage from Žarnikova’s article:

In June 1993 we, a group of scientists and ethnologists from the Vologda region and our guests – a folklore group from India (West Bengali State), were travelling on a ship along the Sukhona [my comment: compare Skt. sukha सुख ‘running swiftly or easily; agreeable, gentle, mild’ + the common adjective suffix –na] river heading from Vologda to Velikiy Ustyug. […]

The motor ship was moving slowly along the beautiful northern river. We watched the flower-covered fields, century-old pine trees, country houses: two-three storied countryside mansions, the striped steep river banks, the silent smoothness of the water and admired the enchanting quietness of the northern ‘white nights’.

Together we marvelled at how much we had in common. We, the Russians, were surprised how our Indian guests could repeat after us the words of a popular Russian song practically without any accent. They, the Indians, were amazed how familiar the names of rivers and villages sounded to them. And then together we examined the embroideries made in the villages by which our ship was passing. It is difficult to describe the feeling that one experiences when the guests from a far-away country exclaimed interrupting each other pointing at the embroideries “This we have in Orissa, and this one he have in Rajasthan and this is similar to what they make in Bihar, that one – in Gujarat and this one – with us in Bengal”. We were very glad to feel the strong ties connecting us with our distant common ancestors through the millennia.

It is not in my nature to take things for granted so I have done a little research into this area and here are some of the results.

Before starting with it, I think that it is appropriate to mention that the Russian for ’embroidery’ is vyshivka вышивка where shiv is the root = Skt. siv सिव् ‘to sew, sew on, darn, stitch’, the first element is the prefix vy– which is identical to Skt. prefix vi– वि . Those who know Sanskrit will not need an interpreter to understand the Rus. vyshivka, especially if we write it down in Devanagari: विषिव्क (viṣivka) since in Skt. there is विषिव् (viṣiv) meaning `to sew or sew on in different places’. The last bit –ka is a very productive common Slavonic – Indo-Aryan suffix with a general meaning ‘similar to, like’. So विषिव्क (viṣivka) literally means ‘like sewing on in different places = embroidery’.

As the main source of information on Russian embroidery I took the academic study by Boguslavskaja, I. J. Russkaja narodnaja vyšivka [Russian embroidery]. Moskva: Izdatel’stvo “Iskusstvo”,1972.

For Indian embroidery I had to search the internet and found the following sites:

Beautiful Hand Embroidered Indian Sari

http://birdsofoh.blogspot.co.uk/2011/01/kasuti-traditional-embroidery-from.html

First I give the embroidery patterns from Žarnikova’s article:


Left: stylised embroidery from the Vologda Region (19th cent.) and Indian embroidery of the same period (right).


Top: Embroidery theme from Northern Russia. Bottom: Indian embroidery theme.

Vologda Region embroidery patterns (19th cent.)

Now let us compare some other embroideries from Russia and India:


Left: Woman’s head gear “kokoshnik“. The 18-th century. Vladimirskaya province (?). Gold needle work on dark-red velevet. Russian State Museum (Boguslavskaja 1975 fig. 105) and (right) “The embroidery technique used on Jayashree’s sari is called Kasuthi. It’s a technique that originated in the Hubli Dharwad region in North Karnataka around a thousand years ago, and is quite similar to blackwork.” (quoted from Beautiful Hand Embroidered Indian Sari.)

Compare also this typical old Russian embroidery with the same symmetrical motif an the identical ‘roof’ element:


Valance. The 19-th century. Pskovskaya province (?). Embroidered with double running stitch in red cotton threads on flaxen cloth. 262 X 21.3. Detail. Russian State Museum (Boguslavskaja 1975 fig. 17).

The top elements bear a striking resemblance to the śrīvatsa श्रीवत्स / triratna त्रिरत्न symbol and are most probably historically related:


Note the central pattern design made of a rhombus with an X-like cross and flowers in the middle. This is an ancient fertility symbol in which the rhombus represents the female reproductive organ, the X-like cross symbolises the male productive force and it is well known to Indians as vajrākṛti वज्राकृति ‘shaped like a thunderbolt or vajra, having transverse lines a cross-shaped symbol (formerly used in grammars to denote jihvāmūlīyas’ (Monier-Williams, M. A Sanskrit-English Dictionary: Etymological and Philologically Arranged With Special Reference to Cognate Indo-European Languages. Oxford University Press, 1899, p. 914).

Jihvāmūlīya was an ancient Vedic Sanskrit letter for a velarised voiceless fricative [x] identical to modern Russian x. Interestingly, in writing jihvāmūlīya was exactly the same as the Russian letter: X (Müller, F. M. A Sanskrit Grammar for Beginners in Devanagari and Roman Letters Throughout. (Reprinted edition). New Dehli–Chennai: Asian Educational Services, 2004{[1870]}, p. 5). The flowers in the sections of the rhombus symbolised the new life.


The full significance of this symbolic design is obvious from this wonderful ‘Mother Goddess’ statuette from the Cucuteni-Trypillian culture (approximately 4800 to 3000 BC). (Source: File:MotherGoddessFertility.JPG - Wikipedia)

Importantly, this is not some “odd” design. It is persistent on may similar figurines found in the area.


Source: Бурдо, Н. Б. & Видейко, М. Ю.
«Погребенные дома» и ритуал сожжения поселений Кукутень-Триполья
Культурные взаимодействия. Динамика и смыслы. Сборник статей в честь 60-летия И. В. Манзуры, Stratum plus Journal, 2016, 175–191

Compare also the swastika from a later period placed into the female generative organ (Wilson, T. The Swastika. The Earliest Known Symbol, and Its Migration; with Observations on the Migration of Certain Industries in Prehistoric Times, Washington: Government Printing Office, 1896, p. 826) :

This ancient auspicious symbol was later split into two Swastikas (so brutally and shamelessly desecrated by the Nazis!) pointing into opposite directions as the representation of the eternal cycle of life and death and the life-giving unity of the male and female elements:

The crossed rhomb symbol and swastika have been widely used side by side in russian embroidery. See the women’s dress on the left:

Next comes the traditional Kasuti embroidery with this characteristic cross-like design which is, in fact, a variation of the above fertility symbol:

(http://birdsofoh.blogspot.co.uk/2011/01/kasuti-traditional-embroidery-from.html) See more wonderful Kasuti patterns here:

http://www.pinterest.com/isiscat/embroidery-indian-kasuti-patterns/

The same element is clearly seen in the centre and flower-like elements in this Russian embroidery:

Valance. The 19-th century. Olonetskaya province. Embroidered with a double running stitch in a combination of red cotton threads and coloured wool on flaxen cloth. 18 6 X 3 7 . Russian State Museum (Boguslavskaja 1975 fig. 22).

This pattern is also built around the ancient fertility theme: the two horses (each of them having their own life-force or seeds of life, represented by the flower-like design) are united to produce a new life (the flower design in the middle) which grows up in the form of the śrīvatsa श्रीवत्स / triratna त्रिरत्न . This design represents the fundamental idea: “division of the divine nature between a god and a goddess who, together with their child, form a natural trinity, glorifying and repeating on their divine plane the life of the human family” (Waites, M. C. “The Deities of the Sacred Axe”. American Journal of Archaeology, Archaeological Institute of America, 1923, 27, 25-56, p.34) . See more fertility related embroideries at pinterest.com.

This is only a brief comparison on a limited material but it fully confirms Žarnikova’s words and looking at this wonderful affinity I too could share the feeling of “the strong ties connecting us with our distant common ancestors through the millennia”.

 

[Chu]

Well, that's quite convincing... I wonder how that "messes up" (if it does) the Indo-European language tree. The connection between Latin&Greek and Sanskrit is more "famous", yet, this sort of debunks it. But it makes sense that the connection would be deeper with Russian, since they are both "satem languages".

Related to these types of connections, I recently watched an old documentary which I found to be very interesting, and often I kept agreeing with the "debunkers" (starting roughly at minute 50).

The thing is that, as far as I understand, linguists take the common roots, similarities and common patters to mean that there IS an "ancestor" somewhere in there. But the more I read, the more I get the feeling that they are suffering from Darwinism! Especially when you take theories like Abraham Abhesera's (I posted a bit about it here and here.) Perhaps all those common elements bespeak of how our brains are "antennae", and how we pick up information and communicate, more than they tell us something about a common original language from 3000 BC (Indo-European) or as far as some claim they can reconstruct it (all the "Proto-this", "proto-that", which are all extinct and usually brought up when linguists find a big gap between a modern language and an attested older one. That may be cheating!) On top of that, I think that changes over time usually tend to "degrade" (simplify) language, not improve it or make it more complex (similar to what happens with mutations in organisms).

Just some thought on the matter, anyway!

 

[Cosmos]

But the more I read, the more I get the feeling that they are suffering from Darwinism!

Although I haven't studied linguistics in any great detail, I also get the slight impression that quite a lot of it is informed by Darwinism, as is pretty much anything else you can point to! Darwinism is really a success story in derailing so many fields of inquiry and thinking into over simplified/linear/materialistic ways of looking at them. Kinda crazy.

 

[Gruchaa]

I read the linguistic connection between Sanskrit and Russian might indeed be much deeper than between Sanskrit and any other Indo-European language.

I read somwhere that Sanskrit is very similar also to most of the Slavic languages. Here you have some polish examples:

sto	śata	hundred	centum
matka (st.pol. macierz bądź mać)	maat.r	mother	mater
brat	bhrat.r	brother	frater
być/jest	bhuu/bhavati as/asti	be/is	fuisse/est
dwa	dva	two	duo
trzy	tri

 

[Chu]

Although I haven't studied linguistics in any great detail, I also get the slight impression that quite a lot of it is informed by Darwinism, as is pretty much anything else you can point to! Darwinism is really a success story in derailing so many fields of inquiry and thinking into over simplified/linear/materialistic ways of looking at them. Kinda crazy.

You can say that again! And there are two types of "evolution" to look at: First, the evolution of our capacity for language. You can imagine how absurd their theories can be regarding why and how we "evolved" to be able to use language, one tiny step at a time, one mutation at a time, etc. etc. . Yet, if there was ever "irreducible complexity", I would say that's in language. It's hard to imagine dissociating pure words from syntax, concepts, articulation, perception, abstract thinking, "mental grammar", etc.

And second, the evolution of languages themselves. I haven't dug up near enough on this, but like I said, something seems too farfetched. We find more examples of languages being simplified than becoming more complex over time. For example, English used to have 3 cases, and now none (except for the traces that are still present in personal pronouns, like "I/me/my, he/his/him".) It's similar for Romance languages, while Latin used to have 8 cases.

Then you have super "unique" languages whose complexity is mind-blowing, like Basque, which is a "mystery" in terms of its origins, and has 15 cases plus a bunch of different rules (a noun can have up to 64 inflections, I think). Or Tsez (spoken in Dagestan, Russia), with 64 cases. And then, languages that are in Europe, but are not Indo-European, like Finnish (15 cases), Hungarian (18 cases) and Estonian (14 cases). AFAIK at least some of them arose much later than Indo-European (and yet, they are more "complex" even today). Are they old "branches" that stayed isolated? Do they tell us something about a non-linear "language download", as if humans of all kinds had been set here by intelligent design, with different software for using language? I don't know.

And that is just for cases (here is a cool map, if you are interested), but there are a thousand other things you can compare, and very little shows that languages tend to "evolve" in the sense of becoming richer and more complex (except perhaps in terms of vocabulary?). One of the problems is, IMO, that you cannot take languages as you study a living organism, because the human factor is huge (migrations, cultural/economical domination, imitation of the more powerful, vernaculars depending on the period, people creating a normative grammar, etc.). So, I find it's all quite puzzling, but I really don't know enough about it yet. I guess that what I'm trying to say is that, although there is a progression/derivation (I wouldn't call it "evolution"), and you can link well attested languages (like say, Spanish to Latin), when it comes to tracing them way further back, there is too much guessing going on.

 

[Chu]

On the link between Sanskrit and Russian, what David Reich says in Who We Are and How We Got Here is quite interesting, and IMO gives validity to the argument that there IS a strong correlation between the two:

In 1987, Colin Renfrew proposed a unified theory for how Indo-European languages attained their current distribution. In his book Archaeology and Language: The Puzzle of Indo-European Origins, he suggested that the homogeneity of language across such a vast stretch of Eurasia today could be explained by one and the same event: the spread from Anatolia after nine thousand years ago of peoples bringing agriculture.40 His argument was rooted in the idea that farming would have given Anatolians an economic advantage that would have allowed new populations to spread massively into Europe. Anthropological studies have consistently shown that major migrations of people are necessary to achieve language change in small-scale societies, so a phenomenon as profound as the spread of Indo-European languages was likely to have been propelled by mass migration. Since there was no good archaeological evidence for a later major migration into Europe, and since once densely settled farming populations were established it was difficult to imagine how other groups could gain a foothold, Renfrew and scholars who followed him concluded that the spread of farming was probably what brought Indo-European languages to Europe.

Renfrew’s logic was compelling given the data he had available at the time, but the argument that the spread of farming from Anatolia drove the spread of Indo-European languages into Europe has been undermined by the findings from studies of ancient DNA, which showed that a mass movement of people into central Europe occurred after five thousand years ago in association with the Corded Ware culture. By arguing from first principles—that after the spread of farming into Europe it would not have been demographically plausible for there to have been another migration substantial enough to induce a language shift—Renfrew constructed a compelling case for the Anatolian hypothesis, which won many adherents. But theory is always trumped by data, and the data show that the Yamnaya also made a major demographic impact—in fact, it is clear that the single most important source of ancestry across northern Europe today is the Yamnaya or groups closely related to them. This suggests that the Yamnaya expansion likely spread a major new group of languages throughout Europe. The ubiquity of Indo-European languages in Europe over the last few thousand years, and the fact that the Yamnaya-related migration was more recent than the farming one, makes it likely that at least some Indo-European languages in Europe, and perhaps all of them, were spread by the Yamnaya.

The main counterargument to the Anatolian hypothesis is the steppe hypothesis—the idea that Indo-European languages spread from the steppe north of the Black and Caspian seas. The best single argument for the steppe hypothesis prior to the availability of genetic data may be the one constructed by David Anthony, who has shown that the shared vocabulary of the great majority of present-day Indo-European languages is unlikely to be consistent with their having originated much earlier than about six thousand years ago. His key observation is that all extant branches of the Indo-European language family except for the most anciently diverging Anatolian ones that are now extinct (such as ancient Hittite) have an elaborate shared vocabulary for wagons, including words for axle, harness pole, and wheels. Anthony interpreted this sharing as evidence that all Indo-European languages spoken today, from India in the east to the Atlantic fringe in the west, descend from a language spoken by an ancient population that used wagons. This population could not have lived much earlier than about six thousand years ago, since we know from archaeological evidence that it was around then that wheels and wagons spread. This date rules out the Anatolian farming expansion into Europe between nine thousand and eight thousand years ago. The obvious
candidate for dispersing most of today’s Indo-European languages is thus the Yamnaya, who depended on the technology of wagons and wheels that became widespread around five thousand years ago.

That there could have been a massive enough migration by steppe pastoralists to displace settled agricultural populations, and thereby distribute a new language, seems on the face of it even more implausible for India than for Europe. India is protected from the steppe by the high mountains of Afghanistan, whereas there is no similar barrier protecting Europe. Yet the steppe pastoralists broke through to India too. As is related in the next chapter, almost everyone in India is a mixture of two highly divergent ancestral populations, one of which derived about half its ancestry directly from the Yamnaya.

While the genetic findings point to a central role for the Yamnaya in spreading Indo-European languages, tipping the scales definitively in favor of some variant of the steppe hypothesis, those findings do not yet resolve the question of the homeland of the original Indo-European languages, the place where these languages were spoken before the Yamnaya so dramatically expanded. Anatolian languages known from four-thousand-year-old tablets recovered from the Hittite Empire and neighboring ancient cultures did not share the full wagon and wheel vocabulary present in all Indo-European languages spoken today. Ancient DNA available from this time in Anatolia shows no evidence of steppe ancestry similar to that in the Yamnaya (although the evidence here is circumstantial as no ancient DNA from the Hittites themselves has yet been published). This suggests to me that the most likely location of the population that first spoke an Indo-European language was south of the Caucasus Mountains, perhaps in present-day Iran or Armenia, because ancient DNA from people who lived there matches what we would expect for a source population both for the Yamnaya and for ancient Anatolians. If this scenario is right, the population sent one branch up into the steppe—mixing with steppe hunter-gatherers in a one-to-one ratio to become the Yamnaya as described earlier—and another to Anatolia to found the ancestors of people there who spoke languages such as Hittite.

To an outsider, it might seem surprising that DNA can have a definitive impact on a debate about language. DNA cannot of course reveal what languages people spoke. But what genetics can do is to establish that migrations occurred. If people moved, it means that cultural contact occurred too—in other words, genetic tracing of migrations makes it possible also to trace potential spreads of culture and language. By tracing possible migration paths and ruling out others, ancient DNA has ended a decades-old stalemate in the controversy regarding the origins of Indo-European languages. The Anatolian hypothesis has lost its best evidence, and the most common version of the steppe hypothesis—which suggests that the ultimate origin of all Indo-European languages including ancient Anatolian languages was in the steppe—has to be modified too. DNA has emerged as central to the new synthesis of genetics, archaeology, and linguistics that is now replacing outdated theories.

Composed between four thousand and three thousand years ago in Old Sanskrit, the Rig Veda was passed down orally for some two thousand years before being written down, much like the Iliad and Odyssey in Greece, which were composed several hundred years later in another early Indo-European language. The Rig Veda is an extraordinary window into the past, as it provides a glimpse of what Indo-European culture might have been like in a period far closer in time to when these languages radiated from a common source. But what did the stories of the Rig Veda have to do with real events? Who were the dasa, who were the arya, and where were the fortresses located? Did anything like this really happen?

[...] Around this time, the Rig Veda was composed in Old Sanskrit, a language that is ancestral to the great majority of languages spoken in northern India today and that had diverged in the millennium before the Rig Veda was composed from the languages spoken in Iran. Indo-Iranian languages are in turn cousins of almost all of the languages spoken in Europe and with them make up the great Indo-European language family. The religion of the Rig Veda, with its pantheon of deities governing nature and regulating society, had unmistakable similarities to the mythology of other parts of Indo-European Eurasia, including Iran, Greece, and Scandinavia, providing further evidence of cultural links across vast expanses of Eurasia. [...] In the Rig Veda, the invaders had horses and chariots. We know from archaeology that the Indus Valley Civilization was a pre-horse society. There is no clear evidence of horses at their sites, nor are there remains of spoke-wheeled vehicles, although there are clay figurines of wheeled carts pulled by cattle.8 Horses and spoke-wheeled chariots were the weapons of mass destruction of Bronze Age Eurasia. Did the Indo-Aryans use their military technology to put an end to the old Indus Valley Civilization?
[...]


The Yamnaya—who the genetic data show were closely related to the source of the steppe ancestry in both India and Europe—are obvious candidates for spreading Indo-European languages to both these subcontinents of Eurasia. Remarkably, Patterson’s analysis of population history in India provided an additional line of evidence for this. His model of the Indian Cline was based on the idea of a simple mixture of two ancestral populations, the ANI and ASI. But when he looked harder and tested each of the Indian Cline groups in turn for whether it fit this model, he found that there were six groups that did not fit in the sense of having a higher ratio of steppe-related to Iranian farmer–related ancestry than was expected from this model. All six of these groups are in the Brahmin varna—with a traditional role in society as priests and custodians of the ancient texts written in the Indo-European Sanskrit language—despite the fact that Brahmins made up only about 10 percent of the groups Patterson tested. A natural explanation for this was that the ANI were not a homogeneous population when they mixed with the ASI, but instead contained socially distinct subgroups with characteristic ratios of steppe to Iranian-related ancestry. The people who were custodians of Indo-European language and culture were the ones with relatively more steppe ancestry, and because of the extraordinary strength of the caste system in preserving ancestry and social roles over generations, the ancient substructure in the ANI is evident in some of today’s Brahmins even after thousands of years. This finding provides yet another line of evidence for the steppe hypothesis, showing that not just Indo-European languages, but also Indo-European culture as reflected in the religion preserved over thousands of years by Brahmin priests, was likely spread by peoples whose ancestors originated in the steppe.

So, it's quite likely, IMHO. If the influence is mainly from the Yamnaya, just looking at the map above one can see a possible explanation for some of the other similarities between Indo-European languages, as the Yamnaya also supposedly migrated west, although their influence may be more "washed out" compared to the resemblance between Sanskrit and Latin&Greek, for example. Perhaps the casts and more isolation preserved the "legacy" better...

 

[Altair]

You can say that again! And there are two types of "evolution" to look at: First, the evolution of our capacity for language. You can imagine how absurd their theories can be regarding why and how we "evolved" to be able to use language, one tiny step at a time, one mutation at a time, etc. etc. . Yet, if there was ever "irreducible complexity", I would say that's in language. It's hard to imagine dissociating pure words from syntax, concepts, articulation, perception, abstract thinking, "mental grammar", etc.

Speaking of creation and evolution of languages I find this C's quote particularly interesting:

Q: Change of subject: I am tracking the clues through the various languages and alphabets. I would like to know which of these alphabets, Runic, Greek, or Etruscan, preceded the others, and from which the others are derived?

A: Etruscan.

Q: Well, who were the Etruscans?

A: Templar carriers.

Q: What does that mean?

A: Seek and ye shall find.

Q: Well, how am I supposed to do that? I can't find anything else on the Etruscans!

A: No.

Q: What do you mean 'no?' You mean there is more out there on the Etruscans?

A: Yes.

Q: Okay. What are Templar carriers?

A: Penitent Avian Lords.

Q: What does that mean?

A: For your search. All is drawn from some more ancient form.

Q: Okay, let's leave that for now. I was digging into the Sanskrit alphabet and found that it says that it was essentially 'invented' by the great Hindu grammarian, Panani, which means that it may simply be arbitrary. And, for some reason, digging into it further does not seem to interest me...

A: Because you have not yet connected these dots.

Q: Oh, so it will be part of the picture eventually. Well, okay. We will deal with it when it comes up. Next: I notice that Sargon the Great is sort of an unknown person in historical terms. He is the first great 'Akkadian' king of Sumeria, but no one knows exactly where the term 'Akkadian' came from nor where 'Akkad' even was. Who was this Sargon?

A: Deep level punctuator.

Q: What?!? What does THAT mean?

A: What does it imply?

Q: Well, punctuation is a way of dealing with language, grammar...

A: Beginning or end.

Q: You guys are making me completely crazy! I will never figure all of this out!

A: All is within your grasp.

Q: Well, I think that a HUGE key is in the tracking of the languages...

A: The roots of all languages are identical...

Q: What do you mean?

A: Your origin.

Q: You mean Atlantis?

A: Is that your origin?

Q: You mean Orion?

A: Interesting the word root similarity, yes?

Q: Well, the word root similarities of a LOT of things are VERY interesting! It is AMAZING the things I have discovered by tracking word roots...

A: The architects of your languages left clues aplenty. And, you have the rare opportunity to learn far more of this by being taught to speak and understand other languages. WE suggest you work to penetrate the STS implanted resistance in this area.

So I assume that creators of human languages must be someone from higher densities who are also able to influence our DNA (as was indicated in previous sessions). And applying "as above so below" analogy one can compare human (or created for humans) languages and programming languages created by humans for their own creations (computers).

Programming languages are similar to human languages since they also are systems of symbols with their own semantics, syntax and vocabulary. And they also build language families:

Source: History of Programming Languages by Ursula Lewis

On the other hand, they are very rudimentary having much less complex grammar and very few "words". For example, Java's "basic vocabulary" has only plus/minus 51 reserved words. But it's of course enough for the purpose of Java and other programming languages - namely for describing algorithms that can be understood by computers and other humans. There is no morphology, synonyms, emotional aspects in programming languages and their rules are very strict compared to human languages.

If, for example, Microsoft or Google create (infuse into information field) a new programming language, other people who find it useful, robust and promising pick them up from the information field and start using them. There are 200-300 programming languages but only a few very popular:


And this popularity distribution changes every year. New languages are being created, some are becoming outdated and even extinct as soon as people stop using them. It's a constant flow between information field and its receptors (humans).

And similarly, I think, it may work for human languages and their architects (from higher densities).

 

[N1mTzo]

There are many videos on YouTube where Svetlana Zharnikova talks about the kinship of the Russian language and Sanskrit. Perhaps it will be more convenient for some to watch the video rather than read linguistic books (they are difficult to read for a non-specialist)

Unfortunately, Zharnikova died several years ago.


In addition, the KALASH (КАЛАШ на русском) people live in modern Pakistan - these are blue-eyed and fair-haired people who have preserved the culture and customs of our ancestors. There is also a video about Kalash on Youtube (there are few of them, but they are).

 

[Obi]

The thing is that, as far as I understand, linguists take the common roots, similarities and common patters to mean that there IS an "ancestor" somewhere in there. But the more I read, the more I get the feeling that they are suffering from Darwinism! Especially when you take theories like Abraham Abhesera's (I posted a bit about it here and here.) Perhaps all those common elements bespeak of how our brains are "antennae", and how we pick up information and communicate, more than they tell us something about a common original language from 3000 BC (Indo-European) or as far as some claim they can reconstruct it (all the "Proto-this", "proto-that", which are all extinct and usually brought up when linguists find a big gap between a modern language and an attested older one. That may be cheating!) On top of that, I think that changes over time usually tend to "degrade" (simplify) language, not improve it or make it more complex (similar to what happens with mutations in organisms).

Just some thought on the matter, anyway!

This Indo-European or more precisely Aryan language is a fascinating topic. I am studying it since 2 years and it is amazing what kind of connections I was able to make. I find the current Indo-European language tree quite incorrect and there is a plenty of proof in research papers.

My starting point was this article:

European and Asian languages have one mother tongue

Most of the modern languages in Eurasia can be traced back to a single mother tongue that existed around the time of the last ice age

www.newscientist.com

Quote:
"We are more connected than you think. Seven families of languages across the Eurasian continent, containing tongues as diverse as modern Inuit, Tamil, Japanese, Greek and Hungarian, evolved from a single language that existed around the time of the last ice age. That’s the conclusion of research that has traced linguistics thousands of years deeper into the past than was previously thought possible.

The evolution of language is thought to have much in common with biological evolution. Scientists look for similarities between languages that hint at a common ancestor. Just as a fused bone or an extra finger in two species could suggest they shared a common ancestor, two words that have the same meaning and a similar sound in different languages – known as cognates – may indicate the same thing. For example, “brother” in English, “bhratar” in Sanskrit, “frater” in Latin and “frère” in French are all cognates."

So, there is some "scientific" research backing up the possibility of many of the modern languages descending form one common proto-language spoken around the end of the last Ice Age. I even have an idea which modern language is the closest to the original Aryan language spoken across the Eurasia 12K years ago and earlier. But that's just a theory I entertain

 

[Obi]

So, it's quite likely, IMHO. If the influence is mainly from the Yamnaya, just looking at the map above one can see a possible explanation for some of the other similarities between Indo-European languages, as the Yamnaya also supposedly migrated west, although their influence may be more "washed out" compared to the resemblance between Sanskrit and Latin&Greek, for example. Perhaps the casts and more isolation preserved the "legacy" better...

Indeed, the Yamnaya culture was the source of IE language. Interesting that Scythians are said to have descend from Yamnaya via Srubnaya culture ( Srubnaya culture - Wikipedia ). Did Scythians speak IE? I would imagine that being the case.

Who created Roman Empire and who influenced its language (Latin)? Etruscans naturally. Latin has plenty of Etruscan words in it. It even inherited its agglutination. Unlike all modern IE languages Latin is an agglutinative language and there are only 2 or 3 other agglutinative languages in Europe: Hungarian, Finish and Estonian (I believe). Is it possible that Latin is an agglutinative language because Etruscan was one as well? Could be. But what language Etruscan is similar to? Hard to tell, but some Italians have some crazy ideas about it like prof. Mario Alinei, who claims to have translated some early Etruscan inscriptions based on Hungarian.

There is also genetic study of Etruscans and it has some very interesting implications:
Quote:
Could it be that the genetic data would confirm the linguistic theory so thoroughly dismissed by most of the linguists? The explosion of the genetical studies we are experiencing brings results from a completely different angle. Below is a table found in the following citation, which is equipped with all the details of the methology, criteria, results and conclusions. For a preview, here is a table showing that a virtual Etruscan, averaged over the breadth of the sample and over a period of 5 centuries, was genetically composed of ca. 45% Türkic, 35% Basque, and 20% N African material. Since it were the Etruscans who immigrated to the Apennines, it would not be unthinkable that the Türkic people imposed their language and genes over the ingenious Basko-N.African population. After all, what were stating the estimable Adilya Aida and F.R. Latypov, the author of the work published in 1995 in Kazan, might have a merit, as well as the notion that masses of Trojans after the defeat in the Trojan War emigrated, a part to Balkans and a part to Apennines, and the Apennine group, called Etruscans by their Basko-N.African neighbors, created Etruria, gave us the alphabet to write this page, jumpstarted the Rome, and sparked its rise and initial institutions. Another research leads to the Türks and Sumerians, as phrased by A.Toth:

[(The Stanford (USA)] "publication (Achilli 2007) proves that the Etruscans are closestly related to the Turks. But given the many common words in Etruscan and Hungarian (Alinei 2003, Tóth 2007a, 2007b), the genetical relationship of Etruscan to both languages is only valid when these languages have as common basis Sumerian."

Etruscan Genetics - First steps - TurkicWorld

Oops, Etruscan similar to Hungarian and both of them similar to Sumerian? Oh my gosh. That's a can of warms. Not sure I want to open it.

For our Italian friends, let me point out that Italus or Italos was a legendary king of the Oenotrians, who were among the earliest recorded inhabitants of Italy. How about the Hungarian version italös. In modern Hungarian it means a bottle, but it is an adjective which describes somebody who likes to drink. Ital in Hungarian means drink till this very day. Why oh why we find a common Hungarian word in the name of the country? Well, if we take the Etruscan/Hungarian language connection as possible then we will not be surprised to find Etruscan word in the name of the Italy, which also happens to be Hungarian word with the same meaning. Gosh, it is late and I am writing nonsense... off to bed.

 

[Chu]

It even inherited its agglutination. Unlike all modern IE languages Latin is an agglutinative language and there are only 2 or 3 other agglutinative languages in Europe: Hungarian, Finish and Estonian (I believe). Is it possible that Latin is an agglutinative language because Etruscan was one as well? Could be.

Hmm, sorry, you lost me there. Latin, an agglutinative language? As far as I know, it's an inflected language.

 

[Obi]

Hmm, sorry, you lost me there. Latin, an agglutinative language? As far as I know, it's an inflected language.

Sorry, you are right. Etruscan was one, but Latin lost this aspect apparently.