From owner-freebsd-chat Fri May 24 21:52:49 2002 Delivered-To: freebsd-chat@freebsd.org Received: from postfix1-2.free.fr (postfix1-2.free.fr [213.228.0.130]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 0792F37B408 for ; Fri, 24 May 2002 21:52:45 -0700 (PDT) Received: from bluerondo.a.la.turk (nas-cbv-3-62-147-139-249.dial.proxad.net [62.147.139.249]) by postfix1-2.free.fr (Postfix) with ESMTP id 55D1AAB194 for ; Sat, 25 May 2002 06:52:43 +0200 (CEST) Received: (qmail 1766 invoked by uid 1001); 25 May 2002 04:52:37 -0000 Date: Sat, 25 May 2002 06:52:37 +0200 From: Rahul Siddharthan To: Greg 'groggy' Lehey Cc: Marc Ramirez , Brad Knowles , chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Aryan and Dravidian (was: French, Flemish and English (was: cvs commit: src/sys/alpha/alpha clock.c)) Message-ID: <20020525045236.GA1722@lpt.ens.fr> References: <20020522182914.I45715@wantadilla.lemis.com> <20020524110009.T21090-100000@mrami.homeunix.org> <20020524173331.A5683@lpt.ens.fr> <20020525103645.A52737@wantadilla.lemis.com> <20020525032513.GA1425@lpt.ens.fr> <20020525140432.B84264@wantadilla.lemis.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <20020525140432.B84264@wantadilla.lemis.com> User-Agent: Mutt/1.3.27i X-Operating-System: FreeBSD 4.6-PRERELEASE i386 Sender: owner-freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk List-ID: List-Archive: (Web Archive) List-Help: (List Instructions) List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Greg 'groggy' Lehey said on May 25, 2002 at 14:04:32: > > Many Hindi speakers today have problems saying "sh" and convert it > > to "s"; they also have problems with two consonants succeeding each > > other. So they not only convert English words like "school" to > > "ischool", but also Sanskrit-origin Hindi words like "stree" > > ("woman") to "istree" > > Interesting. The Malays have gone one step further and pronounce it > "isteri" (meaning "wife"). Again, the voiceless "e". The Malay language is also called "Bahasa" I believe, and so is the related Indonesian language. "Bhasha" means "language" in Sanskrit and most other Indian languages. I found that a semi-Malay relative of mine was unaware of that origin. > > "tesan." And a name like "Krishna" > > Wasn't that originally Krsna, with a fluid instead of a vowel? Yes, it should be written Krshna (the sh is one of the two Sanskrit sh letters, the one in "Sri" being the other one). The Sanskrit "s" is the letter in "stree" for "woman". But in English it's usually spelt "Krishna", perhaps for easy pronunciation. > Hmm. There are other issues apart from pronunciation. I believe the > grammar has diverged considerably both in India and in Europe > (interestingly giving rise to excessive use of the present participle > both in English and in Hindi IIRC). True, I don't know much about Sanskrit grammar but it seems totally different from any modern language. There aren't separate words for prepositions, declensions, etc, they're all modified forms of the noun. Also, as in German, compound words are formed from simple words, and indeed an entire line is frequently written as a single word. It seemed initially strange to me that in French there is no distinction between "I go" and "I am going" -- both are "je vais" but now that I think of it, the same is true of Sanskrit. > language spoken in Tamil Nadu. In particular, it retains more Aryan > words, whereas in Tamil Nadu they try to replace them with > Tamil-derived words. It rather reminds me of the difference between > Flemish and Dutch :-) Hm, I've heard that Sri Lankan Tamil is much "purer" than the Tamil Nadu version because it has *less* Sanskrit influence... There is indeed a movement to get rid of the non-Dravidian words in Tamil, but I don't know to what extent it has been successful, and certainly I don't think it looks like a worthwhile exercise. The other thing about Tamil in Tamil Nadu is that the written language, or the formal spoken language, is *very* different from the informal spoken language; I'm reasonably comfortable in the informal version but can barely understand the formal version, having always lived in non-Tamil-speaking regions. I'm told that the divergence between the two forms is not so sharp in Sri Lanka, and indeed I have some trouble understanding Sri Lankan Tamils. - Rahul To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message