No man, woman, child, or house, with the pie

William Jones wrote a book, ■The Sanscrit Language, to tell that ■Greek and ■Latin had common roots with ■Sanskrit, and there must have been a Proto-Indo-European language from which to derive human speech, in India as well as Europe.

Mr. Jones reportedly learned Greek, Latin, Persian, Arabic, Hebrew, and basic Chinese, says ■Wikipedia to sum up that he knew 13 languages thoroughly, and another 28 reasonably well; in total, some 41 languages. His Proto-Indo-European, PIE as a cookie in short, would have given origin to tongues as English or Polish.

Languages to come from the same source have similar basic vocabulary. Reasonably good knowledge of a language has words as woman, man, child, and house. Let us compare these words in English, Latin, Greek, Russian, Polish, German, French, and Sanskrit.

Man

Latin: ■vir; Greek: ■andros; Russian: ■muzshtschina; Polish: ■mężczyzna; German: ■Mann; French: ■homme; Sanskrit: ■naro.

I do not know Sanskrit. I can only compare resources. The morpheme ■-man, quoted by supporters of the PIE, yet refers to thinking and not to gender, whereas it is common lore that masculinity is not strictly synonymous with pensiveness.

Woman

Latin: ■femina; Greek: ■gyne; Russian: ■zshenshtschina; Polish: ■kobieta; German: ■Weib; French: ■femme; Sanskrit: ■nari.

Child

Latin: ■putillus; Greek: ■pais; Russian: ■riebienok; Polish: ■dziecko; German: ■Kind; French: ■enfant; Sanskrit: ■sutah.

House

Latin: ■domus; Greek: ■do; Russian: ■dom; Polish: ■dom; German: ■Haus; French: ■maison; Sanskrit: ■vasati.

Vir or andros, child or riebienok, woman or kobieta ― the words do not resemble one another, and they are the basic vocabulary that hardly ever changes; this is why it gets compared for language grouping. Groups can work better than “language families”, as those derive tongues one from another.

If to have Russian, Polish, English, or German for kindred, it would be by white marriage. English has four verb ■Aspects, the Simple, Progressive, Perfect, and Perfect Progressive. By grammatical standards as well, German, Russian, and Polish would have only the Simple or, some people would say, there are no Aspects.

Polish and Russian could make a group. We may compare the words ■muzshtschina and ■mężczyzna. There is not much point deriving Polish from Russian or Russian from Polish, however. We can compare ■riebienok and ■dziecko, or ■zshenshtschina and ■kobieta. Evidently, the males came into contact and to terms, long ago. I hope not to offend the reader to remark, l’homme is obviously from contact in an area where home or house, the word was prevalently domus.

The lingua franca, French, developed the maison shape of word from a Latin stem ■maci-, where the {ts} or {c} sound of speech mostly became interpreted into {s} or {k}; feel welcome to compare the ■Latin demeanor.

Evolutionary frameworks allow that languages emerged on Earth in result of human cognitive progress. People shared knowledge, and similarities as domus or dom, as well as house or Haus evidence urban progress and communication; they cannot be honestly used to derive words by their shape.

Oldest does not mean wisest

Except for a few ancient Greek philosophers, and that selectively, I am not an enthusiast of ancient content. Quotient has always been a matter more individual than old collections of scripts (also with intelligent people meeting up), and ancient living conditions or health standards were not better than today.

Supporters of the “Proto-Indo-European family” yet would purport olden wisdom, having gone into making the ■Proto-Indo-European religion. There is no PIE root for planet Earth and life.

Earth

Latin: ■terra or ■tellus; Greek: ■Gaia or ■Aia; Russian: ■Ziemlia; Polish: ■Ziemia; German: ■Erde; French: ■Terre; Sanskrit: ■vasudha.

Life

Latin: ■vita; Greek: ■bios; Russian: ■zshizn; Polish: ■życie; German: ■Leben; French: ■vie; Sanskrit: ■asavah.

It seems there was a pie rather than the the PIE, in the times of Mr. Jones. ■The Company rule in India meant much rivalry.

False superiority

It has been doubted if Sanskrit ever got to be spoken as a natural language, that is, by a child to learn it for own first tongue. Ancient Indian teachers probably made it of ■Prakrits, to go apart from lower castes. In simple words, Sanskrit is a sort of ancient ■Esperanto, only the purpose was to keep the general public unable to read, speak, or write.

It would have been in regard to elite dowry and heirloom that Sanskrit introduced “children of men”, ■nrpraja. To deny a child, a woman shouts “nrpraja”, in ■Manu Smriti. We could not say, let us look for a common root with the PIE, because it must have been a beautiful culture.

The air of superiority takes vapor from criticism on western languages as “inexact”. An ■influence in Wikipedia betrays, the phrase verb tense is “a very inexact application”, because Sanskrit tells more distinctions than simply tense. It can be organized into four “systems” as well as gerunds and infinitives (are these systems?), along with creatures (?) as intensives & frequentatives, desideratives & causatives, and benedictives, based on different stem forms “derived from verbal roots”.

Eskimos have plenty of words for snow, but they have snowfall. Let us compare Sanskrit and a flexional language as Polish: is all the Sanskrit descriptive sophistry necessary, if the tongue simply uses flexion? “Our First Sanskrit Word” online turns out to be,

The lesson offers “another verb” to compare, gacchāmaḥ. It means We go, in Polish Idziemy. A yet “another verb” would be the dual, The two of us go, in Polish Dwoje z nas idzie. “Actually, these verbs are all complete Sanskrit sentences”, concludes the lesson, having really been about conjugation for one verb, to go.

Language economy can be a smart thing, but it is about the semantic field, and this is no math or system, however incomprehensible the fact remains.
■USA CIVICS, BILINGUAL POSTERS

In comparison, the Latin alphabet looks a work of genius. A child may begin to tell between Latin characters at ages 2 or 3. Benjamin Franklin wrote he did not really remember any time in life he could not read, as he learned on his own and began early. It is believable.

To show Thomas Paine’s Common Sense or USA Declaration of Independence in Sanskrit, you’d be slashing the power of persuasion to a negligible proportion: many people would not be able to make it out. Therefore, English remains not one notch only — above the human proto-idea.

To use Sanskrit for religion and thus try to elevate it, you’d be bringing up associations with the times Latin was used to talk to people and people did not understand: spirituality gained with a ■common language.

Aristotle remains my preference for ancient reckoning, and I have begun work on my crunch for Greek. This here is ■my crunch for American English.

Language learning naturally does not require weapons. The ■game movie here has plenty of clangor, but I watched it for impressions about humans moving in physical space.

There is this interesting thing not only in Polish, but Polish can be example, ■biernik changes into ■dopełniacz, the genitive, when there is negation. Human cognitive variables have had it for another directionality when negative, I think.

Evidence and dating

■Proto-languages are man-made constructs for the sake of theoretical “families”, whereas natural languages do not provide any rationale for probabilistic speech patterns. Speech can bring a probabilistic result, but it is then for something just probable, not a rule. More, machine or otherwise built, a code is not a natural language, and word shapes are not forgotten cousins.

Decent linguistic work requires evidence. The ■Rosetta Stone was absolutely unique, yet it covered only ■Ancient Egyptian ■glyphics and ■demotics, along with some ■Ancient Greek. It did not have etymologies.

The best source for comparative linguistic evidence in human history so far, the Rosetta Stone allows translation, but not word derivation. There never was even a stone like the Rosetta, for the “Proto-Indo-European”. More, the Rosetta ■granodiorite cannot be ■carbon-dated. Researchers have followed the dates as inscribed in the stone.

It is obviously impossible for the Chinese Communist Party to have started up in the Permian period, 270 million years ago.

Sanskrit might have been influenced

■Marco Polo was not even probably the first visitor to the Far East. Ancient Egyptians look to have left their marks all over the world.

Let us think there is language A. Some people come around and adopt some grammar for verbs from A. They do not refer to language A for everything, however. They already have a language, B.

The people who talk B make progress; they begin to come up with new words, and language A begins to adopt from language B: if we find a phrase or word in Sanskrit today, it does not mean the wording has been there since the beginning of time.

Of course, I do not mean exactly anything as a Polish Gacie masz? Idziemy…
Esperanto (■Google Translate): Havas pantalonon? Ni iru.

■This text is also available in Polish.

---

ADVERTISEMENT