VIDEO 1

Indo-european-excerpt-from-before-babel.mp4 Subido por Pennock Speck, Barry, 19/02/2009 10:54:57

Radio Sunrise compares Punjabi and English with other languages of another parts of India (Hindi, Gujarati) and they conclude that these languages are related.

As presented by professor Colin Renfrew (University of Cambridge), it was discovered by chance 200 years ago by multilingual English lawyer and judge, Sir William Jones, who went to India in 1783 and learnt Sanskrit (a language of Ancient India which was first written about 500 a. d) Curiously, Sanskrit had some relations with Greek and Latin and other languages. Therefore, due to those similarities William Jones thought that all those languages must have come from an original source.

For example, Latin numbers (unus, duo, tres, quattuor, quinque) it is pretty similar to the numbers of Greek (heis, duo, treis, tettares, pente) and Sanskrit (ekas, dva, tryas, katvaras, panoa)

However, one must notice that the numbers 4 and 5 aren’t so similar, but still the same type of words as in the case of 4 although different share the same type of sounds (q, t, k) in the three languages.

According to Don Ringe (University of Pennsylvania) the only way to find this original language is to compare the similarities between languages in all areas  (grammar, phonetics, etc), these similarities must be precise so that it isn’t just a coincidence but that these languages are obviously in the same family.

For example, an English word like tooth and the same word in Hindi dant doesn’t seem to have anything in common; but when you see the same pattern on the words in English ten and in Hindi das you see that for words with the same meaning the English prefers the sound of a ‘t’ and the Hindi the sound of a ‘d’ (other examples like two and do).

To sum up, linguistics believe that languages stretching from Iceland to India come from the same family called Indo European which originated by another ancestor called Proto Indo European.  

Corrected version given by Barry Pennock Speck:

Indoeuropean (Taken from the TV programme Before Babel)

Voice-over: Radio Sunrise serves a West London community of mixed races- Punjabi

speakers in the midst of an English suburb. What could these two languages, Punjabi and

English, have in common? In fact, English and Punjabi, as well as other languages of

Northern India like Hindi and Gujurati are related –something discovered by chance 200

years ago by a multilingual English lawyer, Sir William Jones.

Professor Colin Renfrew (University of Cambridge): He was a judge who went out to India

in 1783, but he’d studied languages, oriental languages, before he went, and when he got to

India, he became very interested and learnt Sanscrit, which is the language of ancient India,

which was first written about 500 A.D., and then he realised, he made this great discovery,

that Sanscit resembles in some way, has relationships with Greek and Latin and other

languages, and he gave a very famous discourse in which he said that these were sprung from

some common source.

Voice-over: It’s surprising that no one spotted the resemblances earlier. Take the numbers

again, for example, the Sanscrit, on the right, bears a strong resemblance to Latin and Greek,

on the left. While one, two and three are obvious, four and five need a closer look to spot the

connection. Linguists have discovered rules that govern how sounds in different languages

are related. Look at the words for “four”. This is one of many examples where a word

beginning with “q” in Latin say, is similar to a Greek word beginning with “t”, and a Sanscrit

word beginning with “k”. These sound correspondences can reveal how apparently unrelated

languages are members of the same family.

Latin Greek Sanskrit

unus heis ekas

duo duo dva

tres treis tryas

quattuor tettares katvaras

quinque pente panca

Don Ringe Jr. (University of Pennsylvania): The question is how can you tell that the

languages that you’re looking at reflect a single original language and therefore form a

family. The only way you can do that is by finding sistematic similarities between these

languages in every area of their grammar: similarities in sounds, similartities in their

inflexions, in the syntax of the language, and so forth, and the similarities have to be very

precise, and they have to be interlocking for the assertion that these languages form a family

to be believable. If we look at an English word like“tooth”, and see that in Hindi it’s“dant”,

and that by itself that doesn’t mean that much, but you take a look at English“ten”, which

shows up in Hindi as“das”, and the same pattern emerging- you have got an initial “t” in

English and and initial “d” in Hindi. When you find that the word “two” though, the numeral,

in English, shows up in Hindo as “do”, once again an initial“t” in English and an initial “d” in

Hindi. You begin to think that perhaps this is not an accident.

English Hindi

tooth dant

ten das

two do

Voice-over: Linguists have now established that a whole range of languages, stretching from

Iceland to India form one family called Indoeuropean. They can even reconstruct an earlier

ancestor of these languages- Proto Indoeuropean.

 

Academic year 2008/2009
© a.r.e.a./Dr.Vicente Forés López
Barry Pennock Speck
© Carolina Cody Aldaz
cacodyal@alumni.uv.es
Universitat de València Press