Jump to content
Join the Unexplained Mysteries community today! It's free and setting up an account only takes a moment.
- Sign In or Create Account -

6,000 year-old language, reconstructed


Still Waters

Recommended Posts

* Sanskrit is nothing but one of the many Indo-European languages, and not the 'mother tongue' of Indo-Europeans.

* Proof of written Sanskrit is not older than 1000 BCE (give or take a century).

* Show us some sort of proof that Sanskrit is 10 to 15,000 years old.

* The most 'suitable' language for computer programming is said to be Aymara, a language still spoken in Peru/Bolivia.

Proof of written sanskit less than a century is laughable .

The oldest material in Vedic Sanskrit is the Rigveda, usually dated to between 3,200 and 3,000 years ago, but not written down until later.

Classical Sanskrit, which is close to Vedic, was written down about 2,500 years ago by the grammarian Panini. The Mahabharata and the Ramayana were probably composed at about the same time.This is because, we have written records only for the past 5000 years. Therefore, history beyond that period is in the realm of fancy and conjecture. The Rig Veda, the oldest among the Vedas, is said to be 10,000 years old, if not older. But, there are no written records to prove this fact. But, the fact remains that Sanskrit was the lingua franca of India for thousands of years.

and devangiri and dravidian is again much older than sanskrit , Devangiri is a languge which can be written from right to left as well as left to right .(written scriptures in temples in south india)

Mother of all european languages -Dean Brown (Published on 28 May 2013)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rnELm3jQsLE

A report in Forbes magazine in 1987 said that Sanskrit is the most precise language and hence suitable language for computer software. Rick Briggs' paper that made waves in 1985, Knowledge Representation in Sanskrit and Artificial Intelligence. Briggs makes no claim about it being a "suitable language for computer software". Not least because such a claim, about any natural language, is meaningless.

anway

check out this (COMPUTATIONAL ANALYSIS OF SANSKRIT LANGUAGE )

http://www.languageinindia.com/may2006/computational.pdf

Link to comment
Share on other sites

 
The idea that Sanskrit is the mother of the Indo-European languages is something they teach in schools in India. It is absurd on its face and just represents Hindu ultra-nationalism at its worst (inventing things to glorify themselves).

sanskrit has nothing to do with hinduism except the fact that vedas are written in sanskrit as well as other older languages .

Mother of all european languages -Dean Brown (Published on 28 May 2013)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rnELm3jQsLE&feature=player_embedded

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Maybe you should read my post again.

It's in plain old English, and I never said that written proof of Sanskrit is less than a century old.

=

Btw, check the Aymara language.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Well I see this thread has been soured by nonsense and now will be a debate between science and pseudo-science. If it gets back on track let me know.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Maybe you should read my post again.

It's in plain old English, and I never said that written proof of Sanskrit is less than a century old.

=

Btw, check the Aymara language.

It could be , i just quoted as it was published in a well acclaimed magazine like forbes in july 1985 , but what so ever as i mentioned ."Briggs makes no claim about it being a "suitable language for computer software". Not least because such a claim, about any natural language, is meaningless."

Yes I will have a look at Aymara language . innovations and changes happen always -- we all have to accept the fact .

about sanskrit "mother of all euro language " is again highly debatable but only fact is that , its very closest to what i said and im not that big expert to do a debate . My debate on the basis of reading knowledge and my knowledge of 5 indian languages (out of which 2 languages which i speak have roots older than sanskrit - ie dravidian & devanagiri)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

It could be , i just quoted as it was published in a well acclaimed magazine like forbes in july 1985 , but what so ever as i mentioned ."Briggs makes no claim about it being a "suitable language for computer software". Not least because such a claim, about any natural language, is meaningless."

Yes I will have a look at Aymara language . innovations and changes happen always -- we all have to accept the fact .

about sanskrit "mother of all euro language " is again highly debatable but only fact is that , its very closest to what i said and im not that big expert to do a debate . My debate on the basis of reading knowledge and my knowledge of 5 indian languages (out of which 2 languages which i speak have roots older than sanskrit - ie dravidian & devanagiri)

Some articles about the Aymara language:

http://www.creationmoments.com/radio/transcripts/4000-year-old-computer-language

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/06/060613185239.htm

http://tech.dir.groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/Imagine_Knowledge/conversations/topics/3360

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Fantastic - This very similar to sanskrit .(below I have put sanskrit meaning to which all I know ,Iam from India )

"Avis = means apparently,seemingly ,it seems

, jasmin

varna =color,paint, lusture,unknown quantity

na= NO

a ast= act

, dadarka

akvams

, tam= languishing , fainting

, vagham

garum = germ

'vaghantam= highest voice

, tam

, bharam= pressure or weight

magham = something to do with Magha constellation

, tam,

manum =thinking creature

aku = mole/rat or thief

bharantam

. Avis

akvabhjams

a

vavakat

: kard = rumble / unpleasant voice

aghnutai

mai= me or to me

vidanti = they say

manum

akvams

agantam=name of a lord (siva according to veda)

. Akvasas

a

vavakant = indeed move (vava= indeed) kant= move

: krudhi = either anger or Play

avai=weave

, kard

aghnutai

vividvant-

svas:=breath

manus=man

patis = Eye or Sea

varnam

avisams = a vision

karnauti = bore

svabhjam =sva (of self)

gharmam =very hot

vastram = cloths

avibhjams = avi = disposed ,bhajam = worship

ka

varna na

asti = Bone

Tat = That (Thath will be the sanskrit pronunciation )

kukruvants

avis

agram = before

a

bhugat = existing in earth

thanks guys

You could claim it were "very similar to Sanskrit" if the meanings actually aligned, but they very obviously do not. Just look at the first word, avis, which is the reconstructed word for sheep. That's not even remotely similar to the Sanskrit meaning you've listed. The same can be said for most of the other meanings you've listed.

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Fantastic - This very similar to sanskrit .(below I have put sanskrit meaning to which all I know ,Iam from India )

"Avis = means apparently,seemingly ,it seems

, jasmin

varna =color,paint, lusture,unknown quantity

na= NO

a ast= act

, dadarka

akvams

, tam= languishing , fainting

, vagham

garum = germ

'vaghantam= highest voice

, tam

, bharam= pressure or weight

magham = something to do with Magha constellation

, tam,

manum =thinking creature

aku = mole/rat or thief

bharantam

. Avis

akvabhjams

a

vavakat

: kard = rumble / unpleasant voice

aghnutai

mai= me or to me

vidanti = they say

manum

akvams

agantam=name of a lord (siva according to veda)

. Akvasas

a

vavakant = indeed move (vava= indeed) kant= move

: krudhi = either anger or Play

avai=weave

, kard

aghnutai

vividvant-

svas:=breath

manus=man

patis = Eye or Sea

varnam

avisams = a vision

karnauti = bore

svabhjam =sva (of self)

gharmam =very hot

vastram = cloths

avibhjams = avi = disposed ,bhajam = worship

ka

varna na

asti = Bone

Tat = That (Thath will be the sanskrit pronunciation )

kukruvants

avis

agram = before

a

bhugat = existing in earth

thanks guys

So lets just nail that sanskrit story.

Ahem *Once upon a time...*

...There was seemingly a colour that couldn't act and fainted.

A germ with the highest voice pressured the magha constellation thinking-creature mole rat thieves!!

Then, seemingly fainting, a rumbling voice said: sentient-creatures, it's Siva!

So I moved in a playful weave.

The breath of a man on the eye gave a colourful vision of me being borne by very hot cloths...

And I disposed of my worship and a colourful bone that seemingly had previously been existing in the earth.

-

Feel free to make corrections. However, in my opinion, this is already a much better story than sheep and horses.

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Sanskrit and its close relative Pali are at the far eastern edge of the Indo-European language range, as Gaelic is at the far western edge. That makes it highly unlikely that either is the origin of the family.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Do accents from the regions get taken into account?

Just look at England, we use the same language , but you would not think so when listening to how different regions pronounce the `alleged` said words.

Each new generation comes out with its own made up words too, like today ie: innit.

Apart from the difference in pronounciation, each region will have its own words for certain things, so how can do they come up with the accent in the voiced tape?

Agreed that the PIE reconstruction is theoretical, which by necessity it has to be, but I don't think it's really as make-believe as you seem to think. Linguists have been studying PIE for a long time now, and while I am not expert on PIE studies myself, I understand how the dissection and backtracking of Indo-European languages can lead to the theoretical models proposed. To me it sounds a hell of a lot like Old English.

I don't know that modern English would be a good example to use because English is more of a mutt language than probably any other today. What you hear in England today, or in the United States and Australia and elsewhere—is the end result of a thousand-plus years of profound mixing with and influences from a variety of other languages. PIE would be the very beginning of the language family that would much later lead to Indo-European languages, so while it may have had dialects, equating it with the course and development of English is sketchy at best.

I think these linguists are on firmer ground than you might believe, but where I personally am skeptical is with some linguists who have tried to form theoretical models on the first spoken language, period. This would've been in Africa, of course, and these same linguists have posited that the click languages of Africa may be the remnants of the first language. I am not convinced.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

A speculative and highly suspect re-creation. Kudos for their effort but it has only a little more validity than Klingon.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

 

A speculative and highly suspect re-creation. Kudos for their effort but it has only a little more validity than Klingon.

I have to conclude massive ignorance of linguistics here.
Link to comment
Share on other sites

The thing about English is, first, that the coming of the Norsemen with their slightly different suffixes than the Germanic suffixes Anglo-Saxon then had led to a generalized stripping of English of most of its cases and declensions and so on. (In order to communicate the root words were basically the same so they started talking in just the roots, and using prepositions and word order instead of suffixes.)

Then in the Middle Ages came the "Great Vowel Change" (for unknown reasons) where English went astray in its vowel pronunciation from the other languages of continental Europe.

Also of course the double and sometimes triple vocabulary -- Germanic, French and Latin (the French is also from Latin but changed in the process of going through being French) makes English far more precise in its available word choices ("door" vs, "portal").

In short English has strayed quite far from its Indo-European origins.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The Great Vowel Change leads to some of the most persistent errors Vietnamese learning to speak English tend to make. Vietnamese uses an alphabet taken from French in the late nineteenth century, so its pronunciation rules are largely those of the French. In particular, along with all West European languages except English, the letter "i" is pronounced as English "ee" ("feet"), so you get "fit" pronounced "feet," and so on (much as in a Mexican or Italian accent where the same thing happens.

This is fairly harmless and native English speakers don't much mind it, except for a certain word that begins with "sh".

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

The Great Vowel Change

heh, I remember having a really hard-nosed English teacher that gave us Chaucer to study, and insisted on reading out the passages in the correct accent and then asking us to analyse it. Sounded like another language, until you actually read the words. Seems Chaucer was near the beginning of the great vowel shift.

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Agreed that the PIE reconstruction is theoretical, which by necessity it has to be, but I don't think it's really as make-believe as you seem to think. Linguists have been studying PIE for a long time now, and while I am not expert on PIE studies myself, I understand how the dissection and backtracking of Indo-European languages can lead to the theoretical models proposed. To me it sounds a hell of a lot like Old English.

I don't know that modern English would be a good example to use because English is more of a mutt language than probably any other today. What you hear in England today, or in the United States and Australia and elsewhere—is the end result of a thousand-plus years of profound mixing with and influences from a variety of other languages. PIE would be the very beginning of the language family that would much later lead to Indo-European languages, so while it may have had dialects, equating it with the course and development of English is sketchy at best.

I think these linguists are on firmer ground than you might believe, but where I personally am skeptical is with some linguists who have tried to form theoretical models on the first spoken language, period. This would've been in Africa, of course, and these same linguists have posited that the click languages of Africa may be the remnants of the first language. I am not convinced.

I do not think it is make-believe, I do not think they have the accents right.

Take on here for instance, I type (the best I can) in a language all understand, but accents can change the sounds of that language quite dramatically, so unless the researches took their findings from writings without taking in account the regional accent, I can not see how it could sound the way they have made it on the tape.

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I do not think it is make-believe, I do not think they have the accents right.

Take on here for instance, I type (the best I can) in a language all understand, but accents can change the sounds of that language quite dramatically, so unless the researches took their findings from writings without taking in account the regional accent, I can not see how it could sound the way they have made it on the tape.

In that respect I apologize because I misread your intent. I think we were both touching on the same idea but were looking at it differently. The only cautionary note I would make is that we cannot know how widely PIE was spoken before it branched out, or if there was regional variation (i.e., dialects).

And in this light I have to agree with you. You're right. There's no way, I believe, to know the actual sounds of PIE because it is too far in the past. We can only propose theoretical models based on studies of modern to ancient Indo-European languages and how words and sounds might have shifted through time. This is certainly known fairly well for more recent centuries, but not so well for the ancient past. And from my own studies of the ancient Egyptian language I can contribute about PIE that we will never know things that are key to pronunciation, such as syllable stresses.

Still, I find it interesting, but I'm a boring old fart who's always been intrigued by ancient languages.

  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I have to conclude massive ignorance of linguistics here.

I'd go so far as to say I'm reasonably well-versed in linguistics, and by and large I agree with hammerclaw. The extant data is so slight and the interpretations of it so open to criticism(s), that in specific regard to what the language actually sounded like, that anything claiming to be genuinely PIE is highly questionable.

--Jaylemurph

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Such reconstruction has been going on for a century, and has had remarkable successes, of which you seem unaware. It may seem a remarkable claim, but if you know something about the ways languages evolve, it is possible with enough successor languages at hand, to do a pretty good job reconstructing the original.

Pronunciation is a more difficult thing, but not impossible either.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Such reconstruction has been going on for a century, and has had remarkable successes, of which you seem unaware. It may seem a remarkable claim, but if you know something about the ways languages evolve, it is possible with enough successor languages at hand, to do a pretty good job reconstructing the original.

Pronunciation is a more difficult thing, but not impossible either.

I'm perfectly well aware of it, actually. And well aware of the specifics of Historical and Comparative Linguistics, and of the historical reconstruction model generally used. And this model, in point of fact, has been used in excess of more than a single century.

However, in my experience, linguists will quickly tell you of the paucity of evidence -- there is no single attestation of a pututative PIE language, so there is no definitive proof for such, and more than one legitimate interpretation of reconstructed data, since the first records we have are already at several removes from PIE -- and are generally reluctant to offer up something certain, let alone definitive as this particular effort tries to be. I'd be happy to point out any one of several introductory texts in the field that echo this viewpoint, such as Indo-European Language and Culture: An Introduction or Indo-European Linguistics: An Introduction.

--Jaylemurph

Link to comment
Share on other sites

You seem determined to downplay the achievement. I don't see your reasoning and it seems discordant with the reality of what has been determined.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

You seem determined to downplay the achievement. I don't see your reasoning and it seems discordant with the reality of what has been determined.

Then these people have been particularly adept at convincing you there is an acheivement to downplay.

--Jaylemurph

Link to comment
Share on other sites

 

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.