What is the relationship between Latin, Greek and Sanskrit?
Greek and Latin are
derived from Sanskrit is the common belief especially in India But the truth is they
share a common ancestry.
The common ancestor dates back around 8 or 9 thousand years and has been splitting and evolving ever since.
All the three were
derived from proto-Indo European language.( PIE). Sanskrit is higher up in the family tree I.e. ... So basically,
Sanskrit is an old aunt of both the languages,in my words Sanskrit is not mother but ' Massi' ( Mother's sister!) of Greek and Latin
The most compelling theory is that Sanskrit,
Latin, and Greek, along with several other languages spoken in a vast
region from England to Northern India, were at one point the same
language spoken by the same group of people.
linguists assume it exists because it’s the
best way to explain the similarities in grammar and vocabulary between
all of these languages.
The discovery of Indo-European
first started with a British judge named William Jones who was stationed
in India in 1780. Jones, a bright fellow with classical training in
Greek and Latin, had determined to master the ancient
Sanskrit tongue. He wanted to brush up on native Indian law codes--many
of which were written in Sanskrit script--before administering British
law in the region.
Jones was shocked to discover a regular pattern
of similarities between ancient Sanskrit words and ancient words in
classical Western languages. Here are some examples:
Meaning:
|
Sanskrit
|
Latin:
|
"three"
|
trayas
|
tres
|
"seven"
|
sapta
|
septem
|
"eight"
|
ashta
|
octo
|
"nine"
|
nava
|
novem
|
"snake"
|
sarpa
|
serpens
|
"king"
|
raja
|
regem
|
"god"
|
devas
|
divus
("divine")
|
Other Sanskrit words were similar to Greek terms. For instance, the Greek word
trias ("three") is close to
trayas and
tres in the chart above. The Greek word
pente ("five") is close to Sanskrit
panca
("five"), and so on. Jones began systematically charting the
similarities, finding literally thousands of such parallels between
Sanskrit,
Greek, and Latin. He presented his findings on February 2nd, 1786, to
the "Asiatick Society in Calcutta."
What Jones had uncovered, without realizing it initially, was the existence of a lost mother tongue, what scholars call
proto-Indo-European--a
single, ancient, prehistoric language that led to the development of
many languages in Europe, India, Russia, and the Middle East. It
required nearly
ninety years of comparative linguistics to fill in all the gaps.
Before Jones,
earlier scholars had long ago noted that many languages shared such
similarities. It was no news, for instance, that Romance languages
They started from Vulgar
Latin (In the
Latin Language, "vulgar" is the word for "common," so "Vulgar
Latin" means "Common Latin"). The biggest Romance languages are
Spanish,
Portuguese,
French,
Italian,
Romanian, and
Catalan. (They are called "romance languages" because they originate from a language spoken by Romans.),shared
cognates with each other. Spanish
caballo (horse) was a cognate for Portuguese
cavalo (horse), Italian
caballo (horse), Provençal
caval (horse), French
cheval (horse), and English
cavalry (horse-riding troops). Scholars had long known that all these words ultimately came from the vulgar Latin term
caballus
(horse), and that French and Spanish and other Romance languages had
developed from Roman provincial speech--with some voiced German,
Frisian, Dutch, Swedish, and Norse shared many cognates with each other
in much the same way, tracing their origins back to a proto-Germanic
tongue in prehistoric times.
What astonished linguists was that Sanskrit had
cognates to more than just Latin and Greek words. Philologists found
that Dutch, German, Old Norse, Gothic, Old Slavic, and Old Irish had
similar patterns of words with Sanskrit. These
cognates had a related meaning and they also sounded similar to each
other either in terms of vowels or consonants (or both!). For instance,
consider the words for "father" and "brother" in a variety of
Indo-European languages:
"father"
|
"brother"
|
- pitar
(Sanskrit)
- pater (Latin)
- pater
(Greek)
- padre
(Spanish)
- pere
(French)
- father
(English)
- fadar
(Gothic)
- fa∂ir
(Old Norse)
- vader
(German)
- athir
(Old Irish--with loss of original consonant)
|
- bhratar
(Sanskrit)
- frater
(Latin)
- phrater
(Greek)
- frere
(French)
- brother
(Modern English)
- brothor (Saxon)
- bruder
(German)
- broeder (Dutch)
- bratu
(Old Slavic)
- brathair
(Old Irish)
|
Linguists call this theorized language PIE
(proto Indo-European), and argue that many languages such as Russian,
German, Persian, Greek, and Latin, are all “daughter languages” (i.e.
descended from it in the same way that the Romance
languages descended from Latin.) The basic idea is that a group of
people living either in Anatolia or the Steppe region spoke this
language and then slowly spread out and conquered a wide swath of
territory, spreading their language as they went.
As time passed and the Indo-European peoples
became more separated the language changed in different ways in
different areas, to the point where modern Indo-European languages
aren’t mutually intelligibile, despite being one language
at some point.
There are several competing versions of the
‘family tree’ of languages, but the usual theory is that Sanskrit
derives from the ‘Indo-Iranian’ branch of the Indo-European tree,
sharing an intermediate ancestor with Persian and Avestan.
Greek occupies its own (‘Hellenic’) branch and Latin sits on the Italic
branch along several other lost Italian languages. Here’s a decent,
though pretty simplified, graphic representation of the family tree:
The center (“PIE” or Proto-Indo-European)
represents about 8000 years ago and successive rings are rough
approximations of 1000 year intervals over the last 5000 years. As you
can see the Greek / Latin/ Italic split is at least about
5000 years in the past.
Greek and Sanskrit:
- kendra 'center' from Greek κέντρον
- dramma- from Greek. "drachma" δράχμα
- heli- 'sun' from Geek ἧλιος
- horā 'hour' from ὥρα
- jāmitra 'diameter' from Greek διάμετρον
-
Root Sanskrit WordMedian
-
Word in Latin(L) / Greek(G) / Arabic(A)Derived English
-
Word Ghas (meaning eat)Grasa (German)Grass
-
Samiti (meaning Committee)committere (L)Committee
-
Sama (meaning Same)Samaz (Proto Germanic)Same
-
Lubh (meaning Desire)Lubo (Latin and Proto Germanic) Love
hrdroga 'Aquarius zodiacal sign from
- Naû
-Greek,
Nau-- Sanskrit( Boat or Ship)
- hrdroga
'Aquarius zodiacal sign' from ὑδροχ
- nautikós
Greek Nautical- Latin
nautic(us)
pertaining to ships or
sailors,
equivalent to naû
- Maa in Snskrit ,Mama in Greek
Searched ,Compiled and Illustrated by Tejinder Kamboj
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