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| quote: | Originally posted by Lira
Why Spanish, English, Hindi, Portuguese, Bengali, Russian, German, Marathi, French, Italian, Punjabi and Urdu are related
For simplicity's sake, I'm going to pick Sanskrit (from which Hindi, Marathi have evolved) and Latin (from which Portuguese, French, ... have evolved). I'll also try to avoid any kind of jargon and stuff - if it does sound complicated, though, do tell me, and I'll try to make myself clearer 
Firstly, it's not rare for words with similar meaning to resemble one another. For example "Mirar" in Spanish means "to look", and so does the verb "Miru" in Japanese. However, once you analyse the languages more carefully, you can't see that happening systematically.
However, when you have entire systems that resemble one another, then you probably something going on. When you compare Sanskrit and Latin numbers, for example, you don't need to be a linguist to notice something strikingly similar between the two languages:
| Latin Numbers | Sanskrit Numbers |
| 1 | unus | éka |
| 2 | duo | dvá |
| 3 | tres | trí |
| 4 | quattuor | catúr |
| 5 | quinque | pańca |
| 6 | sex | ṣáṣ |
| 7 | septem | saptá |
| 8 | octo | aṣṭá |
| 9 | novem | náva |
| 10 | decem | dáśa |
The numbers 2,3,4,7 and 9 are almost identical and, when there are more differences, linguists can count on a bunch of rules that explain how the sounds changed in each of these languages. Notice, for example, how the sound "e" in Latin often becomes "a" in Sanskrit.
However, that's not enough. If two languages are really genetically related (yup, that's the terminology), the grammar must also show some common traces. And, once again, you've got that: Words both in Sanskrit and Latin change according to their function in a sentence. For example, if you a rose is the subject of a sentence, in Latin, you say "Rosa". If it's the object, you say "Rosam". If something belongs to the god damn rose, you say "Rosae". And, this is the cool thing about Latin and Sanskrit. The way they do that is quite similar, and I'm adding Greek this time, just so you can understand how the changes "flow" accross languages:
| Latin | Greek | Sanskrit |
| Genus | Genos | Ganas |
| Generis | Geneos | Ganasas |
| Genere | Genei | Ganasi |
| Genera | Genea | Ganasu |
| Generum | Geneon | Ganasam |
Did you find the common pattern? Well, let's consider "ganas, ganasas,..." the most conservative form. There's some evidence that intervocalic "s" fell in old Greek, and it became "r" in Latin. If you turn things back to what they probably were like, the similarities become even more obvious:
| "Old" Latin | "Old" Greek | Sanskrit |
| Genus | Genos | Ganas |
| Genesis | Genesos | Ganasas |
| Genese | Genesi | Ganasi |
| Genesa | Genesa | Ganasu |
| Genesum | Geneson | Ganasam |
All these 3 languages treat their nouns the same way, and sound too much alike. You can assume that, if that's the case, they probably have a common ancestor (just like two brothers have the same parents). And, upon further inspection, that is the case.
So that's briefly how we know that Spanish, English, Hindi, Portuguese, Bengali, Russian, German, Marathi, French, Italian, Punjabi and Urdu are all related
edit: Why is there such a giant gap between the text and the tables!? |
Awesome ! This seems to imply that these languages have either influenced each other or one has influenced the other. Do you know whether these languages evolved around the same time, or whether one predates the others ?
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