I have seen many Indians eulogizing Sanskrit like its near-perfect grammar etc.
But if Sanskrit is soooo good then why it never became a people’s language like Arabic did?
Re: Why Sanskrit never became a common man's language?
pal almost all languages in india and pakistan today are what sanskrit and its influenced prakrits have evolved into. much like latin into the modern day romance languages. prosperity and pastoral nomads settling into stable agrarian populations are associated with language evolution, and the subcontinent has been Mashallah very blessed in this regard.
Re: Why Sanskrit never became a common man's language?
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pal almost all languages in india and pakistan today are what sanskrit and its influenced prakrits have evolved into.
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If this is the case then Sanskrit grammar should be similar to Urdu/Punjabi/Sindhi/etc. grammar. (I am not talking about lone words borrowing).
Since I don't know Sanskrit grammar, can you confirm if its grammar really is similar? Any online reference?
Re: Why Sanskrit never became a common man's language?
I think that Sanskrit was as much foreign to the Subcontinent as Persian and Arabic. The local languages of this area are what you call 'prakrits', but this probably is a name given by the Sanskrit speakers.
Re: Why Sanskrit never became a common man's language?
yawn. Since no one else is responding therefore let me finish this thread by answering my own question.
The reason Sanskrit never became people's language is that the original spoken Sanskrit was not a very good language with perfect grammar. So people had no need to converse in this language. I read somewhere that present Sanskrit grammar was compiled later, and this is why it is logical. But then any language created artificially would have easy logical grammar, like Esperanto.
So while Sanskrit was being spoken and manipulated by chosen few (Brahmins?), the common folks of north-western Subcontinent continued to speak in their local languages like Punjabi, Sindhi, Gujrati, Urdu/Hindi, etc. These popular languages were the descendants of one language spoken earlier, probably at the time of Indus Valley Civilization (Harrappa).
And since all these languages evolved from a single source, therefore their vocabulary and grammar are similar to each other, showing their local origin. On the other hand, Sanskrit's vocabulary and grammar are actually similar to European and Iranian languages, showing Sanskrit's foreign origin.
Here is reference about Sanskrit being an artificial language.
The following text also tells us that the word Prakrit is nothing but a Sanskrit description of local languages of the Subcontinent. This is why I don’t like to use the word prakrit to refer to the local languages.
Sanskrit: Definition from Answers.com
Like Latin in Europe and elsewhere, Sanskrit has been used by the educated classes in India for literary and religious purposes for over two thousand years. It achieved this status partly through a standardization that resulted from a long tradition of grammatical theory and analysis. This tradition reached its height around 500 B.C. in the work of the grammarian Panini, who composed an intricate and complex description of the language in the form of quasi-mathematical rules reminiscent of the rules of generative grammar in modern times. The language thus codified was called saṃskṛtam, “put together, artificial,” to distinguish it from prākṛtam or the “natural, vulgar” speech of ordinary people. Sanskrit thus became a fixed literary language, while Prakrit continued to develop into what are now the modern spoken languages of northern and central India, such as Hindi and Bengali.
Re: Why Sanskrit never became a common man’s language?
^ Correct :k:
Sanskrit is a “pure” language thats primarily been used for literature & religious texts (much like Latin) but never became a spoken language. Most Indian & foreign spoken languages have drawn something from Sanskrit.
Re: Why Sanskrit never became a common man's language?
I take the relationship between locals (ie, local languages) and Sanskrit as similar to relationship between Latin and English of England's medieval times.
Re: Why Sanskrit never became a common man's language?
Sanskrit has similarities with European and Iranian languages because all of them evolved from the same language source; Proto-Indo-European.
yeah, it was standardised some centuries before Christ, but thats way before any of the present languages of the Sub-continent came into being.
the only other language which may have been before it was Proto-Tamil, and even the present Tamil is a corrupted version of the older one.
Grammatically, Sanskrit and Hindi/Urdu are kind of similar. cant tell about Punjabi or Sindhi. zero knowledge about them.
Re: Why Sanskrit never became a common man's language?
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but thats way before any of the present languages of the Sub-continent came into being.
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It's just an opinion, not necessarily fact. Present local languages most probably were there thousands of years ago. This is reflected in the fact that grammar of most north-western Subcontinent languages is similar, indicating that they all originated from a single source, spoken in this area thousands of years ago.
I think that this old language, or a variety of it, was spoken by Indus Valley people. Foreigners of that time introduced their own language to this region, which they later named 'Sanskrit' (perfect), and called the original local languages of the region 'Prakrits' (vulgar).
Those 'vulgar' languages included Urdu/Hindi, Punjabi, Sindhi, Gujrati, etc.
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and even the present Tamil is a corrupted version of the older one.
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I don't know why you use the word 'corrupted'. EVERY language will undergo changes during the course of time. The word 'corruption' is not suitable.
Using this definition of 'corrupt', Sanskrit's name 'perfect' suggests that it is also a corruption of an older language, initiated by Panini.
So Tamil is also a veryyy old language. hmm.
Re: Why Sanskrit never became a common man's language?
Sanskrit,as a language was only limited among the Brahmin caste and it was (or is)mainly treated as a divine language and was something inaccesible for others to learn and practise.
Re: Why Sanskrit never became a common man's language?
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Sanskrit,as a language was only limited among the Brahmin caste
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This happened because Sanskrit did not belong to Subcontinent, and was a foreign language, learnt by descendants of foreigners who made it divine.
Re: Why Sanskrit never became a common man's language?
^Are there real aborigins of any land on this earth?
Re: Why Sanskrit never became a common man's language?
Yes. It is all relative.
But since people speaking different local languages before Sanskrit speakers arrived, have no name; therefore I used the word 'original' for them and 'foreigner' to Sanskrit speakers. Of course, it is hard to consider Sanskrit speakers a foreigner when they essentially mixed with local people. The locals and foreigners thus became one new people.
Re: Why Sanskrit never became a common man's language?
I thought Sanskrit was a spoken langauge about 3 thousand years ago, and over time most north Indian languages evolved from Sanskrit. Urdu is an Indo-Aryan language, so has roots in Sanskrit. Although the sentence structure is Sanskrit, the vocabulary is Arabic and Farsi, with a few words of Sanskrit like purana. Arabic only became the spoken language 1,700 years ago, so is a much newer language.
Re: Why Sanskrit never became a common man's language?
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and over time most north Indian languages evolved from Sanskrit.
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Are you saying that before 3000 years ago there was almost NO language in Subcontinent beside Sanskrit?
If Sanskrit was no common at that time then why everyone stopped speaking it?
If most languages evolved from Sanskrit then why are there grammars so different from Sanskrit grammar?
Urdu is not an Indo-Aryan language, but a local language, which has words from many languages including Sanskrit
Re: Why Sanskrit never became a common man's language?
What I am saying in some parts of North India and Pakistan, Sanskrit was the spoken language. It was the language of the Aryan invaders. But the area was restricted to parts of Punjab, NWFP, Indian Punjab, and western UP. In other parts you had other languages, such as Dravidian, Orian, Kol and Khasiya. By the time the Indo-Aryans got to Bengal, they started speaking there own Prakirti dialects. The population in east India and Bangladesh is most Munda, Oraon and Mongol-Tai that were Aryanized, while in Gujarat and Maharashtra, it mixed with Bhils and Kolhi groups. Sanskrit would have been forgotten, but was saved by the fact the Hindu scriptures are in that language. But the modern Indo-Aryan tongues all descend from Sanskrit, and that includes Urdu.
Re: Why Sanskrit never became a common man's language?
Its a common knowledge, khoji, Punjabi, Sindhi etc evolved from Sanskrit. Linguistic scientists have proved it. And Urdu is a real young language of definite Indo-Aryan family. You didn't know that? Mughals were definitely a more recent invader than the Aryans. And i used 'corrupted' cause that's the standard terminology. Eg: English is mostly a corruption of Latin.
Re: Why Sanskrit never became a common man's language?
And population in Eastern India and Bangladesh is mostly Indo Aryan, even all are cocktail races. The most mixed are the Bengalis; Indo Aryan, Dravidian, Mongoloid, even to a certain degree Austro-Afroids. Explains the heterogenity in the group.
Its a common knowledge, khoji, Punjabi, Sindhi etc evolved from Sanskrit.
Can you please cite any online reference?
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And Urdu is a real young language of definite Indo-Aryan family.
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Any proof of this claim?