Did people in antiquity comment on word similarities across languages?

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Discussion Overview

The discussion centers on whether scholars in antiquity recognized and commented on similarities between words in different languages, exploring examples from Greek, Persian, Avestan, Sanskrit, and European languages. It touches on the implications of language borrowing, grammar evolution, and historical linguistics.

Discussion Character

  • Exploratory
  • Debate/contested
  • Technical explanation

Main Points Raised

  • Some participants suggest that scholars in antiquity did notice similarities between languages, particularly when the relationships were close, such as between Indian and Persian languages.
  • Others argue that while there are commonalities in language borrowing, the focus of linguists is on grammatical similarities to trace common ancestry, which can reveal insights into pre-history.
  • A participant notes that while grammar can persist, it is not always consistent over time, citing the significant changes from Old English to Modern English as an example.
  • Further discussion includes the evolution of grammatical structures, such as the reduction of noun inflections in English, which raises questions about the stability of grammatical features across languages.

Areas of Agreement / Disagreement

Participants express differing views on the extent to which ancient scholars recognized language similarities, with some asserting that only close relationships were acknowledged, while others emphasize the importance of grammatical structures in understanding language evolution. The discussion remains unresolved regarding the recognition of larger language families like Indo-European.

Contextual Notes

Limitations include the lack of consensus on the recognition of language families in antiquity and the varying interpretations of grammatical persistence across languages.

Swamp Thing
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Did scholars in antiquity notice and remark on related/similar words in different languages?

Just as one example, during and after the Greco-Persian wars there would have been many who became at least partly bilingual in Greek and Persian. They would have then come across Indo-European words in each others' languages. Another example would be early contacts between Persia and India, given that Avestan and Sanskrit share many similar sounding words. (I read somewhere that Zoroastrian texts were translated into Sanskrit during medieval times after some Zorastrian groups migrated to India).

As for European language groups (e.g. the Romance group), I assume that their interrelation would have been known continuously throughout their evolution, since there was no period of mutual isolation that would have erased the common origin from collective memory?
 
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It is very common for otherwise unrelated languages to "borrow" words from one another. What linguists are interested in is whether languages have the same grammar. Grammar persists through time. The idea is if languages have a similar grammar then they came from a common ancestor. In this way we can learn about what was going on in pre-history (before written records).

Hindi and English have a common ancestor. Hungarian is related to Finnish but not to German. And so forth.
 
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Swamp Thing said:
Did scholars in antiquity notice and remark on related/similar words in different languages?
Yes, but often only when the relation was pretty close. Indian grammarians did recognise similarities with Persian. However nobody came close to recognising bigger families like Indo-European.
 
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Hornbein said:
Grammar persists through time.
Not always. There are enormous differences between Old English, Middle English, and Modern English, to the point that Old English is unrecognizable to modern speakers. Even Middle English is just barely recognizable to us. For example, in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales (written between 1387 and 1400 - Middle English) the following would be nigh onto inscrutable.
Wepyng and waylyng, care and oother sorwe
I knowe ynogh, on even and a-morwe,'
Quod the Marchant, 'and so doon oother mo
That wedded been.
Some grammar structure that changed between Old English and Middle English included the elimination of many of the noun inflections corresponding to grammatical cases. Where there used to be dative, instrumental, genitive, and other cases in Old English, most were eliminated in Middle English. In Modern English, the only remnants of these grammar constructs are the genitive 's added to nouns to indicate possession, together with the various cases that still remain in our pronouns -- I/me/my/mine and so on.
 
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Hornbein said:
Grammar persists through time.
Like gender in English?
Like noun classes in Niger-Bantu-Congo languages?
Mark44 said:
Chaucer's Canterbury Tales
"When in April, and it's muddy underfoot"
Or something like that.
 

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