Looking for a language that shares many similarities with Sanskrit in pronunciation(vocabulary similarities are a bonus)

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Dtmont
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Looking for a language that shares many similarities with Sanskrit in pronunciation(vocabulary similarities are a bonus)

Postby Dtmont » Sat Jun 15, 2019 12:35 am

I am looking for a language that shares similarities to Sanskrit. I want to be able to pronounce Sanskrit terms easier but also learn a modern day spoken language. I am aware there are Sanskrit materials out there but most are way too complicated and don't have pronunciation guides(There is an Assimil course but it is in French unfortunately.). It doesn't even have to be an Indo-Aryan language (although the vocabulary similarities would be nice). What languages are the closest pronunciation and vocabulary wise to Sanskrit? Is Hindi the best bet?(I ask this here because most other places people have certain emotional and political biases).
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Re: Looking for a language that shares many similarities with Sanskrit in pronunciation(vocabulary similarities are a bo

Postby jonm » Sat Jun 15, 2019 5:02 am

Hi Dtmont, I think your best bet is probably Hindi, though I'd be curious to see what suggestions others might have.

Here's how I would approach this if I were doing it. First, I would look at the sound inventory of Sanskrit and figure out which sounds I didn't already have in my native language and any other languages I spoke. For that, I would probably use Wikipedia's charts showing Sanskrit's consonants and vowels. Then I would look for the modern language that had the greatest number of those unfamiliar sounds. And then once I had started learning that modern language, I would pay close attention to the ways in which its sound system differed from Sanskrit's, so that I would know what adjustments to make when pronouncing Sanskrit.

Let's start with the stops. Sanskrit has a four-way voicing/aspiration contrast (for example, /p b pʰ bʱ/ or /k g kʰ gʱ/) where English has a two-way contrast. And Sanskrit contrasts dental and retroflex stops /t̪ and ʈ/ (with the same four-way voicing/aspiration contrast at each of those places of articulation) where English just has alveolar stops. Modern languages with pretty much the same stop inventory as Sanskrit include Hindi, Bengali, Marathi, and Gujarati.

Sanskrit also has a series of alveolo-palatal affricates /t͡ɕ d͡ʑ t͡ɕʰ d͡ʑʱ/, as well as a voiceless alveolo-palatal fricative /ɕ/, which it contrasts with a voiceless retroflex fricative /ʂ/. I don't think Hindi has that last contrast (I hope someone will correct me if I'm wrong), and it has alveolars instead of alveo-palatals (as does English). So that would be one difference between Hindi and Sanskrit to be aware of. Marathi is the same as Sanskrit with respect to these sounds.

And then Sanskrit has five nasal stops /m n̪ ɳ ɲ ŋ/ articulated at the same five places as the stops and affricates discussed above. I'm not certain all five are phonemes. Hindi definitely doesn't have five phonemic nasals, but because nasals are pronounced in the same place as an immediately following stop or affricate, I believe all five nasals occur, if only as allophones in some cases. I think that's probably close enough, because if you can articulate the Hindi stops and affricates at all five places, it's not too hard to make the corresponding nasals (though it might be hard to distinguish them when listening). Incidentally, it looks like Punjabi and Gujarati may retain more of these nasals as phonemes.

I think that about covers the consonants. Other Sanskrit sounds such as /ʋ/ and /ɦ/ are pretty much the same in Hindi and in other Indo-Aryan languages.

And then the Sanskrit and Hindi vowel systems are pretty similar. The main thing to watch out for is that the Hindi open-mid vowels ऐ /ɛː/ and औ /ɔː/ were diphthongs in Sanskrit: /ai/ and /au/, respectively.

So Hindi's sound system remains fairly close to Sanskrit's. And the sound systems of some other Indo-Aryan languages are closer to Sanskrit's in some ways but further away in others, so I think it comes out about even. Hindi, however, would have the most learning material, and it uses Devanagari. (Sanskrit isn't necessarily written in Devanagari, but it very often is.)

One last thing I would say is, while I do think learning Hindi would help with Sanskrit pronunciation, it would probably also be a good idea to listen to Sanskrit audio at some point if you can track some down.
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Re: Looking for a language that shares many similarities with Sanskrit in pronunciation(vocabulary similarities are a bo

Postby israelrt » Sat Jun 15, 2019 6:17 am

Hindi, Gujarati and Rajasthani would all fit the bill.

Interestingly Malayalam a Dravidian language, has some overlap due to borrowing, rather than through inheritance.
https://www.quora.com/How-close-is-Mala ... h-Sanskrit
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Re: Looking for a language that shares many similarities with Sanskrit in pronunciation(vocabulary similarities are a bo

Postby vonPeterhof » Sat Jun 15, 2019 8:07 am

jonm wrote:...as well as a voiceless alveolo-palatal fricative /ɕ/, which it contrasts with a voiceless retroflex fricative /ʂ/. I don't think Hindi has that last contrast (I hope someone will correct me if I'm wrong)...

The contrast is maintained in the spelling, and some people do try to mark it in speech (usually those who have learned Sanskrit), but otherwise both consonants tend to merge into [ʃ]. I think I've also heard some Hindi speakers hypercorrect(?) by pronouncing /ɕ/ as [ʃ] and /ʂ/ as [s], but I'm not entirely sure.
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Re: Looking for a language that shares many similarities with Sanskrit in pronunciation(vocabulary similarities are a bo

Postby Kraut » Sat Jun 15, 2019 4:39 pm

http://www.jyotish.ws/wisdom/sanskrit-latvian.html

Most people probably think that Hindi or another North Indian language is the closest modern language to Sanskrit. Wrong. Lithuanian is the closest modern language to Sanskrit, with Latvian a close second. I am lucky in that my wife Mara was born in Latvia and is a native speaker of modern Latvian. Also, she has an M.A. in Linguistics, so she knows something about languages.



https://www.quora.com/Why-are-Baltic-la ... o-Sanskrit

https://www.quora.com/Did-Lithuanian-or ... m-Sanskrit
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And t would be not the current Lithuanian which has undergone many "reforms" but the Lithuanian of Northern Prussia.
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Re: Looking for a language that shares many similarities with Sanskrit in pronunciation(vocabulary similarities are a bo

Postby Deinonysus » Sat Jun 15, 2019 5:09 pm

Kraut wrote:http://www.jyotish.ws/wisdom/sanskrit-latvian.html

Most people probably think that Hindi or another North Indian language is the closest modern language to Sanskrit. Wrong. Lithuanian is the closest modern language to Sanskrit, with Latvian a close second. I am lucky in that my wife Mara was born in Latvia and is a native speaker of modern Latvian. Also, she has an M.A. in Linguistics, so she knows something about languages.



https://www.quora.com/Why-are-Baltic-la ... o-Sanskrit

https://www.quora.com/Did-Lithuanian-or ... m-Sanskrit
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And t would be not the current Lithuanian which has undergone many "reforms" but the Lithuanian of Northern Prussia.

Ah yes, the "Lithuanian is basically Proto-Indo-European" meme, the European equivalent of "Tamil is Proto-world and is millions of years old" meme.

I assume you're being facetious, but just in case you aren't, or in case you are but a reader misses your humor, the Balto-Slavic and Indo-Aryan languages diverged thousands of years ago and there's no way Lithuanian would be closer to an Indo-Aryan language from another continent than to another Baltic language.
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Re: Looking for a language that shares many similarities with Sanskrit in pronunciation(vocabulary similarities are a bo

Postby Kraut » Sat Jun 15, 2019 5:44 pm

You misunderstood this sentence:

Lithuanian is the closest modern language to Sanskrit, with Latvian a close second.


and you are wrong on this point:

and there's no way Lithuanian would be closer to an Indo-Aryan language from another continent than to another Baltic language.


https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... n&start=10
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Re: Looking for a language that shares many similarities with Sanskrit in pronunciation(vocabulary similarities are a bo

Postby Deinonysus » Sat Jun 15, 2019 6:28 pm

Kraut wrote:You misunderstood this sentence:

Lithuanian is the closest modern language to Sanskrit, with Latvian a close second.


and you are wrong on this point:

and there's no way Lithuanian would be closer to an Indo-Aryan language from another continent than to another Baltic language.


https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... n&start=10

Well, you could certainly make the argument that Lithuanian maintained a dual number longer than most other Indo-European languages. However, Sanskrit is far from the only IE language to have a dual number. It was also found in Ancient Greek and Old English and Norse.

But saying that Lithuanian is the closest modern language to Sanskrit implies a phylogenetic relationship, not just a shared feature, which is patently ridiculous. So at best it's sloppily worded.

It's like saying that Spanish is closer to English than it is to French because they both have a present progressive tense.
Last edited by Deinonysus on Sat Jun 15, 2019 6:32 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Looking for a language that shares many similarities with Sanskrit in pronunciation(vocabulary similarities are a bo

Postby Serpent » Sat Jun 15, 2019 6:32 pm

I thought the claim was that if you want to hear what PIE sounded like, you should speak with a Lithuanian peasant? So the pronunciation/general sound of the language are similar. Many -s endings, for example.
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Re: Looking for a language that shares many similarities with Sanskrit in pronunciation(vocabulary similarities are a bo

Postby Dragon27 » Sat Jun 15, 2019 7:24 pm

Come on, guys. That article is just amateurish pseudolinguistics. The very first sentence:
Sanskrit is the ancient mother tongue of most of the languages spoken in India and almost all the languages spoken in Europe (among the exceptions are Basque, Albanian, Hungarian, Finnish and Estonian).

is a dead giveaway (+ a minor squibble - Albanian is an Indo-European language too).

And yes, of course, Sanskrit, being an Indic language, is closer to other Indic languages, than to Balto-Slavic family.
Arguing about which one is closer to PIE (which is, incidentally, the ancestral language of Indo-European family, to which both Sanskrit and modern Lithuanian belong), on the other hand, may have some merit, at first glance. Second glance, though, does require some kind of specialist in this area (or, at least, somebody, who has learned Lithuanian, Sanskrit and PIE to a high level (: ).
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