Why is Tamil regarded as the oldest of Dravidian languages, but not proto-Tamil/Malayalam/Tulu/Kanada/Telegu/Brahui?
2.7182818284590...
linguistics/biology. That would help us discern/qualify the oldest of
the Dravidian languages, which we attribute as being Tamil. For some
reason, the oldest of this family of languages is *not* Telegu/Kannada/
Brahui. So does this imply that these latter languages came from
Tamil?
Brian M. Scott
"2.7182818284590..." <tange...@gmail.com> wrote in
<news:0fdb3b35-4b16-4a38...@c65g2000hsa.googlegroups.com>
in soc.culture.indian,sci.lang:
> I wish that someone incorporated the science of divergence with
> linguistics/biology. That would help us discern/qualify the oldest of
> the Dravidian languages, which we attribute as being Tamil.
You appear to be confusing date of attestation with age. I
believe that Tamil does have the oldest extant literature of
the Dravidian languages, but that doesn't make it any older
as a language than Kannada, Telugu, or what have you.
[...]
Brian
Peter T. Daniels
wrote:
What it means is that Tamil happened to get written down earliest.
All the Dravidian languages are "the same age."
(Assuming that human language had a single origin in a single human
community before we spread around the world, _all_ languages are "the
same age." -- Except the ones that happened to come about when
speakers from different communities got together and came up with a
"pidgin" to communicate with, and osmetimes such a pidgin develops
into a "creole.")
M. Ranjit Mathews
What if someone speaking Middle English natively were discovered?
Would his language be of the same age as the language of a speaker of
Modern English?
Peter T. Daniels
wrote:
I'll worry about that when you come back with an interview of Khubilai
Khan.
Richard Wordingham
news:ece0fb00-d1e4-4f89...@1g2000prg.googlegroups.com...
One can raise a lot of caveats against the basically true statement that
"_all_ languages are 'the same age'." How about revived languages? What
about Afrikaans - does one have to regard it as a pidgin to call it a young
language? (I think the answer is that you get a different answer if you
compare historical rather than present-day languages. Classical languages
such as Sanskrit, Sumerian or Latin present other issues - though they do
actually continue to change, but possibly with periods of reversion to an
older form.)
Richard.
M. Ranjit Mathews
> "M. Ranjit Mathews" <ranjit_math...@yahoo.com> wrote in messagenews:ece0fb00-d1e4-4f89...@1g2000prg.googlegroups.com...
>
> > On May 12, 4:19 am, "Peter T. Daniels" <gramma...@verizon.net> wrote:
> >> (Assuming that human language had a single origin in a single human
> >> community before we spread around the world, _all_ languages are "the
> >> same age." -- Except the ones that happened to come about when
> >> speakers from different communities got together and came up with a
> >> "pidgin" to communicate with, and osmetimes such a pidgin develops
> >> into a "creole.")
>
> > What if someone speaking Middle English natively were discovered?
> > Would his language be of the same age as the language of a speaker of
> > Modern English?
>
> One can raise a lot of caveats against the basically true statement that
> "_all_ languages are 'the same age'." How about revived languages?
Well, the Tuya Tamizh chauvinists claim to use the Sen Tamizh of over
a millenium back or at any rate, a proper superset of that language.
Brian M. Scott
<jrw...@yahoo.co.uk> wrote in
<news:3IbWj.2$sv...@newsfe13.ams2> in
soc.culture.indian,sci.lang:
[...]
> One can raise a lot of caveats against the basically true
> statement that "_all_ languages are 'the same age'."
> How about revived languages? What about Afrikaans -
> does one have to regard it as a pidgin to call it a young
> language?
Yes, if you mean without any qualification. (And as you
know, I don't think that it is properly so regarded.) It is
young as a recognized distinct language, but its history is
as long as that of any other Germanic language.
[...]
Brian