in reply to Re^3: The Germanic language form
in thread The Germanic language form

I only found support for the idea that Sanskrit is the ancestor of English

That's strange. See, for example, the wikipedia article on the 'Out of India theory', which clearly states that 'This theory is deprecated in mainstream scholarship'.

Update: I found that there is actually a wikipedia article about The Adventure of English, the TV series upon which Lord Bragg's book (which you cite as your source above) was based. Here's an extract:

Critics of the programme have pointed out that it contains factual errors: for example, it asserts unequivocally that the Indo-European languages stem originally from India

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Re^5: The Germanic language form
by Moron (Curate) on Jun 01, 2007 at 12:59 UTC
    Aha, but I never said Sanskrit originated in India, did I!

    I studied your link and find (so far) as follows: The more recent hypothesis A) that the Indo-European civilisation began in Kurgistan 7000 years ago instead of in India, irrespecive of whether that civilisation spoke Sanskrit or not at whatever period in history offers neither support nor counter-argument to the hypothesis B) that Sanskrit is the origin of English and so A irrelevant to B.

    To put it another way Sanskrit is indeed the classical language of India, the objections you raise (or should I say link to) are only relevant to whether or not it originated in India but are not relevant to whether or not Sanskrit is the origin of English.

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    ^M Free your mind!

[reply]

      I'm sorry, but I just don't understand how you think that this justifies your original statement 'It all started with as sanskrit'.

      As the topic so obviously fascinates you, however, might I suggest some further reading? (You will probably find these books to be rather better researched that Baron Bragg's TV series :)

      The Oxford Introduction to Proto-Indo-European and the Proto-Indo-European World by J. P. Mallory and D. Q. Adams ISBN 0199296685

      Indo-European Linguistics: An Introduction by James Clackson ISBN 0521653673

[reply]
        And sorry too but I still don't understand why you still think the origin of the indo-european civilisation not being India but is geographically or otherwise Kurgish is a reasonable counter argument to the statement that English originated from Sanskrit - or what else is your argument then? That Sanskrit has been spoken in India since before English began is not in dispute by the way? Or is it?

        I am not disputing your references, I am disputing what you understand by them.

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        ^M Free your mind!

[reply]

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