The Power of Knowing and Your Word

Date:   4/23/2005 11:07:57 AM ( 19 y ago)

"Knowing" Words in
Indo-European Languages

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The first systematic theory of the relationships between human languages began when Sir William Jones, "Oriental Jones," proposed in 1786 that Greek and Latin, the classical languages of Europe, and Sanskrit, the classical language of India, had all descended from a common source. The evidence for this came from both the structure of the languages -- Sanskrit grammar has similarities to Greek and to nothing else -- and the vocabulary of the languages. Thus, "father" in English compares to "Vater" in German, "pater" in Latin, "patêr" in Greek, "pitr." in Sanskrit, "pedar" in Persian, etc. On the other hand, "father" in Arabic is "ab," which hardly seems like any of the others. This became the theory of "Indo-European" languages, and today the hypothetical language that would be the common source for all Indo-European languages is called "Proto-Indo-European." The following table shows a genealogy for two "knowing" roots, which in modern English turn up as "know" and "wit."


Words that are related to each other by descent from a common source are called "cognates." English "wise" and Sanskrit "veda" are thus cognates. Note that descent can become confused when words are subsequently borrowed. English has borrowed "idea" and "agnostic" from Greek, "video," "visa," and "cognition" from Latin, "vista" from Spanish, etc.

Another striking example of cognates are all the following words for "is" -- modern French and Persian pronunciation is given in parentheses:


English German French Latin Greek Sanskrit Persian
is ist est
(ê) est esti asti ast
(ê)

Traditionally, all Indo-European languages were divided into "centum" and "satem" languages, after the Latin and Avestan words for "100," respectively. This is an "isogloss" (like an "isotherm" or "isobar" in meteorology) that distinguishes languages where, in certain environments, an Indo-European k has remained a k and where it has turned into an s. Most importantly, the Indo-Aryan (Sanskrit, Persian, etc.) and Slavic languages are "satem" languages. However, this particular isogloss is now no longer taken to reflect a fundamental division in descent. In the chart above, Russian, the principal Slavic language, will be seen to be more closely related to German and to Latin than to Sanskrit; and Greek, a "centum" language, is more closely related to Sanskrit than to anything else. What has happened is that more features have been taken into account and the overall greater similarities between Greek and Sanskrit outweigh a lesser point that Sanskrit seems to share with Slavic languages. On the other hand, the whole picture of branching descent, while perhaps appropriate for organic evolution, may not be as appropriate for languages, which can borrow features from even unrelated languages in geographical proximity. The Slavic and Indo-Aryan languages thus may well have shared a certain sound change, even while retaining closer affinities to other groups.

9th- As Human Beings we Know at Birth our Divine Nature, but "Class Consciousness" deprograms our beautiful intelligence of Knowing. I have been studying the power of The Word In Creation for 11 years now. Mostly, I have been the guinea pig-but as I grow more intuitive I view others and their lives, and measure (for lack of a better word) how aligned they are with their word, and the look and feel of their lives. Are the aligned more fruitful? Look around your friends and family-What do you "see"?


 

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