Thoughts And Trivia

When you photocopy a version (having a fly squashed on it), of a many-versioned document, the copies can be traced back to that particular version. Some thing similar has happened with languages during the migration of human races across the continents - and we can trace the origin of various languages - the proto-language. Human race is said to have evolved from one single woman called "Eva" - based on evidence from mutations of mitochondria genes. We can trace the great human migration from Africa to various continents in three ways:
1) Mutations of Mitochondria Genes or Y-chromosome genes
2) Archeology
3) Comparative study of languages
Let me share my own discoveries on such photocopies of squashed flies between "Sanskrit" and "German" languages - that I learnt during my one-year stay in Germany during 1987-88. No wonder that these two languages are said to have come from same proto-indo-germanisch language.
Firstly the roots of words:
i) 'Sammeln' in Deutsch (German) = To collect or gather; 'Sammelan' in Sanskrit = Gathering of people.
ii)'Bahn' as in AutoBahn in Deutsch = A mode (of travel); 'Vahan' in Sanskrit= A mode of travel.
There are many others like that. In fact while learning Deutsch there, I felt a sense of Dè-jâ vu - whenever I encountered a new word. Many times I was able to guess its meaning.
But what is the real squashed fly is the exact copy of a totally weird counting systems in the two languages - about which I will post next. Please Wait for the next post.

Posted by Girish Bhatnagar at Wednesday, March 16, 2005