language is a funny thing. It is just a sound a group of people make- made it produces so much emotions in us. Well i think there is no inherent - mother language chauvinism. It is a political issue to think my language is the best or it has so many words and much more. Language is just a sound we make along with some lines we draw if it were used for long.
All languages has the function of expressing what we think to others in a comprehensive manner. We have a brain which tells us- what " i" think cannot be same as the next person. This self awareness makes us want to communicate with other members of the tribe.
One of the first thing it strike you if you read "discover of india" is vastness and the rich languages we speak. Now it is easy to understand our diversity- easy to travel and watch "reels" to know the variations among us. When i went to study away from home town- i was astonished with the variations of Tamil spoken among my classmates of 22. The contraction of the words by my friends from down south was just amazing. In Tamil we finish lot of verbs with "kirathu" in formal Tamil. But the contractions of it in spoken languages is amazing- it changes from "kutu" to just "KI". when they finish with Ki it is so funny for my to listen. Sadly most of my Madurai accent is lost and it is sort of sad. living in Chennai and speaking in English while teaching has made it disappear.
I am poor in learning languages. I have trouble learning newer languages- Unlike many of my friends and my son.
Anyway it seems south east language have a unique DNA. It seems if you have retroflexion of tongue is a unique feature of it. What it means is you have to bend your tongue to bend it backwards to produce sounds - like la, li lu, taa and much more. We now know all over languages are mixture and nothing is "pure". All languages are influenced by each other.
The Dravidian languages spoken in south India has pronounced retro-flexion and it seems they all might have arose from a unknown proto-Dravidian language. The amazing thing is it might have slowly moved to south india from the regions of Iran and Afghanistan. How do we know that- some people still speak some form of protodravidian langauges still there. how fascinating.
Well as time goes by Dravidian languages had influences from languages of the North. Again from Uzbekistan region to north of India it could have slowly come. Those languages have more dental phonetics. I may not be able to explain it properly by they way they say tha, dha - you know. Thats dental sound. I cant do that and thats why it is so difficult to speak Hindi. I am never going to make those sounds properly so no. Also the movies they make it very difficult to watch hence cant learn. The movies in Hindi- i could rather have constipation rather than see them.
Sanskrit is more dental and Dravidian languages were more retrofelxion. But it did not stay like that both influenced each other. classic example is my name Ha is more dental. local south asian langauges influenced sankrit and prakrit making it add retro sounds to it. all langauges are sounds humans make. More influences came from king, merchants and wanders it seems- you know from the Persian kings, making up of creoles for business and much more.
Nothing to be proud of, it evolved like everything. Happy we would write poems making it sound beautiful, communicate truth, lies, evil and much more. I have not read or heard most of the Indian languages leave alone world languages- still it is so common for us to say my mother tongue is the best. how stupid and Narcisi tic
More info in this book
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