Surprisingly,there’s no subject called ’Motherology’in Linguistics that would help us trace the mother of any language!Nevertheless,some linguists have recently formed certain ground rules to identify the mother language of any language in question.
’CDDT’ (Core Diction Deduction Technique) lists out a few ground rules for the purpose.
What are the rules?
1.The fore most deciding rule is the presence of common core words between the ‘mother’ and the ’daughter’ languages discussed.List of ’Core diction’ is furnished elsewhere.
2. The chronological precedence of the ‘mother language’ needs to be established beyond reasonable doubt.
3. The ‘mother language’in question should have identifiable lot of ’native speakers’ to prove independent origination and spoken status as of now.
What are the core words/core diction for the exercise?
When any language ‘originates’the first words to originate are all ‘verbs’ normally.For example, core verbs like’come,go,sit,eat’ etc originate first followed by core nouns like’food,water,mom,dad,brother,sister’etc.’.
Linguists are of the view that a language is original if at least 90% of the following core diction A is proved to be original,meaning its ’own’.The view is based on the understanding that ‘verbs’ are the drivers of spoken basics and no language can originate without its own verbs.’Nouns’ may be borrowed from any language from any where.
A-Core Verbs
1. Go
2. Come
3. Run
4. Sit
5. Eat
6. Pee
7.Shit
8. Stand
9. Lie
10. Sleep
11. Bath
12. Drink
13. Fuck
B- Core Nouns
14. Man(Person)
15. Woman(Female)
16. Mom
17. Dad
18. Wife(my woman)
19. Food
20.Water
21. Brother
22. Sister
23. Hot
24. Cold
25. Fire
26. Good
27. Bad
28. God
29. Fear
30. Sad
31. Dog
32. Cow/Bull
33. Animal
34. Cave/Home
35.Tree
36. River
37. Forest
38. Etc.
(This is a sample list only for illustrating the concept)
However,if 90% of the core diction of Daughter language D is derived from another chronologically older mother language M,then it can be safely concluded that the second language M is the ‘Mother language’ of the first language D.
An illustration would help understand the CDD Technique better.
Let’s take a simple set of languages for easy understanding,say Tamil and Malayalam.
A-Core Verbs -TAMIL (Mother) MALAYALAM(Daughter)
1. Go ————-Po———————- Poaku
2. Come ——— Vaa——————- Varuka
3.Run ———— Odu—————— Oduka
4 Sit —————Iru ——————-Irukkuka
5. Eat ————- Unnu —————-Bhakshikkuga(Tamil-Patchi=consume)
6.Pee———— Onnukku ———— Pi(Tamil for shit)
7. Shit ————- Kakka————— Sirr ?
8. Stand———- Nil ——————- Nikku
9. Lie —————- Padu ————— Kitakkuka(Tamil-Kida=lie down)
10. Sleep(v)——— Urangu ———- Urakka
11.Bath(v) ————Kuli ————- Kulikku
12. Drink ———— Kudi————- Kudikku
13. Fuck———— Okka ————- Umpi(Tamil-Oombu=suck)
Almost 95% matching is seen in this study.Some words may not match exactly as another equivalent word of M language may be used in D language, like for ‘eat’.Sometimes phonetic changes in D words may disguise the words from immediate recognition .
Most of the words in B List Core Nouns are also likely to match thus strengthening the relationship.However B List words are prone to undergo more changes with time and varied cultural contacts..So B List matching may be considered as supplementary/additional/extra proof only.
I suggest this kind of an exercise with Sanskrit as M and Hindi as D for some surprising revealing insights.
Can we find out the mother of Sanskrit by applying CDDT ?
The CDD Technique works good as long as both the languages discussed are SPOKEN languages driven by verbs.If one of them is an unspoken SCRIPT ,then these rules do not apply.Since some IE linguists have recently found out that Sanskrit is a CODE and not a ‘language’ by nature,we cannot apply CDDT to determine who the mother is.
Instead of it,we can compare all key WORDS/NOUNS in (M and D )to determine who the mother is.
Who could be the most probable mother of Sanskrit?The first choice of the IE scholars is PIE or Greek.PIE is dated circa 4500 B.C.while Sanskrit is dated circa 450 B.C. well separated by 4050 long years So,PIE as a possible candidate is ruled out as anachronistic issue .
When the Aryans entered India by say circa 1500 B.C. they did not bring with them any known language.If Greek was the mother of Sanskrit,then they should have spoken Sanskrit before entering India.The very fact that Sanskrit was born in India means that its mother is somewhere in India only.
Now,who is that secret mother of Sanskrit ?
The possible candidate for the winner mother should be:
1. Older than Sanskrit
2.Should have the concepts/ideas that are in Sanskrit
3. Should be an Indian language spoken in close proximity to Sanskrit
Considering the fore-going parameters,Tamil appears to be the ideal candidate for the M language..Let’s compare key Sanskrit words with Tamil equivalents now.
No- Sanskrit - Tamil Root.
1 Veda———— Vithu=Seed,Vithuvan=Expert
2 Puja —————Poo(flower)+Seithu(do)
3 Gyan ————— Gnanam=Knowledge,wisdom
4 Samskrit———— Samam=Level+Kirukku=Scribble,Script
5 Atma—————— Aal=Person
6 Yoga—————— Okkam=Union
7 Ayurveda———— Ayul=life+Veda=vithu
Many more such words are available but I stop with this few samples for want of space.
In the circumstances,some IE linguists conclude that Tamil is the mother of Sanskrit in its present form based on the dictional and thought similarities.This contention is supported by the fact that there are no native community of speakers for Sanskrit who could originate words for the Sanskrit language It may also be observed that the supporters of Sanskrit language themselves speak the respective State languages only as their mother tongue.
Link:https://www.quora.com/Which-is-the-mother-of-Sanskrit-language/answer/Alvaro-Hans?__filter__=&__nsrc__=2&__snid3__=3321603133
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
