The discovery of Sanskrit has contributed a lot in the revolution of Linguistic contrastive studies due to some similarities between Sanskrit and some European languages.
[Sanskrit bears] „to both [Latin and Greek] a stronger affinity, both in the roots of the verbs and in the forms of the grammar, than could possibly have been produced by accident [...] no philologer could examine them all three without believing them to have sprung from some common source, which, perhaps, no longer exists.“
This conclusion by Sir William Jones (1786) kick started comparative linguistics: the study of relatedness between languages. As a result, it was established that most languages of Europe, Persia (Iran) and the northen part of India were related, which lead to the work of reconstructing proto-languages such as Proto Germanic, Proto Slavonic, Proto Romance, etc. Above all, the 19th century comparative linguistics began the work of reconstructing the grammar of Proto Indo-European. Thus, the discovery of Sanskrit ultimately lead to important development of the comparative method (discovering systematic correspondences in phonology, morphology, and syntax of different languages; Rasmus Ras, Jakob Grimm, Karl Verner...), as well as to many languages becoming the object of linguistic study.
One of the main outcomes in historical , diachronic linguistics has been the application of the comparative method in finding the languages that belong to the same family . Based on phonetic similarity existing between a large number of words across different targeted languages , the lineage for a large number of European languages was established. In point of fact, it was found out that languages like English, French, German, Spanish, Italian, Persian , Sanskrit are sisters and belong to the same protoform or parent language known as IndoEuropea family of languages.
Marvellous, Reza Biria. This information is really interesting. Best regards. Hazim.
[Sanskrit bears] „to both [Latin and Greek] a stronger affinity, both in the roots of the verbs and in the forms of the grammar, than could possibly have been produced by accident [...] no philologer could examine them all three without believing them to have sprung from some common source, which, perhaps, no longer exists.“
This conclusion by Sir William Jones (1786) kick started comparative linguistics: the study of relatedness between languages. As a result, it was established that most languages of Europe, Persia (Iran) and the northen part of India were related, which lead to the work of reconstructing proto-languages such as Proto Germanic, Proto Slavonic, Proto Romance, etc. Above all, the 19th century comparative linguistics began the work of reconstructing the grammar of Proto Indo-European. Thus, the discovery of Sanskrit ultimately lead to important development of the comparative method (discovering systematic correspondences in phonology, morphology, and syntax of different languages; Rasmus Ras, Jakob Grimm, Karl Verner...), as well as to many languages becoming the object of linguistic study.
Thank you, Nadira for your detailed marvellous answer. Best regards. Hazim.
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