Tamil words in English

[Sn. Subrahmanya]

Well I am tired of the disscussion too...

I will try to answer from some of the questions raised...
Here goes ....
1. Dr.art. Lars Martin Fosse
   Your arguments about languages being more reliable than archeology
   is untenable. You undermine your own arguments by stating that
   languages are arbitrary and hence more valid !!!.
   If languages are arbitrary..how in the world can you draw conclusive answers
   from studying them.  I believe that Archeology is NOT arbitrary
   As for your ethnological reasoning for the AIT, less said the better.
   That kind of reasoning belongs to 1898 and not in 1998. Please show
   me any kind of data that there is genetic differences between brahmins
   and non-brahmins and that they are a different race, in any part of India.
   By your ethnological arguments (based on skin colour) you are unwittingly
   stating arguments similiar to those subscribed to in the
   beginning of this century and the previous and in fact recently here in
the US
   there was(and still is) a guy named David Duke who was spouting the same
observations.
   I will NOT respond to such arguments.
   You seem to prefer linguistic evidence (also stating at the same time
that languages
   are arbitrary), wheras I value archeological evidence. Dont you think
   at the least that the models should corroborate evidences from each other so
   that we arrive at the truth ?. You want to conveniently ignore archeological
   findings (infact thousands of them) when it does'nt suit your model.

2. Mr. Robert J. Zydenbos
   YES....there is a similiarity between Northern and Southern languages
   in India.  In fact you can just about do a one to one substitution of
words and
   can easily translate sentences. To account for this, linguists have come up
   with their own theories - please ask some of the expert linguists on their
   theories as to how they account for this.
       naanu  odida pustaka   - kannada
       mayaa paTitaM pustakaM - sanskrit
   In school when we were learning sanskrit, the teacher used to tell us
that we would
   be able to translate from English to Sanskrit very easily, if we first
translated the
   English to our own mother tongue and then to Sanskrit. He was right, and
it used to work
   all the time. Seeing so much commonality, I find it very hard to believe
that somehow,
   English and Sanskrit are closer to each other than Kannada & Sanskrit.
   Please read some of the arguments used by linguists to explain this
commonality,
   and you will see, why I find it so hard to believe them.

3. Mr. S.Krishna
    If someone claims to be a descendant from the moon it IS logical to laugh
    at it... but if someone claims he is from Dwaraka, dont you think that it
    maybe possible ?
    Is an outright rejection valid ?
    All the original sources refer to only places within the subcontinent
and there
    never was any argument among pandits about some kind of origin from some
faraway
    lands - until the word Arya was bastardized and all kinds of racial
    connotations were ascribed to passages in the Vedas.

I waited to see reactions to Edwin Bryants posting, but there doesnt seem
to be any.Could it be one of shock ?
Now that Mr.Edwin Bryant has made his position clear, maybe some of the vocal
supporters of the AIT are thinking that the Invasion theory is not on such a
sure
footing after all - especially now that a **non-Indian** (ignoring
Mr.Jim Shafer, after all he is a mere archeologist) has said that
THERE IS A POSSIBILITY  OF A ALTERNATIVE TO THE INVASION/MIGRATION  THEORY.
          ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
No one knows what that alternative is, but atleast accepting that there
might be an alternative
is indeed a mighty positive change.

The so called "evidence" for the Invasion theory has been built up over
almost 150 years
wheras the challenge to it from has come only within the past 15-20 years
and has become more organized only within the past decade or so. After all,
India gained independence only 50 years ago and time is needed to discard
old euro-centric colonial thinking.
Atleast a beginning has been made.

Again, at the end - the thing that started this discussion thread was kuyil.
Does anyone out there have an answer as to why it HAS to be of
Dravidian origin ? anything else other than just assertions ?

BTW,is the word for crow in Sanskrit, also of a supposed dravidian origin ?
coz after all a cuckoo depends on the crow for its survival.

Subrahmanya
Houston, TX