Tamil words in English

[Vidhyanath Rao]

[Since nobody would bite my post about periodization of Sanskrit, I
will try to steer this that way :-)]

"Sn. Subrahmanya" <sns at IX.NETCOM.COM> wrote:
>[...] 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.

There is Sanskrit, and then there is Sanskrit.

It is not at all clear that ``mayaa pustakam pa.thitam'' would have
struck Panini as Sanskrit. Even to Patanjali, it probably would have seemed
weird unless the sentence meant ``I have read the book'', [as opposed to
`I read the book']. Of course, it would be right at home in drama
dialogs.

Medieval Sanskrit, in its syntax, had been deeply influenced by Prakrit.
So much so, that some genres, like drama dialog, are just Prakrits in
Sanskrit phonology. Modern Sanskrit, being modelled on medieval S.,
(with some further influences from modern languages), continues this.
[Compare things like `vadan asti': this is ok in Hindi or English, but
was bad Sanskrit even in 1900, at least according to V. S. Apte.]
Just because translating word for word from a modern Indian language
is acceptable Modern Sanskrit, you cannot conclude that modern Indian
languages are descended from Sanskrit.