SV: SV: Sanskrit translations in Nazi hands

[Miguel Carrasquer Vidal]

Paul Kekai Manansala <kekai at JPS.NET> wrote:

>Even Sir William Jones was sketchy about the
>relationship of Sanskrit to other Indian languages.  He denied that
>Hindi was in any way related to Sanskrit, but otoh believed that most
>of what is now known as Austronesian was related to the modern
>Indo-European family.

Interesting.  I'm not familiar at all with Sir William Jones'
thoughts on linguistics, except for the famous paragraph in which he
is said to have first identified the Indo-European language family.
I do know that a rather well-known Indo-Europeanist from around the
turn of the century (whose name escapes me right now) did indeed
propose a relationship between Indo-European and Austronesian
(Malayo-Polynesian).  It would be interesting to know if he had been
in any way influenced by Jones in this.  What is your source for
Jones' thoughts on IE and MP?

>However, he believed that Malay, Afghan and Palavi
>were related to Semitic.

Led astray by the script, no doubt.

=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
mcv at wxs.nl
Amsterdam