SV: SV: Classical languages of India

[Lars Martin Fosse]

C.R. Selvakumar [SMTP:selvakum at VALLUVAR.UWATERLOO.CA] skrev 28. september
2000 23:28:
>     Even by your own definition, Tamil will eminently qualify as
>     classical language. I wonder what aspect of your definition
>     Tamil does not qualify !

It is not really my intention to disqualify Tamil as a classical language
according to my own definition! I have no competence in Tamil, and I simply
didn't know to what extent it was used outside Tamilnad. Whether Tamil fits
my definition or not is something I must leave to others to decide! :-)

>     Also I wonder whether you can cite Old Norse, Old German and
>     Anglo-Saxan English literature comparable to Tamil before
>     500 C.E. ? By this question, I don't imply that none exists, but
>     I would like to see some comparable literature cited for the Sangam
>     corpus (just the surving part) written by some 500 poets
>     (including many lady poets),

None of the languages mentioned here go further back than about a 1000 y
ears. Evidently, they are not as old as the Sangam literature. But that is
not relevant here: the main point is not age, but use and distribution. Old
Norse would have been a classical language according to my definition if it
had been used as a cultural vehicle by speakers who otherwise did not speak
Old Norse, not to mention that it would have been used for several
centuries after it "died" and even today like Classical Arabic. But that is
not the case. (I am not forgetting Islandic which is not germane to my
point).

>Laksmi Srivinas wrote:

>This suggestion seems to require, for a candidate
language to qualify as classical, an imperial context
whereby subject peoples use the language of the
imperial nuclear zone viz., Latin in the Roman Empire.

Not really. The Greeks hardly had an empire (with the short-lived exception
of Alexander the Great). The extensive use of Greek in the Ancient world
was primarily due to cultural factors, and the same goes for Sanskrit. With
Arabic and Latin, there are of course imperial connections!

>I hope that you do not require that a language be well
and truly dead for it to qualify as a Classical
language. This was another one of the arguments
advanced against Tamil's claims to being a Classical
language.

This argument is slightly muddled. Obviously, the Tamil of today must be
somewhat different from Old Tamil, which would be the Classical version of
Tamil. Notice that Classical Arabic is till written, although the modern
Arabic dialects are as different as the Romance languages (or even more
different for all I know!) But classical languages are invariably *old*. A
classical language is used for centuries on end, long after people have
ceased to speak it in everyday life.

>Venkatraman Iyer wrote:

>The definition given today for a classical language
will only suit for invaders like Arabic or Sanskrit or Persian
or Greek. Quoting from memory, A.K.Ramanujan wrote
that "after all a language is nothing but a dialect with
an army".

This is not quite correct, as I have stated above. But let me point to a
Classical Language in the making: English. English now fullfils a number of
the features I mentioned: it is used by people all over the world, and
although there is an imperial connection to some extent, this connection is
not the main reason why English is turning into a classical language. The
main reason is the economic power and cultural attraction of the United
States of America, which means that we are all becoming americanized
(whether we like it or not). At the same time, spoken English both in
America and Great Britain continues to develop. Give English a couple of
centuries, and I'll bet you won't be able to understand its spoken form
whereas you probably can go on reading it with few problems. (This thought
experiment assumes that you live for 200 years, which is the sort of
assumption one can use in thought experiments :-)).

Best regards,

Lars Martin


Dr. art. Lars Martin Fosse
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