announcement: proceedings of symposium PLUS summaries in skt

[Dipak Bhattacharya]

06 02 09
The accusation that an NIA language depended heavily on Sanskrit perhaps first came from Grierson who noted that in Bengali and called that 'slavish'. The idea caught up with some non-Bengali linguists like Taraporewala but none among Bengali authors or scholars of any consequence including Tagore and so many writers in Bangladesh cared for the accusation. Most of them do not know anything of that 'slavish' dependence. Bengali has moved way from the nineteenth century stiffness. But Grierson or Taraporewala had nothing to do with that. Development in the districts and improved communication have allowed the influence of the dialects to be felt with native words replacing Sanskrit words imperceptibly. But quite a few post-Tagore poets (eg.Sudhindranath Datta, Bishnu De in calcutta and a number of them in Bangladesh) have been in search of proper words much more from Sanskrit than from any other language for expressing various ideas and ideologies .  
Hindi caught up with Bengali a bit late in the day. So the attention on its dependence on 
Sanskrit is younger than that on Bengali.
As to why the concern for over-dependence on Sanskrit is of no concern to the creative 
writers in these languages and is of non-native origin will not be far to seek. It is because the critics do not speak or write the languages concerned. 
I request for the indulgence of my colleagues in giving here a gist of my conversation with late Professor F.B.J. Kuiper. That may clarify my point. Everybody knows that Kuiper had a 
forceful personality and was liberal in his outlook. I had just complained against the way 
Grierson attacked the influence of Sanskrit on Bengali. Kuiper, who had at first thought that I had been speaking from the point of view of Grierson, asked me if the process had been still alive. I asked him with all humility -- what most of the European languages did for coining terms for zoological species and other new additions in physical and social sciences? I just averred that the dependence was not more than that of French or English on Greco-Roman at least till the fifties of the twentieth century. My words only evoked a heavenly smile from the savant. That was usual and typically Kuiperish.
Why not even a word will ever be uttered anywhere in the world about that dependence?
DB

--- On Thu, 5/3/09, Dick Plukker <d.plukker at INTER.NL.NET> wrote:


From: Dick Plukker <d.plukker at INTER.NL.NET>
Subject: Re: announcement: proceedings of symposium PLUS summaries in skt
To: INDOLOGY at liverpool.ac.uk
Date: Thursday, 5 March, 2009, 9:12 PM


See also

/A Comprehensive English-Hindi Dictionary of Governmental & Educational Words & Phrases/, by Prof. Dr. Raghu Vira and Dr. Lokesh Chandra, New Delhi 1976.

Its enormous (1572 pages, three columns to a page), heavingly Sanskritized, vocabulary is mostly formed, just as described by Allen Thrasher, on the basis of Sanskrit roots, pre- and suffixes.


Dick Plukker
Amsterdam


franco at RZ.UNI-LEIPZIG.DE schreef:
> I would like to draw your attention to the Sanskrit dictionary in
> http://spokensanskrit.de/
> It has entries such as computer, computer mouse, log in/out, coffee, chocolade, etc.
> Best wishs
> Eli Franco
> 
> 
>> I would think that since Sanskrit creates abstractions with great ease, it would be more reasonable to invent words for these (at least arguably) abstract entities from Sanskrit roots and vocabulary rather than to borrow the English.   They aren't like Realien like "coffee."  Anyway, modern languages differ radically in the extent to which they expand vocabulary by borrowing rather than by translation, invention from native vocabulary, calqueing, or the like, don't they?
>> 
>> Allen Thrasher
>> 
>> 
>> "I wonder, does Dr. Srinivas Varakhedi and his team also have words for
>> computer, computational, unicode fonts, printer, word strings, parser,
>> recursive, and regular expressions? Personally, if I would have to do the
>> job, I would have considered these terms loan-words, as most living
>> languages do today. Same with submodern items like coffee and train.
>> 
>> Alexandra van der Geer
>> Athens"



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