Examination of "An Indo-European Cloudland" by Michel Danino, presented at ICHR 2002

Examination of "An Indo-European Cloudland" by Michel Danino, presented at ICHR 2002

 

Shrikant Talageri

 

The above paper, "An Indo-European Cloudland" was presented by Michel Danino at the ICHR seminar on "The Homeland of Indo-European Languages and Culture", January 7-9, 2002. It was published in a volume "A Discourse on Indo-European Language and Culture", ed. D.N. Tripathi, ICHR, New Delhi, 2005, pp.42-53. It is a truly excellent paper where it comes to examining some of the prominent fallacies in the AIT (Aryan Invasion Theory), particularly in relation to the attempts to delink the Vedic civilization from the Harappan Civilization, and should be read in full, and hence I will not repeat his points and logical conclusions here: they should be read in the original. Hence my criticism of this paper in this present article should not be misconstrued by Danino or anyone else.

However, there is one point on which the paper falls prey to a common fallacy to which many opponents of the AIT from the Indian (and India-friendly) side are susceptible. It denies or tries to brush away certain fundamental aspects of the Indo-European debate: the very existence of such a thing as an Indo-European language family, of a Proto-Indo-European ancestral language and Homeland, and the concept of a common ancestry "based on the 'tree model' (or genetic model)".

Danino notes that "a school of thought has attempted an opposite model, the 'Out of India' theory (OIT) in which successive migrations out of India (which, at least, clearly figure in the scriptures) explain the spread of IE languages and culture. Among recent proponents (such as Koenraad Elst mentioned above in connection with the linguistic aspect), two in-depth studies by Shrikant G. Talageri (2000) and David Frawley (2001) deserve attention, based as they are on a fresh look at historical elements in the Rig-Veda" (p.8). However, he tell us, "OIT may not be the last word, and the first question we must ask, in the face of the persistent failure of the IE model, is: Do we need an original homeland and an original proto-language at all? An alternative to this 'big bang' or 'Garden of Eden' approach may lie in a much longer period of interaction between cultures in and outside India, with a multiplicity of now vanished regional dialects tending to converge and diverge in turn, and acting as bridges between the main language families. In such a model, we would have many clusters of homelands, not just in Eurasia but beyond. Vedic culture would be indigenous to India and contemporary with the Harappan civilization―this is clearly imposed by the Sarasvati time line" (p.8).

Now it could seem that this is an old paper, from 2002 (published in 2005), and therefore may not represent the exact present views of Danino, who is among one of the respected leading lights of the Hindu intellectual movement. However, this does not appear to be so: we were both present at a seminar in Hyderabad in January 2020, and he reiterated the same views in his talk at this seminar as well. Moreover, this is a major fallacy subscribed to by many opponents of the AIT―and very prominent and eminent opponents of the AIT at that―and although I have already dealt with this issue earlier in a separate article "Are German and French closer to Sanskrit than Malayalam, Kannada and Telugu?", I feel it necessary to take up the question once more here in the specific context of the clearly expressed views of Shri Danino.

It must be realized that the fact of an Indo-European language family, original proto-language (at least as ancestral to the twelve known branches of Indo-European languages) and an original homeland for this proto-language, is exactly that: a fact. You cannot disprove the AIT by the simple expedient of simply denying this fact. The "Indo-Aryan" languages constitute just one of the twelve known distinct branches of Indo-European languages, and it is not enough to simply try to show that the Indo-Aryan languages were native to India: the history of the dispersal of the twelve branches has to be uncovered, failing which the whole linguistic problem remains unsolved. All the twelve branches have to have originated in one small contiguous area, they cannot have automatically and independently sprung up, unconnected with each other, in different non-contiguous parts of the Old World, or connected to each other in some ethereal or surreal reciprocal way in remote ancient times. Either Indo-Aryan originally came from some distant area, or the other distant branches of Indo-European moved out from India in the remote past. Trying to escape this conclusion, by denying the validity of linguistic logic, and seeking to be satisfied with providing a half-answer amounts to simply running away from this problem and asking to be defeated in the debate.

[Note: I have pointed out many times that the term "Indo-Aryan" should be strictly applied only to the Vedic dialects, since the PIE was reconstructed by only taking the Vedic and Vedic-derived Sanskrit structure and vocabulary in the reconstruction: actually the modern "Indo-Aryan" languages are originally derived from other non-Vedic but equally Indo-European dialects to the east and south of the Vedic area, whose features were not taken into consideration. However, keeping this fact in mind, we must also consider the need to maintain coherence in the debate and so the term "Indo-Aryan" will generally be used as a term to include both the linguistic "Indo-Aryan" (i.e. Vedic) dialects as well as the other unrecorded non-Vedic Indo-European dialects of the past to its east and south within India].

We will examine what Danino has to say in this paper:

I. An "alternative model" to the "tree model"?

II. The example of the English language.

 

I. An "alternative model" to the "tree model"?

 Danino rejects the relationship of the different branches of Indo-European branches in a family "tree model" and suggests instead  that an "alternative to this 'big bang' or 'Garden of Eden' approach may lie in a much longer period of interaction between cultures in and outside India, with a multiplicity of now vanished regional dialects tending to converge and diverge in turn, and acting as bridges between the main language families. In such a model, we would have many clusters of homelands, not just in Eurasia but beyond. Vedic culture would be indigenous to India and contemporary with the Harappan civilization―this is clearly imposed by the Sarasvati time line" (p.8).

This pretty picture of "a multiplicity of now vanished regional dialects"―"vanished" regional dialects which have left no record anywhere―is rather strange when even the very logical concept of a PIE ancestral language is rejected because there is no written record available for such a language. And how would one explain in detail this process of these dialects "tending to converge and diverge in turn, and acting as bridges between the main language families" when even the very simple concept of a family tree seems to strain the credibility of people not wanting to accept it?

Further, beyond the clues that can be gleaned from linguistics and studies in comparative mythology and religion, is there even the faintest trace of any concrete evidence that, for example, the pre-Vedic people, the pre-Hittite people, the pre-Greek people, the pre-Teutonic (Germanic) people, to name just four, all more or less in their present or earliest known historical habitats representing "many clusters of homelands, not just in Eurasia but beyond", were in touch with each other?

The main refrain is that the "similarities" in the oldest known representatives of the twelve Indo-European branches do not represent common ancestry but mutual influences among different originally linguistically unrelated people in their "many clusters of homelands, not just in Eurasia but beyond".

Can languages in remote areas influence each other in such a manner? In fact, the "similarities"―which is really a gross understatement of the nature of the linguistic connections between the different branches―are such that even different unrelated languages living in a geographically close space and sharing a common culture and civilizational heritage cannot influence each other to the extent that they can produce such close correspondences.

The only model that can explain these close correspondences is in fact the "tree model". This logical model cannot be rejected on the ground that it fails to answer every single seeming anomaly, or on the ground of lack of concrete evidence, when the only vague "alternative models" suggested are even more prone to countless anomalies and even greater lack of concrete evidence.

Danino tells us that the "whole IE edifice rests on migrations across vast areas, but for which evidence is generally non-existent" (p.5). But does one really require "evidence" to deduce that a language family spread out historically over a huge stretch from Sri Lanka to Iceland must have covered that huge area initially by migrations from one area to the others? The only real alternative is to suggest either that different languages, totally unrelated to each other, but having surprising "similarities", automatically sprang up independently in different parts of Eurasia in the remote past, or, alternately, to simply stoutly deny, and keep on denying, that any "similarities" do indeed exist among the different branches.

Further, Danino dismisses the IE idea by suggesting that "disagreement has dogged the date of the supposed dispersal, which ranges from 7000 to 3000 BC (Herbert Kühn and Lothar Kilian go even beyond 10000 BC). Clearly linguistics has no reliable way to date the speeds with which languages evolve" (p.2). But the question is not about the "speeds with which languages evolve" but about the datable technological developments for which the different branches have common words, and this narrows it down to around 3000 BCE. If the branches had dispersed from a common area in 7000  BCE or before 10000 BCE, and separated from each other, they could not possibly have had common words for wheeled vehicles and copper, among other things.

So the only question―regardless of whether there is concrete evidence for it or not―is: are the twelve branches "genetically" related to each other in a family "tree model"? Or are the "similarities" based on mutual influence and borrowing between originally unrelated languages?

What are these so-called "similarities"?

1. To begin with, let us take up the most common items: numbers and relationships. Compare modern English father, mother, brother, sister, son, daughter, Sanskrit pitar, mātar, bhrātar, svasar, sūnu, duhitar, and modern Persian pidar, mādar, birādar, xvāhar, pesar, dukhtar. Only the modern Persian pesar does not show the connection, but the Avestan word was hūnu. (and for sister it was xvasar). What is the connection between these three languages that the words should be so closely similar? The modern Konkani words are bappūsu, āvsu, bhāu, bhaiṇi, pūtu, dhūva. The Hindi words are bāp, mā, bhāī, behen, beṭā, beṭī. The reader can check the equivalent words in any other Indo-Aryan language known to him/her. How can modern English and Persian―two languages far separated from each other in space and from Vedic Sanskrit in both time and space―have words so strikingly corresponding to Sanskrit words if the three languages are not actually related to each other, when even modern Indo-Aryan languages, all demonstrably related to each other and to Sanskrit, have words different from Sanskrit and from each other? Of course, the modern Indo-Aryan words can usually be shown to be derived from the above Sanskrit words (Konkani dhūva from duhitar, etc.) or derived from other Vedic words (Konkani pūtu from Sanskrit putra) or words developed in later Sanskrit though in some cases they can be local colloquial developments, but in the case of modern English and Persian, there is no need to do any analysis: the relationship is loud and clear.

If the words are to be explained as words borrowed from Sanskrit by the ancestral forms (originally unrelated to Sanskrit) of English and Persian which existed in ancient times, then this explanation is infinitely more hypothetical and unsubstantiated than any reconstructed PIE language.

This explanation becomes even more dubious if we add the related words from other branches (other than the three already seen), all to be assumed to be descended from hypothetical ancestral forms originally unrelated to Sanskrit and to each other?

Tocharian: pācer, mācer, procer, ser, soy, tkācer.

Old Irish: athair, máthair, bráthair, sïur, ― , ― .

Greek: patēr, mētēr, ― , ― , huios, thugátēr.

Latin: pater, māter, frāter, soror, ― , ― .

Russian: oteç, maty, brat, syestra, syn, dochy.

Lithuanian: ― , mótina, brolis, sesuõ, sūnùs, duktē.

Armenian: hayr, mayr, ― , xwuyr, ― , dowstr.

2. Let us take the numbers: Compare Sanskrit "dvā, tri, catur, panca" with Russian "dva, tri, cetuire, pyac"; or Sanskrit "saptan, aṣṭan, navan, daśan" with Latin "septem, octo, novem, decem".

Or compare the Persian numerals "yak, du, si, chahar, panj, shish, haft, hasht, nuh, dah" with Hindi "ek, do, tīn, chār, pānc, che, sāt, āṭh, nau, das".

And then compare all the above with Tamil "onṛu, iranḍu, mūnṛu, nāngu, aindu, āṛu, ēzhu, eṭṭu, onbadu, pattu" or Telugu "okaṭi, renḍu, mūḍu, nālugu, ayidu, āru, ēḍu, enimidi, tommidi, padi".

Instead of wading through all the numbers, one number will illustrate the picture much more clearly:

Sanskrit tri, (and its form trīṇi, and the obviously related Indo-Aryan  forms: Sinhalese tuna, Kashmiri tre, Hindi tīn, Marathi tīn, Konkani tīni, Gujarati traṇ, Sindhi ṭē, Punjabi tinna, Nepali tīna, Bengali tina, Oriya tini, Assamese tini, etc.). In Iranian, we have Avestan thri, becoming modern Persian sī/sē, Baluchi sē, Kurdish sē, Ossetic erte, Pashto dray. Indo-Aryan outside India: Romany (Gypsy) trin, Mitanni tera.

The words in the other distant branches are also obviously related: Greek treis, Albanian tre, English three, German drei, Dutch drie, Swedish tre, Danish tre, Norwegian tre, Icelandic ϸryu, Gothic ϸrija, Latin tres, French trois, Spanish tres, Portuguese três, Catalan tres, Italian tre, Romanian trei, Russian tri, Belarusian tri, Ukrainian try, Macedonian tri, Polish trzy, Czech tři, Slovak tri, Slovenian tríje, Serbian tri, Croatian tri, Lithuanian trys, Latvian tris, Irish trī, Welsh tri, Tocharian trai, Hittite tēries.

Compare all these words with the Dravidian words, all within India: Tamil mūnṛu, Malayalam mūnnu, Telugu mūḍu, Kannada mūru, Tulu mūji, Gond mūnd, Toda mūd, Kodagu mūdu, Brahui musit.

Further, compare them with the Austric words, in India as well as in southeast Asia: Santali pɛ, Turi pea, Mundari apia, Korku apai, Bhumij pea, Kharia uphe, Bijori apia. And in southeast Asia: Vietnamese ba, Cambodian (Khmer) bǝy.

The family-wise division between the three language families is clear. Again, if ancient Sanskrit could influence all the "unrelated" languages spread out over such a huge stretch of Eurasia into borrowing its numbers so completely, without leaving, in a single one of them, any parallel trace of earlier unrelated numbers, why did it fail with equal totality to influence all these Indian languages into doing so as well?

3. As we saw, there is complete identity between the numbers in the different Indo-European branches. There is no parallel trace of any assumed earlier non-Indo-European numbers in a single one of these languages.

And if all of them were more or less native to their historical areas and were only supposed to be "interacting" with and influencing each other, there is zero evidence anywhere of such deep "interaction".

But, hypothetically and minimally speaking, it is still not impossible in general that languages can borrow words for relationships and numbers from other languages. Today, we frequently find Indians using words like "mummy, "daddy", "uncle", "aunty", as well as English numbers, in their discourse even when talking in their own languages (Hindi, Tamil, whatever).

But there are classes of words which are not easily borrowed. Personal pronouns are one such class. Compare the personal pronouns in the various Indo-European languages: the nominative plurals in Sanskrit vay-, yūy-, te, English we, you, they, and Avestan vae, yūz, dī, or the accusative forms of the same plural pronouns, Sanskrit nas, vas,  Avestan noh, voh, Russian nas, vas,  and the Latin nominative forms nos, vos.

Or the Sanskrit dative forms -me and -te with Avestan me and te,  English me and thee, Greek me and se (te in Doric Greek), Latin me and te, etc.

Again, one word will illustrate the picture much more clearly: Sanskrit tu-, Hindi tū, Marathi tū, Konkani tūȗva, Sindhi tuȗ, Punjabi tūȗ, Gujarati tū, Bengali tui, Oriya tu, Assamese toi, Kashmiri tsa, Romany (Gypsy) tu. In Iranian, we have Avestan tū Persian tu, Pashto tu, Kurdish tu, Baluchi tæw.

Here are the words in the other distant branches: Latin tū, Italian tu, Spanish tu, Portuguese tu, French tu, Romanian tu, Catalan tu, Irish tu, Scots-Gaelic thu, Welsh ti, Old English thū (later English thou), Icelandic thu, German du, Norwegian du, Danish du, Swedish du, Old Church Slavic ty, Russian ty, Belarusian ty, Polish ty, Czech ty, Slovak ty, Ukrainian ty, Bulgarian ti, Serbian ti, Croatian ti, Slovenian ti, Macedonian ti, Bosnian ti, Armenian du, Albanian ti, Doric Greek tu, Lithuanian tu, Latvian tu, Tocharian tu, Hittite ta / du.

Compare this flood of Indo-European words with the Dravidian equivalents: Tamil nī, Malayalam nī, Toda nī, Kota nī, Brahui nī, Kurukh nīn, Kannada nīnu, Kolami nīv, Naiki nīv, Telugu nīvu.

It is extremely unnatural for languages to borrow personal pronouns from other languages. Therefore the completely sweeping nature of the correspondences among different Indo-European languages is again proof of the relationship between them.

4. But the very basis of any language lies in its verbal roots. We will not bother to give lists of common verbal roots here, since many such lists are available on the internet, and in any case the comparative study of Indo-European languages, and the hypothetical reconstruction of the likely PIE vocabulary from its verbal roots, is actually based primarily on these common verbal roots. But, it would be too technical for this article.

But we will just take brief note here of a few easy-to-understand common features of the Indo-European verbs:

a) To begin with, a look at the comparative conjugation of a verb in a few main ancient Indo-European languages. This is a standard example often given, and it is important for us because it is of a verb very important to us: the verb bhar- "to bear", which is the root from which we get the name of the people among whom the oldest Indo-European text in the world, the Rigveda, was composed: the Bharatas; the name of India's greatest epic: the Mahābhārata; and, in fact the very name of India itself: Bhārat or Bhāratvarṣa.

The comparative chart gives the present tense conjugation:

 

	(I) bear	(thou) bearest	he/she/it) bears/beareth	(we) bear	(you) bear	(they) bear
Sanskrit	bharāmi	bharasi	bharati	bharāmas	bharatha	bharanth
Avestan	barā	barāhi	baraiti	barāmahi	baratha	baranti
Gothic	baira	bairis	bairith	bairam	bairith	bairand
Greek	pherō	phereis	pherei	pheremon	pherete	pherousi
Latin	ferō	fers	fert	ferimus	fertis	ferunt
OldIrish	birum	bir	berid	bermoi	beirthe	berait
OldSlavic	bero	bereši	beretŭ	beremŭ	berete	berotŭ

Note the connection not only in the verbs but also in the consonants in the suffixes: m in the first person singular and plural, s in the second person singular, t in the third person singular, th in the second person plural, and nt in the third person plural (though all changed in some cases).

2. The relation is fundamental, and covers not only the original roots of the basic verbs, but even the prefixes used to form new words from those roots. Compare the following Sanskrit prefixes with their Avestan and Greek equivalents:

SANSKRIT	AVESTAN	GREEK
ati	aiti	ety
antar	antar	endo / ento
apa	apa	apo / ap
api	aipi	epi
abhi	aibi / aiwi	amphi
anu	anu	―
ava	ava	―
ā	ā	ana
ud	uz	―
upa	upa	hypo / hyp
ni	ni	eni
niṣ	niz	―
para / parā	para / parā	para
pari	pairi	peri
pra	fra	pro
prati	paiti	proti / poti
vi	vi	―
sam	ham	syn / sym
a / an	a/ an	in
duṣ	duz	―
sva	hva	―
su	hu	eu

 

3. The verb which is the most fundamental to any language is the verb "to be". It is almost impossible for any language to borrow this verb from another language. But objecting to the idea of a "family tree" relationship connecting the twelve branches of Indo-European languages amounts to claiming that in the extremely remote, unrecorded and purely hypothetical past, a great number of totally independent and unrelated languages spread out over a major part of Eurasia were busy borrowing to such an extent from each other that all of them, even thousands of years later, have closely identifiable forms for this very basic verb.

 

Here are the singular present tense forms for the verb "to be" in one prominent ancient or modern language from each of the twelve branches, equivalent to the English forms  (I) am, (thou) art, (he/she/it) is:

Sanskrit: asmi, asi, asti.

Avestan: ahmī, ahī, astī.

Homeric Greek: eimi, essi, esti.

Latin: sum, es, est.

Gothic: em, ert, est.

Hittite: ēšmi, ēšši, ēšzi.

Old Irish: am, at, is.

Russian: esmy, esi, esty.

Lithuanian: esmi, esi, esti.

Albanian: jam, je, ishtë.

Armenian: em, es, ê.

Tocharian: -am, -at, -aṣ.

 

Here are the equivalent forms in the Dravidian languages of South India:

Tamil: irukkiŗēn, irukkiŗāy, irukkiŗān/irukkiŗāḷ/irukkiŗadu.

Kannada: iddēne, iddi, iddāne/iddāḷe/ide.

Telugu: unnānu, unnāvu, unnāḍu/unnadi/unnadi.

And in some representative modern Indo-Aryan languages of the North:

Marathi: āhe, āhes, āhe.

Konkani: āssa, āssa, āssa.

Hindi: hũ, hai, hai.

Gujarati: chũ, che, che.

Bengali: āchi,  ācha,  āche.

Sindhi: āhyẫ,  āhĩ,  āhe. 

Punjabi: hẫ,  haĩ,  hai.

 

Note how related words even in languages bordering on each other develop noticeably distinct forms with the passage of time: even the modern North Indian ("Aryan" language) words are not exactly like the Sanskrit words or like each other, though the connection can be seen or analyzed; but the words in the ancient Indo-European languages given above, some of which are ancient languages and some modern ones, and which are separated from each other by thousands of miles and by diverse and independent histories and no known ancient prehistorical contacts, are almost replicas of each other: by simply changing the letter a in the Sanskrit words to e, you get the exact Russian and Lithuanian words, and the Avestan, Greek and Hittite forms also are very little different. A slightly different development gives us the closely similar Germanic (English, Gothic), Celtic (Irish) and Tocharian forms!

Why must anyone be so reluctant to accept facts as to want to postulate a scenario of mutual influence of this intensity in ancient times, so total and all-powerful that even such basic words could have been borrowed from one to the other, when there is not a single known example anywhere in the whole world where even closely situated languages with one language totally influencing the other one has resulted in the borrowing of personal pronouns or basic verbal forms.

Obviously the "Indo-European" languages are closely related to each other. But the speakers of the languages are clearly not racially or genetically related to each other (while the speakers of different language families in India are racially and genetically related to each other). So this means that these languages have spread from some one particular area to all the other areas in prehistoric times, and (by elite dominance or whatever means) language replacement took place where the people in the other areas, over the centuries, slowly adopted these languages: there can be no alternative explanation. The only question is: from which original area did they spread out? I have shown that it was from North India.

Why must people refuse to win a battle and insist on trying to lose it by what is idiomatically described as "bunging a spanner in the works"?

There are many such spanners being thrown in the works by different sets of people who speak in the name of Hindus and Hindu interests:

In this article we are dealing with claims that there is no such thing as an Indo-European family of languages with a common source, and therefore that the academic search for an original homeland is unnecessary and that the AIT and OIT are both equally misguided.

Then there are those who find it sacrilegious to analyze an "apaurusheya" text like the Rigveda because it is a divine and timeless text not written by any human being, and that searching for clues to mundane historical events in it is at worst blasphemy, and at best foolishness.

Then we have those who reject all studies based on non-traditional methods as being based on a "westernized" outlook. The AIT-promoting Indologists are credited with malevolent intentions, but the OIT-claimants are no better, since they use similar  ideas, methods and techniques in analyzing the Rigveda, rather than the methods used by ancient Indian analysts of the Rigveda.

Then there is the extremely popular multitude of scholars and their fans who want to take Indian history (and texts like the Rigveda and events like the Ramayana and Mahabharata) into as remote a past as possible. There is of course a division between those who rely on periods of lakhs of years mentioned in the Puranas and other scriptures, and those who are more modest: they are satisfied with dates between 14000 BCE and 5000 BCE.

Then there are those who want to base their ideas of ancient events and periods only on the descriptions in the Puranas and Epics.

There are many more groups, in which we cannot include those staunch upper-caste Hindus who are actually pro-AIT, and very militantly so, for reasons I have already dealt with in my article on Manasataramgini.

But, like it or not, the original PIE homeland is an extremely important and indispensable part of the Indo-European debate. It cannot be denied. Either the AIT is true or the OIT, there can be no half-way solutions.

Two incidental questions which are often raised:

1. Is this subject important? If history as an academic subject is of any importance at all, then this subject is definitely important, since we are speaking of the geographical and historical origins of a language family which almost exclusively dominates four of the six inhabited continents of the world (Europe, North America, South America and Australia) and large parts of a fifth one (Asia), and is extremely important in the sixth continent as well (Africa).

2. Does it make any difference to the concept of "Hindutva hi rashtriyatva hai" for India? No, it does not really. Even if the Vedic culture came from outside India, which it very definitely did not, Hindutva is still rashtriyatva in India. I dealt with this subject in detail at the very beginning of my very first book "The Aryan Invasion Theory and Indian Nationalism" in 1993. See the pdf of the introduction and first three chapters of that book in my google drive:

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/0B4WOjKfTt7NbRlpjNDE5WjYwaEk

But this does not mean that we should let falsehood prevail or deliberately choose to lose or sabotage a winning battle.

 

II. The example of the English language

 As we saw, Danino tells us that the "tree model" "does not even work for the historical period: for instance the model shows English as originating from Germanic (through West Germanic and Low German), but does not account for the very considerable influence of Latin on it, largely through French".

Fortunately, Danino chooses for his illustration the English language, which will be very well known to at least the readers of this article, which is in English. So it will make it easier to discuss the issue.

Firstly, the logic Danino uses above is misplaced: the point of IE studies―or at least of that part of IE studies which involves the quest for the original homeland―is not to trace out the subsequent history of each branch and language and the numerous influences which each of these individual branches and individual languages underwent in the course, each, of its long individual history: it is only to locate the chronological and geographical origins of these branches and languages. And later influences do not change the origins: English does not become anything other than a Germanic language, whatever other non-Germanic influences it underwent during its subsequent checkered history―a very closely parallel example is Urdu which remains an Indo-Aryan language, and does not become an Iranian or Semitic language, despite the huge infusion of Persian and Arabic vocabulary and idioms and literary devices into the language. Subsequent influences on each of the branches and languages is each a matter of separate study.

English was indeed a Germanic language. It is strange that Danino chooses to give as an example a language which is recorded and documented, with every new change and transformation and innovation taking place, under different influences or with the passage of time, in almost every stage of its history from at least the eleventh century.

In this context, we may first note that a glance at English will also demonstrate a point about the PIE language which it is necessary for many opponents of the AIT―who insist that the Vedic language rather than some artificially reconstructed PIE "which is purely hypothetical" should be treated as the ultimate parent―to understand: i.e. that change is an inevitable aspect of any language.

To illustrate the changes which take place in languages as part of the natural process of language change, here is a passage from the Bible, from the story of the "prodigal son" in chapter 15 of the Gospel according to Luke, as given in a twentieth century English translation (the example is taken from "The history of the English Language" by Charles Barber and others):

"Now his elder son was out on the farm; and on his way back, as he approached the house, he heard music and dancing. He called one of the servants and asked what it meant. The servant told him, 'Your brother has come home, and your father has killed the fatted calf because he has him back safe and sound'".

And here is an eleventh century translation of the same in the English of that time (the vowel-elongation line over the vowels has been added by the authors of the book):

"Soplīcē his yldra sunu wæs on æcere; and hē cōm, and ϸā hē ϸām hūse, genēalǣthe, hē gehyrde ϸæne swēg and ϸæt wered. ϸā clypode hē ānne ϸēow, and acsōde hine hwæt ϸæt wǣre. ϸā cwæϸ hē, 'ϸīn brōϸor cōm, and ϸīn fæder ofslōh ān fætt cealf, forϸām thē hē hine halne onfēng'".

How many readers would be able to understand this small paragraph in the English of the 11th century? Or even to recognize that the language of that paragraph is English? The vocabulary, grammar, syntax, spellings and even the alphabets (ϸ = th) are distinct from the English of the present day. I have given only one example: the reader can himself check up the plentiful material on the historically changing nature of English available on the internet or in other scholarly studies.

Language change is a natural process in any and every language in the world. No language remains completely static over a long period of time. In the case of the Rigveda itself, since it was composed over a long period of time, we see distinct differences in language between the oldest and newest parts of the text. As the oldest hymns of the Rigveda were not composed at the point of time of "creation" of the universe, or in the first moment when human beings started speaking, it is only to be expected that if we go back into time further and further backwards from the point of time when the earliest hymns of the Rigveda were composed, the older unrecorded forms of the language will differ more and more from the earliest recorded form. When we move back to a certain point of time, we will naturally reach the Proto-Indo-European stage.

That PIE language may not be exactly identical to the PIE language reconstructed by linguists, but it may be that this PIE language reconstructed by linguists nevertheless is as good an approximation of the real thing as may be expected in a reconstruction with all its shortcomings of available data and input and its human errors. But in any case, it simply cannot be that the original PIE language was identical to the Vedic language, which must have been more and more different from its earliest recorded version as we go further and further back into the past. That those earlier versions are not recorded does not mean they never existed: if they are "hypothetical" that is only natural and to be expected. Everyone knows one's father's name and identity, and grandfather's, and perhaps great-grandfather's. But after a certain point one does not know the names and identities of ancestors going further and further back in time: does this mean those ancestors, being hypothetical, did not exist, and the earliest known ancestor was the First Man?

[A side-issue: some people churlishly ask why the earliest hypothetical common ancestor of the Indo-European languages should not be called "proto-Vedic" instead of proto-Indo-European. Well, since it was the ancestor of all the Indo-European languages besides Vedic, it could just as well be called proto-Greek, proto-Latin, proto-Slavic, proto-Anatolian, etc. So proto-Indo-European is the most unbiased and objective name. The only important question is: where was this language spoken? And the answer is: in India!]

In any case, back to English:

English is a Germanic language. But, due to other influences―as Danino correctly points out, "the very considerable influence of Latin on it, largely through French"―this would not be immediately apparent. In my first book, in 1993, I had illustrated the sharp difference between, for example, German and English, to show the extent of these changes. I will present the case as follows:

A. The Sharp Difference between English and German.

B. Why English is still a Germanic language.

A. The Sharp Difference between English and German:

English and German are strikingly different from each other, although at an early stage they were reasonably similar to each other. German has remained conservative or evolved within its own parameters, while English has changed in many ways, usually due to external influences, but also separate internal evolution and change:

1. Vocabulary: While German has developed its own vocabulary from its original Germanic root-words, English has borrowed heavily from the Italic branch (Latin and the modern Romance languages). Compare the following few examples of some English words and their German and Spanish (Italic) equivalents:

 

ENGLISH	SPANISH	GERMAN
evidence	la evidencia	der Beweiss
evolution	la evolución	die Entwickelung
exact	exacto	genau
exaggeration	la exageración	die Übertreibung
exaltation	la exaltación	die Erhebung
examination	la examen	die Prüfung
example	el ejemplo	das Beispiel
exasperation	el exasperación	die Erbitterung
excavation	el excavación	die Aushöhlung
exceed	exceder	überschreiten
excellent	excelente	vortrefflich
except	exceptuar	ausnehmen
excess	el exceso	das Übermass
excitable	excitable	erregbar
exclamation	el exclamación	der Ausruf

 

The effect is startling: going by the evidence alone, English could be branded an Italic language rather than a Germanic one: the German words above are incomprehensible but the Spanish words are immediately understandable. It is estimated by some that if all the words, literary phrases and technical terms in English are counted, the borrowings from Italic (Latin and French) and Greek would easily exceed 60-70% of the English vocabulary. The book "The Loom of Language" by William Bodmer is instructive in this regard. Another short but interesting piece on borrowed words in English:

https://www.ruf.rice.edu/~kemmer/Words04/structure/borrowed.html

 Not only is the German vocabulary distinct, but even the attitude towards words is different. The German style of joining together words to an extreme extent is foreign to English. Douglas Busk, for example, in his book "The Curse of Tongues and Some Remedies", parodies this by giving his idea of the headline which a German newspaper would probably give if an assassination attempt were made on the Hottentot emperor's wife on a visit to Germany: "Hottentottenpotentatentantenattentäter…..which, despite its thirty-eight letters, would be instantly comprehensible to any German reader".

2. Syntax: The German vocabulary is richly distinct from the English. Now see what Frederick Bodmer has to say (in his book "The Loom of Language", p.286) about German-Dutch syntax: "The most important difference between English and the two German languages is the order of words. It is so great that half the work of translating a passage from a German or Dutch book remains to be done when the meaning of all the individual words is clear, especially if it conveys new information or deals with abstract ideas". The most obvious fact is that in German (as in Indian languages) the verb comes at the end of the sentence.

3. Grammar: In grammar, the two languages have evolved so differently that German grammar is a nightmare for any English speaker.

While English nouns have no gender (except for the obvious, boy being masculine, girl being feminine, etc.), German nouns have gender: thus, in our above list, Beweiss (evidence) is masculine, Entwickelung (evolution) is feminine and Beispiel (example) is neuter.

Likewise, the conjugation of the verb in German is much more complicated than in English.

Worse, the articles (in English, simply the definite the and indefinite a/an) also have genders and even numbers, and even case (nominative, accusative, genitive, dative)! Thus:

 

Definite articles (the):

	MASCULINE	NEUTER	FEMININE	PLURAL
NOMINATIVE	der	das	die	die
ACCUSATIVE	den	das	die	die
GENITIVE	des	des	der	der
DATIVE	dem	dem	der	den

 

Indefinite articles (a/an):

	MASCULINE	NEUTER	FEMININE
NOMINATIVE	ein	ein	eine
ACCUSATIVE	einen	ein	eine
GENITIVE	eines	eines	einer
DATIVE	einem	einem	einer

 

The adjective is even more complicated. We will take as an example the adjective blind=blind. When used as a predicate, it remains unchanged, e.g. sie ist blind=he is blind. Otherwise, it can change form in three ways :

1. When preceded by a demonstrative or definite article (that, the, etc.):

	MASCULINE	NEUTER	FEMININE	PLURAL
NOMINATIVE	blinde	blinde	blinde	blinden
ACCUSATIVE	blinden	blinde	blinde	blinden
GENITIVE	blinden	blinden	blinden	blinden
DATIVE	blinden	blinden	blinden	blinden

 

2. When precede by a possessive or an indefinite article (my, a/an, etc.):

	MASCULINE	NEUTER	FEMININE	PLURAL
NOMINATIVE	blinder	blindes	blinde	blinden
ACCUSATIVE	blinden	blindes	blinde	blinden
GENITIVE	blinden	blinden	blinden	blinden
DATIVE	blinden	blinden	blinden	blinden

 

3. When there is no preceding demonstrative, article or possessive:

	MASCULINE	NEUTER	FEMININE	PLURAL
NOMINATIVE	blinder	blindes	blinde	blinde
ACCUSATIVE	blinden	blindes	blinde	blinde
GENITIVE	blindes	blindes	blinder	blinder
DATIVE	blindem	blindem	blinder	blinden

 

If it appears there is no consistency in the medley of forms above, consider the different forms of the possessive (my/mine=mein) when it precedes the adjective, so that one has to keep in mind two different kinds of changes in the possessive and the adjective:

	MASCULINE	NEUTER	FEMININE	PLURAL
NOMINATIVE	mein blinder	mein blindes	meine blinde	meine blinden
ACCUSATIVE	meinen blinden	mein blindes	meine blinde	meine blinden
GENITIVE	meines blinden	meines blinden	meiner blinden	meiner blinden
DATIVE	meinem blinden	meinem blinden	meiner blinden	meinen blinden

 

There has been a massive simplification of grammar in English as compared to German. Even here in a few cases there has been some influence from the Italic languages (primarily French): e.g. the normal formation of plural nouns by simply adding an "s": boy=boys, etc.; while the original plural formation was more inflectional, and some archaic forms still survive either as primary or secondary words: man=men, woman=women, child=children, cow=kine, sow=swine, etc.

But in most cases English has developed independently: e.g. English nouns not having gender is an independent development, since the Italic languages also, like German, have gender in nouns.

 

B. Why English is still a Germanic language:

So does the massive Italicization in the vocabulary of English mean it is no more a Germanic language? This is not so, since borrowing of vocabulary, or even of phonetic or grammatical features, does not change the family affiliation or ancestry of a language, any more than a person changes his genetic ancestors when he adopts the language, religion, beliefs, lifestyle and customs of other people. While the borrowed vocabulary is generally for literary, technical and extra words, the basic vocabulary and grammar of English has remained largely Germanic.

So much so that although, for example, as we saw, the large number of forms for the German direct article (der, das, die, den, des, dem, in various situations) is reduced to single form (the) in English, the connection between the German forms and the English form is obvious. Spanish, on the other hand, has distinctly different (Italic) forms (el, los, la, las).

An interesting point is that when the English word is still a Germanic word, and obviously cognate to the German word (often closer to the Dutch or Swedish form, but we will only give German equivalents, except in the rare case, when we will also give the Dutch form), and the Spanish word is strikingly different, we can still see in the Spanish word the different other words that English has borrowed or derived from the original Italic root present in the Spanish word. The borrowed Italic words (often even in two forms, Latin and French, with different meanings: e.g. "major" from Latin, "mayor" from French) are often given different shades of meaning, or different but related meanings, than the original Germanic inherited word in English, thereby adding to the extremely rich vocabulary of English.

The following few examples will illustrate the point (We will omit the articles the/a/an, etc., and the capitalization of the first letter in the German nouns. Also remember: the letter "v" in German-Dutch is pronounced "f"):

 

English	German	Spanish
brother	bruder	hermano
sister	schwester	hermana
son	sohn	hijo
daughter	tochter	hija
uncle	oncle	tio
aunt	tante	tia

 

English	German	Spanish
four	vier	cuatro
five	fünf	cinco
ten	zehn (D. tien)	diez
eleven	elf	once
twelve	zwölf (D. twaalf)	doce
hundred	hundert	ciento
thousand	tausend	mil

 

English	German	Spanish
arm	arm	brazo
beard/chin	bart/kinn	barba
blood	blut	sangre
finger	finger	dedo
flesh	fleisch	carne
foot	fuss	pie
forehead	stirn (D. voorhoofd)	frente
hair	haar	cabello
hip	hufte (D. heup)	cadera
knee	knie	rodilla
shoulder	schutter (D. schouder)	hombro

 

English	German	Spanish
earth	erde	tierra
world	welt	monde
sun	sonne	sol
moon	mond	luna
heaven	himmel	cielo
hell	hölle	infierno
water	wasser	agua
waterfall	wasserfall	cascada
rain	regen	lluvia
rainbow	regenbogen	arco iris
weather	wetter	tiempo
hill	hügel (D. heuvel)	colina
field	feld	campo
grass	gras	hierba
sand	sand	arena

 

English	German	Spanish
monday	montag	el lunes
tuesday	dienstag	el martes
wednesday	mittwoch (midweek), D. woensdag	el miercoles
thursday	donnerstag, D. torstag	el jueves
friday	freitag	el viernes
saturday	samstag, D. zaterdag	sabado
sunday	sonntag	domingo

 

English	German	Spanish
white	weiss	blanco
yellow	gelb	amarillo
red	rot	rojo
blue	blau	azul
brown	braun	moreno
green	grün	verde

 

But the best indicator of any language is the verbal system. It is true that German has created additional higher verbs out of its own stock while English, even while retaining its original verbs, has adopted Italic words with a change in the shade of meaning (thus English "sing" = Spanish "cantar", and the Italic form has been adopted into English from the French form of the verb as "chant"), but generally the verbal system is the most stable part of a language. English has also preserved most of its original verbal stock. In the following list, we have omitted the suffix "-en" from the German verbs for better comparison:

English	German	Spanish
allow	erlaub	permitir
answer	antwort	contestar
bathe	bad	bañar
begin	beginn	empezar
behave	benehm	conducirse
bet	wett	apostar
bite	beiss	morder
bore (a hole)	bohr	perforar
borrow	borg	pedir prestado
break	brech	romper
bring	bring	traer
burn	brenn	arder
comb	kamm	peinar
come	komm	venir
dance	tanz	bailar
do	tu, D. do	hacer
drink	trink	beber
eat	ess	comer
fall	fall	caer
feel	fühl	sentir
fill	full	llenar
find	find	hallar
fish	fisch	pescar
flee	flieh	huir
fly	flieg	volar
fold	falt	doblar
follow	folg	seguir
forbid	verbiet	prohibir
forget	vergess	olvider
forgive	verzeih	perdonar
give	geb	dar
go	geh	ir, andar
greet	grüss	saludar
hang	hang	colgar
hate	hass	odiar
have	hab	tener
help	helf	ayudar
hinder	hinder	impedir
hold	halt	tener
hope	hopf	esperar
kneel	kniel	arrodilarse
kiss	küss	besar
land	land	rizar
laugh	lach	reir
lean	lehn	apoyarse
learn	lern	aprender
lend	leih	prestar
lie (tell a)	lug	mentir
live	leb	vivir
love	lieb	amar
make	mach	hacer
milk	melk	ordeñar
open	offn	abrir
rain	regn	llover
reach	erreich	alcanzar
rub	reib	frotar
run	renn	correr
say	sag	decir
scream	schrei	gritar
see	seh	ver
seek (search for)	such	buscar
send	send	enviar
shine	schein	brillar, lucir
shoot	schiess	tirar
shut	schliess	cerrar
sing	sing	cantar
sink	sink	hundir
sleep	schlaf	dormir
smear	schmier	manchar
sow	sa	sembrar
speak	sprech	hablar
spit	spuck	escupir
split	spalt	hender
steal	stehl	robar
stop	stopp	parar
stroke	streichel	acariciar
suck	saug	chupar
swim	schwimm	nadar
swing	schwing	oscilar
thank	dank	agradecer
think	denk	pensar
understand	versteh	comprender
wait	wart	esperar
wake	weck	despertar
wash	wasch	lavar
wish	wünsch	desear
work	wirk	trapajar

 

Take also a few simple verbal forms:

English	German	Spanish
we sing	wir singen	nosotros cantamos
we sang	wir sangen	nosotros cantamos
we will sing	wir werden singen	nosotros cantaremos
we can sing	wir können singen	nosotros podemos cantar
we cannot sing	wir können nicht singen	nosotros no podemos cantar
we must sing	wir müssen singen	nosotros debemos cantar
we could sing	wir kömten singen	nos gusta cantar
we want to sing	wir wollen singen	nosotros queremos cantar

 

In short, English is a full-fledged Germanic language, regardless of the rich and humongous nature of its borrowings from Latin, French and Greek.

A parallel example, as we saw, is Urdu. It uses the Arabic script, while Hindi uses Devanagari, it borrows heavily from the vocabulary of Arabic, Persian and sometimes even Turkish, while Hindi borrows (especially for technical terms) from Sanskrit, but it is essentially a full-fledged Indo-Aryan language: it is nothing but an Islamized (since it borrows from three languages perceived to be Islamic) form of Hindi, and its basic vocabulary (personal pronouns, basic nouns, numbers, verbs, etc., etc.) is absolutely identical with Hindi. The conjugation of a simple verb, e.g. jā ("go"), is absolutely the same in both Hindi and Urdu (jā , jāo, jāiye, jātā hai, gayā, jāyegā, jānā, jā rahā hai, gayā thā, etc., etc.) and every ordinary Urdu sentence is identical with Hindi, and purely Indo-Aryan, with no connection at all to Persian or Arabic, whatever the percentage of complicated or highfalutin Persian or Arabic words adopted into the language.

In short, the original ancestry of any language is the only thing which decides its identity. And the twelve branches of Indo-European languages very definitely have a common ancestry. Therefore they very definitely had a common original homeland. Therefore, it is not a question of anyone "needing" an original homeland: if this historical IE problem has to be solved, then it is necessary in the interests of academic clarity (not to mention political justice) to locate this homeland.