Is There Such a Thing as "Indo-European" Languages?

 

Is There Such a Thing as "Indo-European" Languages?

Shrikant G. Talageri

 

On seeing the above title of this article, people who have read my books and articles may wonder what on earth I am trying to say. The truth is, I am beginning to wonder if anyone really reads my books and articles, and, after reading them (if they have at all done so), whether they really understand even the very basics of what I am saying. Or is it just that, without reading a single word of any of my books and articles, people just apply ideological labels to me and then decide for themselves what they feel I must be saying, even when their conclusions (of what I must be saying) are exactly the opposite of what I am actually saying?

Confused? What I mean is, there seem to be a large number of Hindus who have decided (without reading a single word of any of my books and articles) that because I am (correctly) labeled a staunch Hindu writer writing on the subject of the Aryan Invasion Theory, what I am saying must be that there is no such thing as "Aryan" or "Indo-European" languages and this whole idea of "Indo-European" languages is just an invention of colonialist scholars!

This kind of thing is fatiguing. What is the sense of writing tomes and tomes showing that "A equals B", and then finding that people are going around praising me for having proved that "A does not equal B"?

This sense of fatigue overcame me today (as it has many times before on seeing similar things said or written about me by some Hindu claiming to be a supporter) when someone sent me the following twitter exchange. The first tweet in the thread seems to be someone giving a list of words to show "similarities between Sanskrit and Lithuanian language". Then follow some more tweets by a tweeter named Indic studies @ son of aryavarta, which asks the other two people in the thread to see my videos which, he claims, show "that Sanskrit didn't originate from Indo-European languages"!

 

As I have written (as I said) tomes and tomes, correcting or criticizing those who claim that there is no such thing as Indo-European languages, it is a bit funny that my videos should be recommended as offering proof that there is no such thing as Indo-European languages (or, in the words of the tweeter, that Sanskrit is not an IE language)!

I have already written everything on this point, and so I have no need to write it all again. But it is possible that, as I have written more than 200 articles on my blogspot, it is not easy for the interested reader to know exactly where I have given the detailed data showing that there is indeed such a thing as Indo-European languages, and that Sanskrit is also one of these IE languages. As this fact is the very first basic fact to be understood in any discussion on Aryans, AIT/OIT, etc., I decided to put up this short article whose very title will make it clear that I am dealing with this subject. But I will not deal with it anew, but only give the URL of my two articles which most completely deal with this point:

"Are German and French Closer to Sanskrit than Malayalam, Kannada and Telugu?"

https://talageri.blogspot.com/2017/11/are-german-and-french-closer-to.html

"Examination of  'An Indo-European Cloudland' by Michel Danino Presented at ICHR 2002"

https://talageri.blogspot.com/2020/08/examination-of-indo-europeancloudland.html

I hope there is no more confusion about whether Sanskrit is an Indo-European language or not, and about what I have to say on the subject.