Summary Details
| Query: |
11th Century North Indian Languages
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| Author: | Amitha Knight | |
| Submitter Email: | click here to access email | |
| Linguistic LingField(s): |
Historical Linguistics
Sociolinguistics Anthropological Linguistics |
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| Language Family: |
None
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| Summary: |
Hi everyone,
I recently posted a question to the list about languages spoken in Northeastern India in the 11th century--specifically what the locals in the Puri/Bhubaneswar and Chittagong areas would have called their languages when speaking about it. Here's a summary of the information I received (attributes in parentheses, but any mistakes are all mine!): First off, I was cautioned that the history of Oriya and Bangla is still being hotly debated. Mike Morgan informed me that calling these languages "North Indian" rather than "East Indian" is problematic and Tanmoy Bhattacharya warned me to be careful when claiming that Oriya is an older language than Bangla (both mistakes I made in my initial email). Thanks for the corrections! Mike Morgan suggested breaking my question into two more specific ones: 1) What would WE call the language spoken at this time? Bengali and Orya do have a common language ancestor, though Magadhi Prakrit seems to more of a linguistic term or literary term rather than a term for the spoken language of the time (Richard Barz, Mike Morgan, Thibaut d'Hubert). They may have spoken a form of Aprabrahamsa at this time (Richard Barz, Tanmoy Bhattacharya) but some would argue that the common language had already broken up by this time period and that we would probably call the languages early Bengali or Oriya (Richard Barz, Mike Morgan, Thibaut d'Hubert). Thibaut d'Hubert also states that the language spoken in Chittagong is made even more complicated because of the strong influence of the Tibeto-Burmese language, with the modern day Chittagongian dialect being difficult for other Bangla speakers to understand at all. 2) What would THEY call the language spoken at this time? (i.e. What would my character say the languages were called?) As national identity and linguistic identity are thought to be more recent concepts, Mike Morgan suggested that referring to "our speech" or "Puri speech" might have been appropriate (and may still be in some areas). Richard Barz also agreed that people were/are still "very casual" about terminology for local spoken languages and cites as an example that "Hindi" is the Persian word for "Indian", applied by 12th century conquerors of Northern India. He suggests that people might have called their languages "bhasha" (also suggested by Thibaut d'Hubert), the Sanskrit word for 'language', "in pre-modern times used for any spoken language that wasn't Sanskrit." Thibaut d'Hubert points to "sanksrit commentary of Munidatta (late 13th century) calling this language 'prakrita-bhasha', which is used here as the opposite of Sanskrit." Ricard Barz also suggests "boli" or "buli", the term for dialect. Some suggested references: The Indo-Aryan Languages by C.P. Masica (Richard Barz) The Origin and Development of the Bengali Language by S.K. Chatterji (Tanmoy Bhattacharya, Thibaut d'Hubert, Naira Khan, Mike Morgan, Bill Poser) Many thanks also to a person who responded via twitter (@tweezew) who offered some general guidance about researching 11th century India. Thanks again to everyone who responded to my query. I will keep you posted if I manage to find a publisher for my manuscript! Amitha Jagannath Knight amitha@amithaknight.com http://www.amithaknight.com twitter: @amithaknight |
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| LL Issue: | 22.2051 | |
| Date Posted: | 12-May-2011 | |
| Original Query: | Read original query | |
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