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| Sunday, 19 May 2002 |
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Background to study evolution of Sinhala language The Origins of the Sinhala Language. Reviewed by Prof Vini Vitharana. Linguistics has during the past few decades grown to be a very popular discipline in university faculties all over the world. There are several specialists in the subject. A considerable literature is available and much research is being actively pursued in the field. Time was when the scope of linguistics was wider than that of the 'linguistics' of the present day. Students were then taught the etymology of words which envisaged an awareness of Pali and Sanskrit and the process of linguistic evolution, all of which are hardly in evidence today. There is hardly a reference to the evolution of language, making students less mindful of the 'roots' and making the study lose the required depth. Especially fascinating is the contribution made by the early nineteenth century linguists who probed into the origin and diversification of the languages of the world and reconstructed primitive vocabularies of which no living evidence is at hand but which nevertheless appear to be rationally correct. Equally creditable is their attempt at localising the possible geographical regions where the earliest forms of the living languages were spoken several thousand years ago. Origins and affinities It is language alone and not any other cultural institution that can educate us on how language itself came to be born. That awareness may have remained beyond the grasp of at least a few of the present-day readership owing to the absence of reading material. It is here that one feels the importance of the publication of the work by Asiff Hussein. His aim is to give the reader an idea of the origins and affinities of the Sinhala language and the manner in which it has evolved since Proto-Indo-European times, C. 4000-3000 B.C. Sinhala is shown to belong to the North Indian Aryan family of languages which in turn belongs to the larger Indo-European family which includes Greek, Latin, Celtic and many modern European languages - a consideration which justified the pioneering researchers to visualise the prevalence of an 'early form', an 'ursprache' that had its origins in Southern Russia extending from the Dniester river to the Caspian Sea of the times anterior to 3000 B.C. The German linguist Schleicher even composed a fable concerning horses (ekwos) and a sheep (owis) in this ursprache (which is reproduced by the author). There is certainly no means of checking the degree of correctness of the composition, but it certainly reflects the ingenuity of its author in having thought backwards in time to have reconstructed the probable vocables basing himself on extremely scantly data. The vast number of non-linguist readers may find reading it a novel experience. The learned author, Hussein, proceeds to supply further evidence in nine tables, eight of which concern the Sinhala language. The first table supplies examples of how a particular vocable appeared in Proto-Indo-European and how it appears in Sanskrit, Greek, Latin, Persian, Gothic, Old Church Slavonic and the modern languages. Philological sequence 'Three' for example is trayas, treis, tres, trys, tris, threis, trois, tres and tri in nine old and new tongues and 'two' is duo, dvau, tvai and duwo in four. Several such examples point to a common origin of at least a few languages, past and present. The learned author devotes the rest of his pages to demonstrate how Sinhala fits into such a philological sequence by a few select terms concerned with numerals, anatomy, kinship, fauna etc. He relates the Sinhala term hatara (four) to cattaro, catvar, quattour, ketturi, kater, quatere, ceathair, cautro, cztery, chetyre cahar, car, sari, and the Proto-Indo-European ketwor. The term for 'daughter' duva finds correspondences in duhitr, daughter, dugdar, dokhtar, dukter, dochter, doch, dustr, thugater and tochter. All these supply the PIE term dhughater which would have meant 'milker' with dhugh meaning 'milk'. The languages he has tabled range from the Sanskrit, Avestan, Gothic and Latin to the modern languages of Europe and Asia. What a painstaking exercise it would have been and how interesting and even mystifying to the lay reader it is. Students of linguistics would find this list extremely useful. The author also appends a glossary of technical terms and a bibliography. Not comprehensive The learned author's work nevertheless is not a comprehensive work as suggested by its title. It is a short attempt at introducing particularly to the general reader the essential background to the study of the evolution of the language. It should nevertheless stimulate others to indulge themselves in intellectual labour in a field which is as vast as it is interesting. |
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