Sunday, November 06, 2011

Dievas dave dantis; Dievas duos duonos

  • Lithuanian: dievas dave dantis; dievas duos duonos
  • Sanskrit: devas adat datas, devas dasyati dhanas

God gave us teeth, God will give us bread. (Not sure who found this Sanskrit proverb but shouldn't teeth be danta in Sanskrit too? Again, is it bread or grain?)

Perhaps their geographic isolation helped the Lithuanians retain their Sanskrit connection more than any other people.


Sanskrit
Lithuanian
Singular
1st --- as-mi --- 'I am'
2nd --- asi --- 'thou art'
3rd --- as-ti --- 'he, she, it is'
-
es-ù --- (older es-mi)
es-ì --- (<*es-si)
ẽs-ti ---'there is'
Dual
s-vah --- 'we two are'
s-thah ---'you two are'
s-tah --- 'they two are'
-
ẽs-ava ---(older es-va)
ẽs-ata --- (older es-ta)
——————
Plural
s-mah 'we are' (more than two)
s-tha 'you are' (more than two)
s-anti 'they are' (more than two)
-
ẽs-ame --- (older es-me)
ẽs-ate --- (older es-te) ——————

As someone said, "a Sanskrit scholar could understand and be understood by a Lithuanian farmer".

2 comments:

Sujeev said...

I do not about Lithuania, but I've always felt a Finnish connection to India, though its race car drivers. For example, the name "Ari Vatanen" sounds suspiciously to me as a corruption of "Hari Vadhana". There were two or three other similar names, but I am not able to recall them now.

Julian said...

Finnish is an Urgalic language where as Sanskrit and most Indians languages are IE.