The Languages and a comparative view of them-newxoomer.virgilio.it/brguiz/asianomads/comp...

Comparative language

While Nomads in their perennial travelling can be said to have discovered the communication of words, enriched their own linguistic knowledge and made words goods of cultural exchange, it was mainly due to the settled groups that such tools of communication were given a written form, which has enabled the reproduction and survival of old languages. Languages, in their either natural development or forcibly structured form, are an invaluable historical device by which we can discover links and connections between human groups which on the surface and for geographical reasons seem to be far apart. In this brief chapter, I will present an excursus on how written script has become a valuable document for our research. The oldest written tablets, dated around the year 3,300 B.C., were unearthed at Jammed Nasal in the bed of the river Tigris in Mesopotamia. The inscriptions on these tablets are in a phonetic sort of script that would later develop into a richer form of syllabic and alphabetic script. Prior to this date there had been some other forms of written communication. Primitive humans would represent hunting events, battles, and scenes of family life by painting them on stone walls and caves, using stylised designs and signs which were of immediate understanding, but which restricted the complexity of the material that could be communicated. Tablets written in the cuneiform script are already the result of a more or less long historical process of evolution along lines of logic and rational thinking. This process is still unknown to us. For the time being, with the little evidence we have, we suppose that the people bringing about this evolution were the Sumerians. Babylonian cuneiform script had a great span of development from the year 3,000 B.C. Moreover it was adopted with few variants by other groups: by the Elamites-- and by the Assirians of Semitic stock. Quite later, around the year 1,900 B.C., it was also adopted by the Indo-European Hittites, Mitannis and Persians. The fact that Babylon was an important and dominant trade centre seems to have compelled other groups of people to adopt that script, at least for economic reasons. Evidence from the Hindu Valley Civilisation provides us with a key to unlock links and trade relations between West and East which, by that time (some time after 1.900 BC), were already well established. Also, archaeological evidence from Ur--present day Baghdad-- in Mesopotamia points to established trade link with the Hindu Valley cities, probably Mohenjo Daro. The evidence is constituted by some terracotta tablet seals on which a form of pictographic script was used to represent animals, which though still unknown in Mesopotamia, was very common in India. Another set of documents, dated around 1,400 B.C., presents us with further evidence about the evolution of script, languages, and the relations between East and West. At Boghazkeui in Turkey 10,000 tablets were discovered. They are inscribed with a cuneiform script and reproduce words of Indo-European origin. They seem to be a ritual text written in three different languages: Luili; Hattic; and Hurrian-Hrozny. It is in the set of the Hurrian-Hrozny language that the names of three important Indian-Vedic divinities are found, namely: Varuna, Indra and Nasatya. Note also that in Syria some more tablets with the same type of script were found. But let me now go back in time once again, in order to complete the historical picture of the earlier stages of scripts. Contemporaneously to the Babylonian developments or probably stimulated by the news of a system for writing in Babylon, the Egyptians and Sumerians started to develop their own system called 'hieroglyphics' and based on 400 signs divided into three categories of representation: -pictograms to represent visible and concrete things; -ideograms to express concepts and ideas; -phonograms to signify sounds. In schools for common people the Demotic system, used mainly by traders, warriors and artists, was taught. In these schools also the Babylonian Cuneiform system was learnt since it was useful for commercial and political relations. In the schools of the sacerdotal class the Hieratic system, an italic form of hieroglyphics but much more elaborate, was used. On the other side of the globe, in China, around the years 2,000 -1,500 B.C., a system of writing was taking shape as well. The influence of the earlier Babylonian invention might probably have been very important for the development of the Chinese language as well,

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nevertheless, like the Egyptian script it was developed as an independent system. The Chinese script was a composition of ideograms and phonograms and even after a long time of development it maintained itself very closely to the original matrix. The alphabetic script of the Phoenicians, a Semitic group, begins to appear between 1,800 and 1,500 B.C. in Asia Minor. The Phoenicians were not very original in formulating a script, but they took a lucky turn in the evolution of languages. They borrowed 27 syllabic cuneiform characters from the Babylonian script and added three vowels: A; I; U. Writing was becoming much simpler, but much more able to convey meanings. Along the birth of this system of writing some significant texts came into existence: the Proto-Sinaitic biblical texts. About the same period (1,800 to 1,500 B.C.) the formation of the languages of both the Northern Semitic groups (Phoenicians, Hebrews, and Aramaics) and the Southern Semitic groups of Sub-Arabia, was taking place. In the West the final evolutionary stage of script formation, which was the completion of a system based on five vowels, was completed around the year 800 B.C. This last stage is mainly due to the Greek and Roman people who managed to organise a simpler form of graphic script. In the East, in India, the most ancient form of written language was probably the one used by the people of the Hindu Valley Civilisation, but until now due to the scant archaeological evidence available, no one has managed to decipher the scrip. The script of modern Indian languages seems to have derived from an ancient type of Indo-European language called Proto-Vedic-Aryan, based on a script called Ideographic cum Syllabic. This type of writing probably did not appear on the Indian Sub-Continent before the arrival of the Aryans between 1,500 and 1,000 B.C. The above brief historical excursus has given us a taste of the early links and connections between peoples living in Africa, Asia and Europe between the years of 3,000 and 1,000 BC. I did this considering primarily the history of script formation, since it is backed up by very scientific documentation. Of course, it would be very interesting to do the same regarding language formation, which would take us into a distant time and into a fascinating world, but as it was said by Latin peoples: "Verba volant, scripta manent", that is: "words fly but scripts stay". Moreover, a study of language formation requires us to tackle philology, archaeology, history, anthropology, geography and other sciences in a sort of inter-disciplinary approach. Focusing on our primary interests on the world of Nomads, but not in an exclusive way, I will introduce a variety of elements that can be developed further according to everyone's interest. Without doubt, one of the most important element that we need to look at in order to deal with groups of Nomads is language. The historical picture of the last millennium points to the fact that the Gypsy language which has remained most faithful to its Indo- Sanskrit roots is that of the Euro-American Gypsies. Moving West, they took along with them the local language of Western India, a language they did know quite well. Entering new countries which had completely different languages, they preserved their original idioms which provided them with a sort of separate identity and protected them from the other groups. While on the move, they never felt the need to carry along in their language the set of different dialects which they might have used while back in India in order to maintain and protect their relations within the group. Those idioms were no longer necessary. On the other hand, the Gypsies who stayed in India were moving around within an area where Hindi or languages all very similar to Sanskrit were spoken and well-known by everyone. Therefore, they adopted forms of dialects or artificial languages which in such a context would make it easy for them to preserve their own separate identity and defend themselves from the settled groups. This is the most likely reason behind the fact that the language of the Euro-American Gypsy is a lot more similar to Gujirati, Rajastani, Panjabi and Hindi than the languages used privately by the Indian Gypsy. This fact could well take us towards a sort of wrong argument: someone could argue that the Gypsy people are part of, or originated from, those settled groups in Gujirat, Rajastan and Panjab, since they have a similar language. Whereas our earlier linguistic argument compounded with anthropological, historical and geographical evidence seems to sustain the following conclusion: Gypsy people of East and West belong to and originated from that great and varied group of Nomad-Gypsy still living in India . To stimulate an open deeper academic research, we have done some sort of background work. We have selected, out of 823 languages, a reduced but sufficient number of linguistic groups


and families which are related to the Euro-American Gypsy language. Some further research work can be done on the links and relations between Indian Gypsy idioms, dialects and languages with Indian local, classic and ancient languages. For a first selection of languages I depend upon the Linguistic Survey of India. For the translations, collection of words, and the general organaization of linguistic material, we are indebted to G.A. Grierson. For the collection of words, samples, and earlier works on specific languages, we are indebted to the following researchers: Md. Abdul Gafurs, G.W. Leitner, Sir R.C. Temple, Rev. T. Grahame Bailey, M. Kennedy, E. Balfour, W. Kirkpatrik, A. Cabaton, C. O. Blagden, B.H. Hodgson and many others. To deal with the phonetic problem we have basically followed the choices made by previous researchers of the Linguistic Survey of India. A special computer font and program was written by Carlo Rubini to deal with the graphic representation of phonetic signs. Riccardo Tobanelli introduced some more changes regarding the use of computer technology, and designed the graphic representation of the different languages to allow an immediate comparison and comprehension of the languages. He and Aira Vehaskari were also involved in the revision of the final draft. Moreover, Riccardo was there with me at every single step and turn, when we had to make choices shifting through a huge amount of material.

First Group: • Gypsy European, • Sanskrit, • Prakrit, • Dravidian Tamil, • Mundari, • Hindi Western, • Mon-Kmer, • Arabik.

See table 1

Second Group: • Gypsy European, • Sanskrit, • Hindi Western, • Hindi Eastern, • Gujarati, • Rajastani - Marwari, • Punjabi, • Bangali.

See table 2

Third Group Section I: • Gypsy European, • Korava, • Bili, • Bojpuri, • Gadi, • Garodi, • Kanjari, • Kolhati.

See table 3

Third Group Section II: • Gypsy European • Labani, • Myanwale Lhari, • Nati, • Odki, • Qasai, • Sasi • Sikalgari.

See table 4 -The first group of languages covered in this presentation for a comparative study with the European Gypsy language, and offered for research, is the group of 'Ancient Languages' of India like Sanskrit and Prakrit to which we have added, besides modern Western Hindi, those families of languages which played a role in the formation of Indian languages. It will include, the Mundari from the Sino-Tbetan family, the Mon Kmer from the Mongolic Altaic family, the Tamil from the Dravidian family and Arabic from the Semitic family. -The second group will offer a comparison between European Gypsy, Sanskrit, Western Hindi, Eastern Hindi, Gujarati, Rajastani (Marwari), Panjabi and Bengali. -The third group will collect together the so-called 'Gypsy languages' of India. -The forth group, later and in a different volume, will cover in comparative form all the selected languages. A preliminary note on the system of transliteration: To transliterate the different languages we have designed our own font (using computer software) called 'Gipsy'. We have largely followed the transliteration scheme used in the Linguistic Survey of India. The scheme presents several problems in consistency. For instance, for the Gypsy languages, the editor has used the Latin consonant plus H ‘ for strongly aspirated consonants, and the Latin consonant plus an H without apostrophe for non strongly aspirated consonants. Later, for the other languages, he has decided to use only the Latin consonant followed by ’. We have for now followed the same system. In the near future we


hope to be able, using better software, to rectify the inconsistencies we have come across and to make the reading and pronouncing of such languages easier. Key: English words corresponding to the numbers in the comparative chart of languages.


TABLE 1


TABLE 2


TABLE 3


TABLE 4


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