# Sanskrit: Languages it influenced



## Pivra

Hindi, Sindhi, Bengali, Tamil, Gujarati, Marathi, Bihari, Panjabi, Kashmiri, Nepali, Thai, and etc. I think that it would be useful if we can have a room for this language group so we can exchange our similarities and differences.


I wonder how many languages use the persian influenced word "Gulab" for rose..... Thai is one.... and i'm pretty sure it is in Nepali as well


----------



## diegodbs

Pivra said:
			
		

> Hindi, Sindhi, Bengali, Tamil, Gujarati, Marathi, Bihari, Panjabi, Kashmiri, Nepali, Thai, and etc. I think that it would be useful if we can have a room for this language group so we can exchange our similarities and differences.
> 
> 
> I wonder how many languages use the persian influenced word "Gulab" for rose..... Thai is one.... and i'm pretty sure it is in Nepali as well


 
And, to some extent, it influenced "caló" too. 
Caló is the language of Spanish gypsies.


----------



## Brioche

There are many words from Sanskrit in Malay/Indonesian.
The motto of the Indonesian Republic is _Bhinneka Tunggal Ika_, which is Sankrit for _Unity in Diversity_

Muka = face, gula = sugar, kata = word, saudara = brother 
and many, many more.

Malays call themselves Bumiputra (in Brunei, Bumiputera) which means "princes of the earth" in Sanskrit.

The Malaysian and Brunei governments give special privileges on the basis of race to these "princes of the earth"


----------



## Pivra

diegodbs said:
			
		

> And, to some extent, it influenced "caló" too.
> Caló is the language of Spanish gypsies.


 
I never know that the word Gulab have gone as far as Europe before. It is very interesting how languages share their similarity.

Many languages that are based on Sanskrit are using the word "Danta" for teeth, which i think this word is a cognate of the word "dental" which is in many European languages.


----------



## Jhorer Brishti

Brioche said:
			
		

> There are many words from Sanskrit in Malay/Indonesian.
> The motto of the Indonesian Republic is _Bhinneka Tunggal Ika_, which is Sankrit for _Unity in Diversity_
> 
> Muka = face, gula = sugar, kata = word, saudara = brother
> and many, many more.
> 
> Malays call themselves Bumiputra (in Brunei, Bumiputera) which means "princes of the earth" in Sanskrit.
> 
> The Malaysian and Brunei governments give special privileges on the basis of race to these "princes of the earth"


 
Actually Putra means son in Sanskrit, RajKumar(Raja Kumar) or Rajputra(son of the king) means prince. Likewise Rajkumari(maiden of the king) or Rajkannya(Daughter of the king) means princess. Bhumi in bengali means land and a slang word for "son" is "put".

Pivra, that's interesting that Gulab means rose in Thai,all of the southeast asian languages derived their scripts from the Brahmi alphabet like the indic languages but I didn't know there was so much more of a linguistic influence especially since Gulab, a persian word is a more recent borrowing(moghuls). In Bengali rose is Golaap. From that we get Golaapi, meaning pink. Tooth is daa(n)t-nasalized "aa". From what I know Nepali is almost the same language as Hindi and is not as distinct as other indic languages.

I too wonder why there hasn't been much of a desire to learn Indic/Persian or African languages(like Swahili or Zulu). We even have a forum for Arabic. There's a scarcity of information and language learning tools for these languages;can they be considered the truly exotic? I first thought that the phonemes and especially the difference between the aspirated and non-aspirated consonants(which westerners tend to have difficulty discerning) was the main repellent but East asian languages like Korean and Chinese also maintain a distinction between aspirated and non-aspirated consonants and there are tons of people learning those languages. It might also delve down into the fact that in terms of purchasing power parity and economic influence the countries with speakers of those languages do not have a lot of power(even though India is fast developing its main transactions are done in english and the middle and upper classes are well versed in english,probably more than in their native tongue. Besides since there are so many languages spoken there already it's impossible for one to be the de facto official,Hindi is not spoken by everyone).

There are actually a number of colleges(in the US) teaching Hindi and Bengali, Persian,Swahili,etc but I'm not exactly sure of how popular or how well-conducted those courses are.


----------



## elroy

Jhorer Brishti said:
			
		

> We *even* have a forum for Arabic.


 
Arabic is the sixth* most spoken language in the world; an official language in 22 different countries; one of the six official languages of the United Nations; the langage of the Qur'an, the sacred text of the second largest religion in the world; and one of the oldest and most complex languages in the world. 

I think "even" may have been a tad hasty. 

*fourth or fifth according to some records


----------



## Brioche

elroy said:
			
		

> Arabic is the sixth* most spoken language in the world;
> 
> and one of the oldest and most complex languages in the world.
> 
> 
> *fourth or fifth according to some records


 
Arabic can get such a high rank only lumping together mutually unintelligible dialects.

Where would "European" rank if we combined the numbers for Italian, Spanish, Portugese, French, Catalan, Romanian &c.?

Anyway, how can any language be "older" than another?


----------



## Jhorer Brishti

elroy said:
			
		

> Arabic is the sixth* most spoken language in the world; an official language in 22 different countries; one of the six official languages of the United Nations; the langage of the Qur'an, the sacred text of the second largest religion in the world; and one of the oldest and most complex languages in the world.
> 
> I think "even" may have been a tad hasty.
> 
> *fourth or fifth according to some records


   Profound apologies elroy! You're right I shouldn't have been so hasty and that "even" does make it seem less important although that was not my intention at all! I was going to make references to everything you've written above(as possible reasons for its separate forum but I must have forgotten in the midst of typing of my post). Not to mention a lot of manufactured items have arabic translations. I just thought that as a whole arabic is not a very popular foreign language(in the west) and is "exotic" in that regard compared to traditional Spanish/French.


----------



## Pivra

Jhorer Brishti said:
			
		

> Profound apologies elroy! You're right I shouldn't have been so hasty and that "even" does make it seem less important although that was not my intention at all! I was going to make references to everything you've written above(as possible reasons for its separate forum but I must have forgotten in the midst of typing of my post). Not to mention a lot of manufactured items have arabic translations. I just thought that as a whole arabic is not a very popular foreign language(in the west) and is "exotic" in that regard compared to traditional Spanish/French.


 
And do u know the word for grape... in Thai it is Angun... I've heard from my friend in Thailand (his family language is Panjabi) that in Panjabi it is Angun... or something similar too. I think this word is again ... from Persian.

And another word that I want to point out is Farang.. In Thai it means Caucasian...I've know that in many Middle Eastern Languages including Urdu use the word Farangi. I wonder if any other Indic languages uses this word. I am pretty sure this is not a Sanskrit word because there is an F sound which does not extist in pre Islam South and Southeast Asia.

Another word is which I think comes from Persian is... Kanja.... I wonder if the correct way to spell this word uses the K or the G... because in Thai it is Kanyja (ny as in ञ). 

The word pink in Thai is Jompu which i think came from the city Jaipura, the pink city... i'm not sure about this but thats my own little thoery. Empire of Siam and India have disconnected from each other as early as 1300s due to the Islamic invasion and the fear of a further expansion into the Malay Peninsular(which they eventually did and The Sultanate of Patani, now a province in Thailand is the first Islamic Kingdom in SEA.) so i'm pretty surprise how and Urdu (or Persian) word got into our language. lol

Kumar and Kumari, Raj, Putra, Parama, and etc. are also use in Thailand

The princess of Thailand has her title ended with Siam Parama RajKumari, which means the Great Royal Princess of Siam. 
Other words such as Arun(dawn), Diva(day), Nidra(night), Ratri(night), Deva and Devi(god and goddess), the prefix Maha are all very common in Thai language. And by the way ... Namaskar (salutation) is pronouncs Namaskan in Thai is also use when we talk to a monk. And how many languages in South and Southeast Asia that Vada means to talk. In Thai we were heavily influence by both Pali (spoken in Bihar long time ago) and Sanskrit. We use both the Bihari Vacana(va- cha-na) and Sanskrit Vada.

Unlike in India, modern vocabs in Thai are still made up using Sanskrit words only. 
Eg.

Station= Stani(thai)
Plane= Akashyanta
Bank= Dhanagara (Dhana + Agara)
Bank Note= Dhanapatra(Dhana+ Patra(card) )
Restuarante= Bhatagara (Bhata(food) + Agara)
Car or Bus= Ratha
Movie= Bhabayantra ( Bhava(picture) + Yantra(motorized))
Automatic= Atanomati (Ata(self)+ Anumati(allow) )
Atom= Anu (small)
Nuclear= Paramanu (Parama(big)+ Anu(small)
Axis= Aksha(core)
Algebra= Samakara ( Sama+ Kara= equalization)
University= Mahavidayalai (Maha+ Vidya(from Vid in Sanskrit means knowledge+ suffix - Alay = the Great Place of Knowledge)
Parliament= Rathsabha(means State Forum) (similar to Loksabha)
Ekaraj= Independency (Eka= One Raj= King)

Here are some names of the roads in Thailand

Rajdevi
Vibhavati
Revati
Arunamrindra
Uttrabhimukh
Sri Ratna
Sri Ayudhya( derrived from Ayodhya)
Maharaj


The three capitals of the Unified Thailand are called
Sukhotai= which derrived from ( Sukha+ Uday which means dawn of Happiness)

Ayudhya= clearly it is an Indian name, there is another Ayodhya in India and it means "Unfoughtable"

Bangkok= is not the real name of our current Capital, the real one is 100% in Sanskrit and it is very very long. Bangkok is the way that westerners prefer to call it. the real name of Bangkok is ...:

Krung Dev Mahanagra Pavara Ratna Kosindra Mahindra Ayudhya Mahatilak
Bhava Navaratna Rajdhani Puri Rajniveshna Mahastan Pavarabiman Avatar Sthitya Sakka Khatiya Vishnukarma Prasiddhi

which i am not possitive about the translation but i will find it soon.

.... this is just a piece of Thai culture that rooted from Sanskrit and Pali. The Royal Institution of Thai Language always generate more vocabs using these two languages to keep them alive.


----------



## Jhorer Brishti

WOW, Pivra your comments on Thai are quite interesting indeed. I had no idea that Thai culture has been influenced to that extent by Sanskrit and Pali(vernacular degeneration of Sanskrit which has also attained classical status due to importance in Buddhism). Since there are profuse persian borrowings as well(that coincide with indic language ones) it seems that a rift between this cultural word exchange did not occur when the Moghuls conquered the subcontinent. I am not too familiar with persian so I did not know that the Thai word angun for grape is derived from that language and it seems that the bengali word is too: aangur. 


Firingee in Bengali is used to refer to white foreigners as well, apparently(yes this is not a sanskrit derivation since there is no F sound instead of that there's an aspirated PH in sanskrit.) There's a small enclave of a neighborhood in Chittagong port(eastern part jutting out into the Bay of bengal bordering with Myanmar) where the residents are christians whose patrilineal descent is from the Portuguese who held power in that area for a little more than 100 years before being ousted by the moghuls.These people are referred to as the Kaalo/Maatia Firingee which means black/earthy colored firingee.


It's quite refreshing to see that Native/Sanskrit derived words are still being used in Thai to denote relatively modern inventions. For some reason even though the word exists, almost everyone will use the english word when speaking about an airplane,etc rather than saying "Urro Jahaaj". We say Iskool to mean school in bengali instead of referring to it as a Paathhshaalay or Biddyaloy which are the bengali words. Do the Thai actually say Akashyanta(Sky, ????) to mean airplane when speaking or is this something that is only restricted to literary language?

I also wonder whether there has been as much of an arabic influence on Thai as its persian one. In bengali, dictionaries will state that only about 3% of the vocabulary is derived from Arabic/Persian while 60% is Tatbhava(native bengali words derived from corrupted sanskrit words and verbal forms) and about 36% from Tatshama(unchanged sanskrit forms). In reality the arabic/persian derivations are in common use while half of the Tatshama words are seen mainly in literature. There are also several extra arabic words that bengali muslims consciously use to distinguish themselves from the hindus. IE: Snaan is the bengali word for bath but us muslims will say Gosol which is clearly an arabic derivation.

I was under the impression that the Sanskrit/Pali/Moghul influence on the southeast asian languages(Thai,Indonesian,Malaysian,Burmese,Cambodian etc.) was the same as the influence of Latin/Greek on english. That is, although a number of words are derived from those languages the grammatical structure and basic words are distinctly sino-tibetan(forgive me if I'm wrong in assuming that those languages are related). Is this true,Pivra? 

Also what is the religious breakdown in Thailand?

elroy, Something I forgot to add was that there is a dispute over whether Hindustani(hindi/urdu) or Bengali is the fourth most spoken language in the world.


----------



## Pivra

In Thai for airplane we say Reaubin, or Kruengbin, which are Thai words but for Airport we say Ta Akashyanta which means port of the sky machines. Thai is not a Sino- Tibetan language, it belongs to the group of its own with its sphere of influence in Asam, Burma, Laos, Southern China, Parts of Vietnam. This language group is called Tai- Kadai group. It is related to Austronesian rather than Sino- Tibetan. Cambodians, I think seems to stop using and borrowing Sanskrit words since the fall of their empire which they were controlled by the Empire of Siam from 1300s until 1800 which is a very long time so their words that are in Sanskrit and still use in modern time came from Siamese again. Such as Ekaraj(Siamese) for independent turns into Ekreat in Cambodians. Right now it seems like our two former protectorates are creating words out from their own vocabs not Pali or Sanskrit like Thailand. It is maybe because of the idea that we see ourself as the sucessor state of the Muarayan Buddhist Empire of India (i'm Hindu and 100% Thai). The main religous icon of Thailand is the Emerald Buddha which was made in Patliputra(now Patna, Bihar, India) during the reign of Emperor Ashoka(it was said that Indra helped making the statue). So keeping Pali and Sanskrit going on would maintian our concept of being a miniature of the pre- Moghul India. There are many cities and rivers which are named after Indian cities. Such as Ayudhya, Surat, Tapi river (near Surat in India and it is the river that divided the Thai city of Surat in half) Lanka Sukha (derived from Lanka) was what the Sultanate of Patani was called before converting into Islam, the city of Sri Dharmaraj was named to conmemorate emperor Ashoka, the road infront of my piano school is called Ashok road. Lobburi was called Lava Pura ( the city that Rama gave to Hanuman to rule after the war was over), Korat is written Goraj which propably means Shiva or Krishna(but more likely Shiva since northeastern Thailand is called Isan) The tallest mountain in Thailand is called Indrananda (The Happiness of Indra), and Chao Praya river(this is pure thai) is held sacret by the Thais as mother Ganga, the goddess of water. Every year we will float fire candles incense and flowers to worship her. (although most of the population is Buddhist but centuries of being Hindus gave us our cultural foundation) Wat Arunrajvraram ( The Royal Temple of Dawn), this is like on every posters of Thailand, the tallest tower was built for Indra, and the are 4 statues of him on top of the towers. 
The royal barges were built to depict the king as the Avatar of Lord Vishnu. One of his golden boats is called Anantanagaraj, the seven headed naga. The title for the kings of the Chakri dynasty is Rama, the king of Ayodhya.(both Bangkok and Ayudhya were built to be Ayodhya).

Thailand has about 90% Buddhists, 7% Muslims, .9% Christians, 2.1% Others (mainly Hindus and Sikhs)<< Sikhs are small but they are imporportionally influencial in Thai business, the largest Thai clothing brand name is from the Jaspal family.

Many other noble families were foreigners who came to work in the court of the Empire of Siam. such as the Sulaiman family ( now they call themselves Na Songkhla after the king granted them the city of Songklha in the late 1600s) were of Persian origins. I forgot the name of another one that can trace their origin back to the Moghul dynasty, Chinese merchants, and much more. 

One of the song for the king is called Stutiya Maharaja ( Hail the Great King) ( feminine form of Raja in Thai is Rajini not Rani)

Many rituals in Thai cultures are of Indian origin such as our new year. It is held one week before Holi and we throw water at each other. It is also to celebrate the moving of the god Suriya ( or Adityadev) into the new something... sorry i forgot. 
^^'



			
				Jhorer Brishti said:
			
		

> elroy, Something I forgot to add was that there is a dispute over whether Hindustani(hindi/urdu) or Bengali is the fourth most spoken language in the world.


 
True... and if we add up all languages including the Dravidians and the SE Asian ones together... wonder how much is that... probably enough to have our own little Sanskrit/ Persian forum... lol.... but if not... never mind not a big deal for me.


----------



## elroy

Brioche said:
			
		

> Arabic can get such a high rank only lumping together mutually unintelligible dialects.
> 
> Where would "European" rank if we combined the numbers for Italian, Spanish, Portugese, French, Catalan, Romanian &c.?
> 
> Anyway, how can any language be "older" than another?


 
With few exceptions, the dialects of Arabic _are _mutually intelligible - rather akin to British, Scottish, American, Australian, etc. - and _not_ all the European languages!  Furthermore, all speakers of Arabic use the same written version, which is also the form of Arabic used in formal registers _in all Arabic-speaking countries_.  With all due respect, your comparison is more than erroneous.

As for your other question, think about Aramaic and Luxembourgish, and tell me a language can't be older than another.

Anyway, if you wish to continue contesting these facts about the Arabic language, feel free to start a new thread in the Arabic forum.


----------



## Jhorer Brishti

First of all Priva I would like to compliment you on your english since it is exceptionally good(Do/did you attend an english medium school?).

What type of Buddhism is practiced in Thailand(Mahayana?)? I think the mahayana is the original indian form of Buddhism before it declined into nonexistence in the subcontinent. I cease to be amazed at the fact that Thailand has so much cultural linkage with India(even up to the moghul era) . This must be the reason why the British called the region past Myanmar "Greater India". In later centuries the term Indochina is heard. Are even basic words like "write" and "sing" which are "lekhaa/likhaa" and "gaawaa" respectively in bengali similar to the corresponding Thai words or are native Tai-Kedai derived words used in this instance?


----------



## Pivra

Jhorer Brishti said:
			
		

> First of all Priva I would like to compliment you on your english since it is exceptionally good(Do/did you attend an english medium school?).
> 
> What type of Buddhism is practiced in Thailand(Mahayana?)? I think the mahayana is the original indian form of Buddhism before it declined into nonexistence in the subcontinent. I cease to be amazed at the fact that Thailand has so much cultural linkage with India(even up to the moghul era) . This must be the reason why the British called the region past Myanmar "Greater India". In later centuries the term Indochina is heard. Are even basic words like "write" and "sing" which are "lekhaa/likhaa" and "gaawaa" respectively in bengali similar to the corresponding Thai words or are native Tai-Kedai derived words used in this instance?


 

Buddhism in Thailand is Thervada like Sri Lanka, I practice Shaivaism. 

No... but lots of words use Likha .... such as .. likhit... means destiny..ancient hindu Thais belived that Lord Brahma has written everything of our lifes. And Likhasiddhi means license.. or copy rights..

basic words are of our own language... at least most of them. We've lost some and replaced them with Indic words... I'll need to gather somemore info.


----------



## Pivra

Here are some wrods that are from Sanskrit and are use in everyday life

Bimba (written = read => pim)= to type
Pathipati (read= patibat) = to do
Mantra=(read= mon) = prayers
Paapa= sin
Punya= merit or good action
Hirio Tapa= fear of sin
Dharmata= normal
manushya(read= manus)= human
Satwa(read= sat) = animal
kila= sport (the L use in this word is the LL (the one that Hindi doesnt use but Sanskrit uses it)
ayu= age
Visutra(read= Bisut) to prove

there are not so much verb words in street Thai that uses Sanskrit
but for formal and the language use in the court are pretty much Sanskrit and Pali. Almost every verbs are. I am not familiar with the court language so I will try my best to bring up some examples of the verbs.

Bhatahar= food
Aasna= sit
Patha= to read... i think... 
Saovaniya= the desire... in court language to have a saovani means to want but we usually add the preffix Raj- infront to make it clear that it is a Royal desire to do something not just anyone's desire.= Rajsavani
Virodh= to be angry
Prija= to be talented

Thats pretty much all i know. lol sorry.... and these are probably a very bad translation of the court's language.

Other languages of Thailand were influenced by different languages such as Arabic, Khmer, Southern Chinese, Malay, Tribal languages, or Burmese.


----------



## Outsider

Arabic has also been influenced by Sanskrit, by the way.

Tai-Kadai languages.


----------



## Jhorer Brishti

Do Thais actually say Bimba in colloquial speech when referring to the act of typing? Unfortunately my formal bengali vocabulary is dismal since I only learned to read last summer and as I said before english has pervaded the language(like all of the indic languages) so that when referring to modern technologies and sophisticated vocabulary english is used(as I'm sure you know from Bollywood) in everyday speech, so I would normallly say Type koro/korun/kor(depending on formality/respect) in bengali. I'll have to ask my parents what the native word is. Bhaat is the bengali word for rice and its plausible that this is derived from sanskrit Bhatahar since rice is the staple in almost all of the different dishes of Bengal(if not all of asia as whole) it's very likely that "food" came to mean rice. The bengali word for food is Khaabaar. Bashaa(boshaa) is bengali for "sit" but an "aashan"(aashon) is type of mat(kind of like the japanese tatami-mat floorings) on which people(particularly villagers) would sit(usually to dine). It's in disuse now but lately there has been a revival among Dhaka's(and presumably calcutta's) urban middle class to have "aashan"s in their house along with sofas and tables. It should be noted that the SAs of sanskrit are all pronounced as SH's in bengali except in consonant clusters so the word aashan probably derives from sanskrit aasna. Maanus(maanush) is bengali for human. Punya(pronounced punno) has the same meaning in bengali as you listed. "Gun" is worth and I believe this word also relates to casteism(in Sanskrit) but being a muslim I'm not really sure how. Pramaan(Promaan) means proof and Pramaan karra(korra) is to prove.

                  I never knew that Paapa was a sanskrit derivation. In bengali Paap means sin as well. In Thai is the final a in Paapa actually pronounced? All of the neo-sanskrit languages have dropped this tendency but in Dravidian languages which have borrowed from Sanskrit(though I hear there has been a grand-scale effort to purify Tamil of the huge number of Sanskrit loanwords and it has surprisingly worked pretty well) the final a like in "Mahabhaarata" is pronounced. I thought paap was another one of those Hindu-Muslim divides. There are about 7-10 extra arabic loanwords in Bengali that are utilized only by muslims(usually only related to religious rituals). This was, I think, a backlash against the pre-partition effort of bengali hindus to infuse even more Sanskrit words into the language(alienated the muslims during the partition of bengal in 1905 when the Hindus perceived this as a British maneuver to create tensions between the Hindus and Muslims. This resulted in an array of nationalistic displays by the Hindus which unfortunately involved polytheistic religious parades/strikes and even more borrowing from sanskrit. This was not well-received by Muslims).

                Uncreatively they borrowed all of those words from Urdu and as a result we say "paani" for water instead of the bengali word "jal". The etymology traces both to Sanskrit so either they were ignorant of this when they borrowed it or just felt that it encompassed more of a feeling of the Delhi Sultanate(since Urdu/Hindi was the official language of the administration during the Moghul Dynasty).

          I guess it shouldn't be too surprising since to refer to our faith we say our "dharma"(dhormo) is Islam. We also say "karma"(kormo) to mean work(work put in results in work put out, circulation of karma). These are still sanskrit derivations since Hindus also refer to their religion by "Dharma". By contrast the Urdu word is mazhab(Is this an arabic derivation or is it persian?Cherine,elroy??) 

            Is the "ini" ending a Thai diminuitive? In bengali we still use the traditional "Raja" and "Rani". Speaking of gender Bengali is the only indic language to have completely lost all of the genders of Sanskrit. Specific words like "Raja" and "Rani", "Nayok"(Actor) and "Naika"(actress) do have the sanskritic masculine/feminine endings but verbs are not conjugated for gender and the rest of the words in a sentence do not agree to gender,etc. In contrast much like the romance languages the other indic languages have preserved the masculine and femenine forms while losing the neuter of Sanskrit. In all other respects Bengali along with Marathi is considered the most Shuddho(pure in terms of Sanskritic lineage) indic language whereas Hindi/Urdu have borrowed a slew of Arabic and Persian words since the area around Delhi is where the crux of the Moghuls lived(not to mention it was the location of the Delhi Sultanate).

            Of course Hindi news broadcasts,etc always use a static language that is replete with Sanskrit words while trying to purge it of as many arabic/persian words as possible while on the other end Pakistani radio broadcasts,media,etc. try to inject their language with as many arabic/persian words as possible. So an urdu speaker would not be able to understand a Hindi news broadcast while a Hindi speaker would likewise not understand an Urdu news broadcast but these two speakers would be able to understand _each other _since the real, living language is the same_._



            The crazy retroflex LL sound is found mainly in dravidian languages but Marathi(which is spoken around the south near Dravidian territory) which is a neo-sanskritic language does have the LL sound as one of its phonemes. Sanskrit adopted the LL and nasalized vowels from the Dravidian languages in its creation.

          I hope this post isn't getting too long but Pivra I have heard that Thai is written using the Devanagri script(same as Hindi and Marathi) with a few modifications. This is interesting because Bengali is written in the bengali script and although there are a few similarities(since they originate from the same source:Brahmi script of Ashoka in the 3rd century BCE) , the letters are different. Does this suggest that the devanagri script travelled relatively late to Thailand?
Are the consonants the same? In bengali they are as follows:
K KH G GH oonga
CH CHH(aspirated form of ch) Bariga J, JH, inga,
t(soft dental t, softer than english, pronounced almost like th in theology) th(aspirated form no english equivalent), d(soft dental d pronounced like the th in this) dh, dantya na(dental N), T( very hard T, harder than english t,picture the funny "indian" accents), TH(aspirated form),D(hard D, funny indian accents), DH(aspirated form of D), Murdhanya NA(made by touching the tongue with the "murdha" or palate), BA, BHA, P, PH(many pronounce this as F),MA, Antasta YA(pronounced like a softer version of Bariga JA,in sanskrit pronounced as Y), Ra(english vocalic r, it is even considered a vowel in bengali since it was one in Sanskrit), LA, BA(remnant of the antasta VA but both are pronounced the same in bengali now, so I don't know why this is still considered a letter, looks exactly the same), Talavyya SA(pronounced as SH in bengali), Murdhanya SHA(pronounced as SH in bengali), Dantya SA(pronounced as SH in bengali unless in consonant clusters where original hissing S sound is preserved), HA(pronounced as english hat), Dayshunnya RA(hard R, pronounced like spanish ere), Dhayshunnya RHA(aspirated form but hardly anyone pronounces this right except for poets since this letter is very uncommon), Antasta A(pronounced as aw), Khanda ta(same as t, though not in sanskrit), anuswar(ing sound), visarga(bishorgo, light puff of H when found in a word), chandrabindu(moon dot, nasalizes vowel it accents).
The vowels are 12 but this is again based on sanskrit and in reality bengali only has 7 if nasals are accounted for:
Shore(transliteration is probably wrong)-A(pronounced as O, or aw,varies), Shore-AA(a as in spanish padre), Hrosho-i( short i pure sound), Dirgho-i(deep I, literally, but pronounced the same as Hroshui-i in bengali), Hrosho-oo(short pure oo sound as in put), Dirgho-oo(same as Hrosho-oo), RI(vowel in sanskrit but consonant cluster written if original sanskrit word had it in bengali), LI(used if original sanskrit words had it but this letter is in almost total disuse now),E(pure eh sound as in pet but no long extensions), AI(pronounced OY, dipthong of shore-A, and hrosho-i), O(O sound as in Boat but purer with no lengthening), AU(pronounced OU in bengali dipthong of O and hrosho-oo).

Thanks for the links Outsider!


----------



## Pivra

We do not pronounce the last A most of the time unless it is to be pronounced so. lol. And we do say Bimba(pron. Pim with an English P).


Thai has a really difficult reading system. It is not phonetic at all. Like the word history "Pravatishastra" is written that way but when we read it it is Pravatisast. We have no deffenite rule in reading and sometimes (lots of the time) alphabets become silent or read as another alphabet. Sometime the ending alphabet become silent and changes the vowel. We also have marks to indicate stresses or change the pronounciation of the word.

Pur alphabets are ordered the same way as Bengali and Rice also means food. We say eat rice not eat food(unless in written language).

I have a friend who moved to Thailand from Dhakka too. His full name is something like F.S Karim Mahibul. His ancestors are from Turkey and Syria but I have no idea how they got so east as Bangladesh.(he looks really white and European - ish...)

Many Indians in my school says Thai is hard to read and learn 'cuz of its non phonetic system and they are use to pronouncing it the Indian way. lol. 

-ini is a suffix to change something Masc. to Femn. such as 

Bhiksu= monk
Bhiksuni= nun
Brahman= Priest
Brahmini= Priestess
Nayok= Prime Minister
Nayika= Prime Ministress
Vraha= Boar
Vrahini= Female boar
Mayura= Peacock
Mayuri(my aunt's name lol) = Female Peacock
Mayuresh= young peacock

and etc.


Many rich noble families or politicians in Thailand are Muslims too. One of my best friend's name is Fikri. He is very rich and can speak 3-4 languages.(he got i pod video early too lol)  International medias are trying to make ppl think that we bully minorities but we dont really do that. 

Thank you for replying my post... is there more Indic lang. speakers around in this forum?????


----------



## Outsider

Maybe one of you could give us some feedback in this thread.



			
				Jhorer Brishti said:
			
		

> Firingee in Bengali is used to refer to white foreigners as well, apparently(yes this is not a sanskrit derivation since there is no F sound instead of that there's an aspirated PH in sanskrit.) There's a small enclave of a neighborhood in Chittagong port(eastern part jutting out into the Bay of bengal bordering with Myanmar) where the residents are christians whose patrilineal descent is from the Portuguese who held power in that area for a little more than 100 years before being ousted by the moghuls.These people are referred to as the Kaalo/Maatia Firingee which means black/earthy colored firingee.


Ferengi!


----------



## Jhorer Brishti

Pivra the original meaning of Nayok/Nayika was someone who participated in abhinay(obhinoy in bengali: Drama) and I'm pretty sure this concerned the different sanskrit plays and dramas which pertain to Hinduism but in contemporary times Nayok/Nayika in bengali means actor/actress. It's interesting to see that in Thai these words have come to mean Prime minister. Mayur in bengali also means Peacock but since we have lost all the gender declinations of sanskrit we cannot change the ending of the word to make it feminine in this case and must be instead anteceded by the word for female.I can't think of the formal word for female right now(male is Punyalinga) but in less formal circumstances one can say meye Mayur to denote a peahen.

Sorry for the misunderstanding before but "Bhaat" means rice in bengali and we do maintain a distinction between food(khaabaar) and rice. I just postulated that the word for food in Sanskrit(bhaatahar) gave birth to the word for rice in bengali(bhaat).

Pivra, are there a lot of immigrants from the subcontinent(and elsewhere) in Thailand?

Outsider, I've never watched a full episode of Star Trek so I don't really know what that thing is! What are the chances for it to be a coincidence?


----------



## Outsider

I was going to reply that I had no idea where they'd got the name from, but, sure enough, the Wikipedia has the answer.


----------



## Pivra

Jhorer Brishti said:
			
		

> Pivra the original meaning of Nayok/Nayika was someone who participated in abhinay(obhinoy in bengali: Drama) and I'm pretty sure this concerned the different sanskrit plays and dramas which pertain to Hinduism but in contemporary times Nayok/Nayika in bengali means actor/actress. It's interesting to see that in Thai these words have come to mean Prime minister. Mayur in bengali also means Peacock but since we have lost all the gender declinations of sanskrit we cannot change the ending of the word to make it feminine in this case and must be instead anteceded by the word for female.I can't think of the formal word for female right now(male is Punyalinga) but in less formal circumstances one can say meye Mayur to denote a peahen.
> 
> Sorry for the misunderstanding before but "Bhaat" means rice in bengali and we do maintain a distinction between food(khaabaar) and rice. I just postulated that the word for food in Sanskrit(bhaatahar) gave birth to the word for rice in bengali(bhaat).
> 
> Pivra, are there a lot of immigrants from the subcontinent(and elsewhere) in Thailand?
> 
> Outsider, I've never watched a full episode of Star Trek so I don't really know what that thing is! What are the chances for it to be a coincidence?


 

Oh... The Bangladesh guy... his dad teaches computor in a very expensive Bilingual University. We like to hire South Asians 'cuz he think they do speak much much better English than we do and their wage are not as expensive as westerners and they have more cultural understanding of Thai culture. I once had a Science teacher from Bangalore her name is Mrs. Gayathri Rao she have been living in Thailand since like forever and she can speak perfect Thai, read Thai, she speaks English with American accent and probably her language too. This is why my english is in a pretty okay level. My school is a bilingual school and we have lots of Indians working. Another reason that there are so many foreigners in Thailand is because UNESCAP is in Bangkok. It is the largest UN branch in the world and takes care of the Middle East Sub Continent SE Asia East Asia and the Pecific Islands. So there are many ppl from India and China studying in my school. Thai is one of the 2nd lang. options but there are also French Spanish Jawi(Arabic in Southern Thailand) Hindi and Mandarin as well. But mainly it is English. Lots of them grow very rich and decided to by a house and citizenship as well.


----------



## Jhorer Brishti

Pivra can you supply us with more information about Jawi? From what you've written it seems like this would be a form of arabic spoken in Thailand which doesn't ring true at all..(or at least it would be surprising if it is true!) What I gather from your personal information is that you currently reside in Canada. Is it a recent move? Where can one find resources on learning Thai?
Also, How do you know so much about Sanskrit? Have you learned the rudiments of the language already(for rituals and prayers, I presume since you're Hindu)?

  Oh and Outsider, I found a teensy-weensy mistake in your last post:





			
				Outsider said:
			
		

> I was going to reply that I had no idea where they'd got the name from, but, sure enough, the Wikipedia has the answer.


           The article "the" is unnecessary in this sentence.


----------



## Pivra

Sorry.... Jawi is a Southern Thai language that borrowed lots of words from Arabic and is related to Malay. They ues Arabic alphabets to write... I am terriblely sorry. (I was assuming they are Arabic language since they write in Arabic and lots of words are from Arabic (just as we got words from Sanskrit... but they just use alot more Arabics and Persians than we use Pali and Sanskrit)) It is spoken in Patani, Yala, and maybe Stul provinces of Thailand. Jawi also added Persian and made up their own alphabets such as Nga, Nya, Gaf, and Pa. In streets in Bangkok or Patani carts that sells Mataba(kinda like roti) often hav signs written in Jawi or Thai or both. 

This is how Jawi pronounce the Arabic alphabets... for Eg.

Alif= Alef
Ba= Beh
Ta= Teh
Tha= Theh
Jim= Yeem ( as in Hijab would be pronounce Hiyab in Thailand)
Ha= Hah
Cha= Tcheh
Kha= Khah and on.... ( sorry these are all Arabic alphabets i can recite T T' cant go no further)

I know some Sanskrit... yes... cuz i'm Hindu... and also learning high level Thai involves tons of Sanskrit and Pali knowledge such as knowing the declension, gender, singular, duol, and plural, verb conjugations, noun conjugations, and much more. Lots of our literatures were written in Pali (Sanskrit has less to do with made in Thailand literatures, as in uninfluenced by India(can't really say that lol) Sanskrit is use more like... in Mahabharata, or the epic that heavily influence Thai culture, Ramayana).

Thai... ummmm I don't really know where you can learn that. Overe here there is a colledge that teaches ppl eastern langauges. Wikipedia might help u find a site on internet. But on internet they will give u a very primitive vocabs and is only just barely enough to survive on the streets of Bangkok. The words in internet learning sources are written in phonetic Romanized Alphabets, which if you are familiar with Devanagari or Brahmi you will find them really confusing and couldn't get any Sanskrit or Pali out of it(like i told u, we are not a phonetic language). Another aspect of Thai that makes it hard for everyone even Indic speaker is the fact that only 50% of our alphabets are Devanagari (we took ALL the alphabets) since we have 90 alphabets. In USA... if you are living in a big city you might be able to find one. But to learn Thai you need to understand that we are not Indo- European language and we have a different sentence structure than South Asian languages.
Eg.
we put adjective after the noun not before the noun. 
we have sentence suffix for every pronouns and they change according to who the pronoun is talking to.(similar to ji.. hanji in Hindi but more complicate)
our articles change to agree with the noun and we have more than 40 different types of articles.(><' I found this really hard too)
we have a sentence suffixs for when you are commanding or asking him to do something such as adding : -na, -naya, navoey, -dueyna, -si or -di and these change according to the speaker and who he or she is speaking to.
we have 3 words for the word to be such as is am are. So if you are thinking in English.... its confusing (similar to Ser and Estar in Spanish)
For First Second and Third person both Sing. and Plur. we have more than one word for I, U , He, She , It, We, Them.... so again.. never think in English.


Easy point.... No irregular verbs, Pass tense and Future tense is so simple you wont even notice that there is a rule ( I hope.. cuz thats what i think)

Eg. I (feminine) will go

Dichan japai. Ja-= prefix for future tense. Pai= to go.

I (familiar) will eat. 
Rao jakin. kin= to eat

For pass tense

He ate

Khao kinlaew= -laew is that you add at the back of the verb for pass tense... and if it is "Have eaten it before or Have already eaten then things change abit... but still... simple"

WE HAVE NO SINGULAR OR PLURAL DISTINCTION....YEAHHH!!! or .. at least with the nouns... articles sometime change... but I'm pretty sure U wont feel that the rule exists.( or at least thats how I feel... lol )

Numbers are pretty easy to remember in Thai. ( numbers are of Tai- Kadai origin unless they are a preffix then its Indo European)


Prepositions in Thai is another thing that always got foreigners. If you are thinking in English you will be so messed up in this language.

Demonstrative nouns are also very easy. There is no plural form like in English (eg. this, these)

Eg. This right here(female) = Eenee ( comes from - ini)
This right here(male) = Ainee
That right there (female)= Eenan
That right there(male) = Ainan
That over there ( female)= Eenun
That over there (male) = Ainun

and there is another set of these for things that are neither male or female too.

A repetition of an adjective would mean it is very something

Eg. Dam = Dark
Dam Dam= Very dark
Dam Mak Mak= very very dark (now Very becomes the adj of Dark and it too is repeating itself)
Kot Ja Dam= Kot (written Gotara= ancestor of, or origin of) undesciptably dark, 


I ve been living here for 8 months now I guess. I am fully a Thai (although with Canadian citizen) I eat Thai, read Thai, speak Thai, cook Thai, No beef for me ( and its Canada's best product) but I do eat seafoods... growing up in Thailand beef is avoidable but I cant force myself not to eat seafood lol) I bought some Devarups (statues of the Gods) with me and I do pray, books at my house in Thailand use Thai alphabets since they can work for each other and it is alot more convinience to read Thai.


----------



## Jhorer Brishti

I was at the city library today(local library has too small of a selection) and when I went to the learning foreign language sections they had more than a few books on Thai. They even had some for Swahili and Persian. While perusing one of the Thai books I noticed that the modified devanagari script used is very similar to the cursive, loopy scripts of South India and not at all like the Devanagari used for Hindi. It seems to me that the northern/central scripts like bengali,devanagari,gujarati,gurmukhi,shamukhi(punjabi sikh scripts) although ornate are very ordered and strict compared to the south Indian ones. What are your thoughts on these similarities that Thai has with south indian scripts, Pivra? It really shouldn't be that strange since from what I've read South Indian maharajas are the ones that spread vedic influence to Southeast asia..

Unfortunately I did not bring any of the Thai books home since I know I'll never have the time to read them thoroughly and I'd already borrowed 8 other books. I have a horrible reputation at the library since I always return books late and they charge 25 cents a day after the due date's passed(I think this an exorbitantly high price since in most other libraries the charge is more like 25 cents a month)! It's really not my fault since I have so many other things to do(homework, primarily but afterschool activities, parties,etc.) that I never get to devote as much time as I could before to reading.


----------



## Pivra

I think Thai is a micture of both South and North Indian influence. Our alphabets are modified so much and so many times until we have 5 more consonants and 30 something more vowels. Do you know that Southern Thailand Malaysia and Indonesia were invaded by the Chola empire so many times that we got really weak until the Vedic kingdoms collapse and turned into Islam. This might be another reason of Dravidian influence on Thai alphabets. Have u ever seen a Brahmi scripts before. If you take the earlier Thai alphabets and compare them with middle Brahmi scripts they look pretty much the sam.

Our alphabets were influenced by Devanagari, Dravid, Brahmi, Khmer, and I think to some extent Persia. we have F and Fh sounds too. and H that can be used after a vowel.


----------



## Pivra

Why do Bangladeshi (is that the rite collective noun) use Sanskrit names... eg
My friend... Mahibul I call him Mahi... do u have Arabic names too?

 South Indian and Thai scripts are less straight maybe cuz we wrote them on Stones and Leaf paper while u guys wrote on a more proper papers... 

thats my theory... don't take it serious lol


----------



## Jhorer Brishti

lol, I think the original scripts for bengali,etc. were also written on leaf paper. This is where we get the word lipi(this is one of the countless words for alphabet in bengali) for. In sanskrit it's from a verb that means to paste and the words were pasted on some particular leaf(banana,maybe?) and rocks(Haven't you ever heard of the stone edicts of Ashoka??). That is an intriguing question though and one that I'd like to know the answer to as well. Actually I think the banana leaves may have been only used in South India but I'm not sure..

Yes, Bangladeshi is the correct noun. It's not too common in colloquial speech(where Bangali is used) except for people who feel distinctly Bangladeshi and not Bangali(those who feel West Bengal is a separate entity pertaining in its entirety to India)

Is your friend Mahibul Hindu or muslim? It seems like it could be a muslim's name.. Most bangladeshi muslims have arabic/persian or bengali(tatbhav) names but usually never long sanskritic religious names. Choudhury which is distinctly bengali is a common last name for muslims and hindus. My real name is Malik and this(I think) means King in Arabic.

How do you pronounce "FH"? It seems like a normal f is already somewhat aspirated. Also how many languages are you acquainted with(Is your sanskrit good enough for reading the Mahabhaarata?


----------



## Pivra

No... my sanskrit is good enough to read but not to understand... my friend is a Muslim is full name is F.S Karim Mahibul 

I can recite some Arabic... but thats all... 
I am learning Spanish 


Fh = F with a a defenite stressing unless there is an accent mark that would drop it to F


----------



## Jhorer Brishti

A few posts ago, you said you were learning high level Thai and that involved knowing sanskrit declensions, verbal forms, etc. Are these(verbal forms, declensions) actually applied to formal Thai scriptures? Isn't that like almost changing the entire grammar of the language? Do the Pali scriptures written in Thailand deal with Buddhism or was that the language de jour in Thailand at that time? Might I ask why you're learning high level Thai in the first place(you and your country seem so interesting!)?


----------



## Pivra

Oh.. I took Thai AP cuz I passed Thai advance and I didn't know what to do and my friends were like."ya.. come to AP with us..its fun"  lol... but actually not... lots of works and typings and readings. I had to add Hindi font too. But I took it off when I finished Thai AP. 

Pali came with the Emperor (Ashoka) and his Magadhan armies. But was use in Buddhism only... Sanskrit existed in Thailand for much much longer prior to the arrival of the Magadhan but they both were blended into Austric- Tai language


----------



## Jhorer Brishti

Lol, Pivra. Did you take AP Thai back home in Thailand or is it something you're pursuing here in the west? What are some famous literary works written in Thai?


----------



## Pivra

What is the percentage of the Muslicm population in Bangladesh?? Is there a Vedic religion in Bangladesh too or just Muslim and some Christians. How about Hindus, Buddhists, Jains, or Sikhs. I went searching about Bengali and I found out that its the 4th most spoken language in the world. I am surprise that it has more speakers than Hindustani (Hindi+Urdu). What is the population of Bangladesh + West Bengal. Is Bengali spoken in like Calcutta and in Bangladesh the same??


----------



## Pivra

Jhorer Brishti said:
			
		

> Lol, Pivra. Did you take AP Thai back home in Thailand or is it something you're pursuing here in the west? What are some famous literary works written in Thai?


 
Oh ... back there.... I just came here in grade 10. 


Thai version of Ramayana (lol this is pretty shameful cuz its not originally but is the one we beloved most) = Ramakirti(pronounce Ramakien) = Glory of Ram

We are also one of the first eastern nations (if not the first) to translate Romeo and Juliet into Thai and Sanskrit...and Andromeda too durint 1770s I believe.

Um... the original Thai literrature written in Pali is Tribhumi, which is a poetry describing the three worlds (Heaven, Earth, and Hell) written in 1300s.


I'm not sure is this Indian or Thai but its a bed time story named The Story of the Bat or Nidan Wetal in Thai. It was written in Sanskrit but was translated into Thai since it is suppose to be a bed time story not a prayer lol.... (why didnt they think of this at first)

Another story is a story of a Bactrain Greek king named Milander and his trivias about Buddhist phylosophy but this too is influenced by India.

Probably we don't really have anything Thai that is uninfluenced by India ><'' so... the only one that I can think of is Tribhumi.... there is another one which is a litterature teaching about sins and merits but I couldn't think of its name... Ive read the semi- translated version before in Thai class...


----------



## Jhorer Brishti

What a coincidence, we posted at the same time! The Hindu population in Bangladesh is small(about 12 percent,I think). There are also christians and buddhists making up about 2 percent(Can you explain what the Bouddho Purnima is? This is a popular tradition among the Buddhists of Bangladesh.Purnima means full moon in bengali). I think it's disputed whether bengali or hindi/urdu has more speakers worldwide but the combined population of bengali speakers in Bangladesh and west bengal is like 175 million, I believe. 

The bengali spoken in Kolkata(calcutta) is Cholito(-Bhasha(Running/current language) and is more or less the standard version. Actually even Kolkaata's bengali is somewhat deviant from the standard which is what's spoken in the region of Nadia(most of which is in west bengal). I can't remember where I read this but there's a linguistic theory that language remains more static and unchanging in remote rural areas and is most likely to become more innovative and lax in urban regions. Before Cholito-Bhaasha, the standard(17th-18th century) was SadhuBhaasha(language of the saints) bengali. The main difference with both of these forms is that the first has longer and more complex verbal conjugation forms and a lot more of its vocabulary is heavily derived from sanskrit. This Shadhubhaasha(albeit with slight changes) is what's heard in the rural villages of Bangladesh,so it is slightly different from calcuttan bengali. However since calcutta became the cultural hub of bengal(if not the whole of India during the time of the British Raj) the colloquial version spoken there gradually replaced Shaadhubhaasha in written script(and this is the standard in both Bangladesh and West Bengal).

Some examples of the difference in the two forms are as follows. To say "What were you doing last night" it is "Kaal raat Tumi(somewhat respectful you form) ki korthechhila" in ShaadhuBhaasha. Current standard bengali renders it "Kaal raat tumi ki korchhile". In the dialects of the villages of Bangladesh one hears "Kaal raat tumi ki korthesila". I think the Ch/Chh-S phenomenon is due to influence from the eastern province of Assam in India. Another example is "Aapne(formal you) kintu Oke(informal he/she distance object pronoun) jaanaiya diyen jokhon bhaashai phiriya-aashe"(Make sure to inform him/her when he/she returns home). This is again shaadhubhaasha and turns to "Aapni oke jaaniye diyen jokhon bhaashai phire-aashe"(in standard bengali). In rural bangladesh:"Aapne oke jaanaiye diyen jokhon bhaashai phire aashe". Yet another example: "Tor osthhir(asthhir) lagile baire thheke ghuriya-ai"(If you're feeling restless, go take a walk(spin) outside". In standard bengali this is "Tor(you, when talking to someone "inferior", also an intimate form) osthhir(asthhir) laagle baire thheke ghure-ai. In some villages you hear "Tor osthhir laagle baire thheke ghuira-ai.

The eastern regions of Bangladesh like Chittagong and Sylhet have been heavily influenced by Burma and other southeast asian peoples and one of the effects of this has been the suppresion of nasalized vowels in those areas. 

As I said before there are many words that bangladeshis use that derive from tatshama sanskrit(despite being muslims) words while a number of these have changed in the language of west bengal: for example the word for salt is "lobon" in bangladesh(tatshama word) and "nun"(tatbhav) in West bengal. The word to "take along with" is "lauwa" in the villages but "neuwa" in standard Bangla(dhaka, educated persons,etc.). In shaadhubhaash lauwa is the word employed. Unfortunately for some reason wikipedia is not displaying on my computer but if you search for Bengali(brings you to the language) the page is very informative and well-written. It highlights some of the main differences. In general the bengali spoken in Bangladesh is more conservative although standard bengali does sound sweeter and does not have that rustic rural flavor found in the village dialects.

The most standard form is spoken in the Nadia district of west bengal as I said before.This district(like a number of other ones) was predominantly muslim(even it's name is arabic derived) but was awarded to India during partition because Radcliffe believed that if Pakistan had too much control over the rivers and tributaries surrounding calcutta, it would pose too much of a problem to India. Nevertheless as a meager compensation for awarding the muslim majority districts of Murshidabad(entire district), Jalpaiguri,most of Nadia, and the picturesque Darjeeling( an outpost of Rajshahi district which excepting Darjeeling was awarded to East Pakistan), East Pakistan(Bangladesh) received 1/3 of erstwhile nadia district, hindu majority Khulna(only hindu majority by a miniscule fraction whereas Murshidabad and Nadia were well over 60% muslim majority), and Buddhist majority Chittagong Hill tracts(I feel bad for the indigenous hill people who came from Burma/southeast asia since the corrupt and incompetent government is doing nothing to stop the advancement of non-hill people to their lands and the consequent seizing of territory...). Apparently Radcliffe was just as horrible a decision maker in the western part of the subcontinent since Pakistan is very discontented with not having received Kashmir and now everyone is in danger of being exploded to smithereens by nukes if either India or Pakistan happen to decide that they have had enough.

People from the small part of Nadia that was awarded to Bangladesh and the district of Khulna are reputed to have the best accent in Bangladesh.. The general educated speech of Dhaka city is also more or less the same as Calcutta's which has had its own share of non-standard hindi influences,being a province of India and all..


----------



## Pivra

So does Bengali has more Arabic and Persian influence or still remain Sanskrit.... What is the year in Bangladesh... is it in Islamic Calender or is it in International Calender... In Thailand its year 2549... we didnt have to worry about y2k 6 years ago... cuz all the computors were in 2543 not 2000... lol....


----------



## Pivra

I really dont like that British guy who separated India... Kashmir should be part of India (lol... from a Hindu point of view) Pakistan already got the Indus and all the snowy parts....lol I like snow.. there is no snow in Thailand... Sri Nagar and Jamu or even Lahor sound alot more like Hindu cities.. lol ... and Ladakh too...where as Fisabad or Nadia sound like ( are ) Islamic city.... splitting Panjab is also a really bad decision... I dont think that the British care at all in splitting India... they wanted to give the Sub continent a problem... cuz they have to let India go...

I like Bangladesh alot more than Pakistan... cuz they are not making nukes.... I dont really like nuke countries.... cuz they take tax money to make weapons... and both India and Pakistan are not yet developed... why dont they split Kashmir into 50-50 or just let them go.... (since some of them are dying to do so) If India stop producing nukes i think they would be a developed country by now... but ... their bad....

 How did Bangladesh separate from Pakistan anyway?? and what was the reason???


----------



## Jhorer Brishti

Yes, I agree with you Pivra. I believe all nuclear countries should have their power plants dismantled and their nuclear bombs done away with. Impulsive humans and nukes do NOT go together and if one of them happens to actually use one on another country it'll set off a chain reaction that could seriously affect the presence of life on this planet.

All politics(nuclear anyways) aside, Bangladesh separated from Pakistan for a number of reasons though the most popular reason given is the language issue, where Urdu speaking pakistanis developed a dislike for bengali and bengali muslims in general since they deemed the bengali muslims to be less islamic and as converted hindus(even though the majority of the muslims in pakistan are also many generations removed converted hindus). Most of the agriculture(on which the economy heavily depended) was done in east Pakistan but the revenues were used to develop cities like Karachi,Lahore,Islamabad,etc. There were other tensions too. Anyways eventually the non-islamic secular east pakistani party garnered the most votes and this set off the war in which millions of people were massacred. India was Bangladesh's main ally but after the war I'm sure there were some ideas of occupation..which didn't hold up for very long. Afterwards Bangladesh emerged as a secular independent nation and still is although it has declared itself an Islamic republic(where everyone is allowed to believe in whatever religion they please) and in general has remained a secular albeit corrupt country that is ravaged by lethal monsoons just about every rainy season...

Bengali in general is mainly derived from Sanskrit(both Tatbhav which are bengali native words that have evolved considerably from sanskrit and Tatshama which are direct sanskrit loan words) but the arabic/persian influence is seen in common speech. Almost all of the arabic/persian words are employed in colloquial speech whereas a number of the Tatshama words are restricted to literary language. As I said before though, bengali has far less of an arabic/persian influence(in the language) than Hindi/Urdu and is one of the "purer" neo-sanskrit languages like Marathi..

Pivra you like the snow?! How cold is it currently in Alberta? I hate the weather in Syracuse since we live by one of the Great Lakes(Onandaga) our local weather forecast usually consists of like 1 day of sunshine per week! The snow and dreary weather does not let up until the end of April! Once spring is actually heralded expect to see rain taking the place of all those winter snow showers! This was never the case in New York City....


----------



## Pivra

lol... Alberta is warm this year... i think .. its like -10 to -3 .... better than a  32°c winter in Thailand... lol... Bangkok is the hottest city in the world with the breaking record that pass Riyadh or Abu Dabi or Cairo .... I went to school on a 45°c day before ... its awesome... everyone was wet and dehydrated lol...The humidity even made it worse .... but anyway... i prefer -10 rather than 30+....What state are u living in, I have cousins in Calf. too.


----------



## Jhorer Brishti

I never knew that Bangkok was the hottest city in the world! I live in Upstate New York which is known for its heavy precipitation and general dreary weather that sends the depressed old folks(senior citizens PC name) packing, in search of more pleasant locales in Florida...

Just curious but how do you say Thank you in Thai? Is it similar to the sanskrit derived Dhanyabad?

    From your other post in the "Devanagari" thread, I'm wondering how popular Bollywood is in Thailand. I know it's popular but I'd be glad to receive some first hand information..

    Responding to your earlier post, the Indus River valley civilization has been found to sprawl an expanse much larger than the ancient cities of Harappa and Mohenjo-Daro that Pakistan has control over(although these are the earliest and most impressive finds). They've discovered that ruins of the cities spread into Delhi and a huge new excavation has started in Gujarat.. So, Pakistan didn't really get the best deal.. Also Allahabad and Ahmedpur sound like "muslim" cities to me(though both are in India..)hehe.


----------



## Pivra

No... not Allahabad... its a holy city... lol.... not giving it to Pakistan (when did i become Indian...) The Bollywoods were very popular when my mother was in high school and the first Bollywood movie was shown in Bangkok. When my mother still young I think the hottest foreign Actress was Hema Malini... if u dont know her ask u parents... lol But now its Hollywood... (we dont watch our own movies either due to the high sense of patriotism). In Thai ThankYou changes according to the speaker and the one you are speaking to. But its no Sakskrit... not Dhanyavaad or Shukriyaa

its Khob Phra Kun (krab), (kha)
or Khobjai (na) (ja) 

Phra is the article of Kun (comes from Guna in Sanskrit) which means something like... ummm " At the outer most of your grace or mercy" or something like that cant really translate...

Khobjai is a very informal way to say it and if u dont put -na or -ja at the end it becomes abit rude. 


The Bollywood Dhoom, the soundtrack is sang by a Thai singer (in english) she became pretty popular in India cuz she believes in Lord Ganesh and she occasionally make visit the temple of the rats in India. 


I think Delhi was called Indraprastha in Mahabharata and the name was changed when the Turks invaded. who do they write the Lh in Hindi anyway or is it like 
Del- Hee 

BTW Ahmedpur is half way Islam half-way Hindu... Ahmed + Pura probably some Shah's name.... and Allahabad is Half way Arabic Half way Persian Allah + -abad lol


----------



## Jhorer Brishti

In bengali we say "Dilli" to mean Delhi. What does Indraprastha mean(Indra is a god, I know that but what is prastha?)? No, you're right, I don't know who Hema Malini is. What do you mean to say by "We don't watch our own movies either due to the high sense of patriotism"? It would seem like this sentence is contradictory.. Are the musical traditions in Thailand influenced by Indian classical music(Kirtan, etc..)?

  Are you in college in Alberta? If so, what major are you pursuing?


----------



## Pivra

Jhorer Brishti said:
			
		

> In bengali we say "Dilli" to mean Delhi. What does Indraprastha mean(Indra is a god, I know that but what is prastha?)? No, you're right, I don't know who Hema Malini is. What do you mean to say by "We don't watch our own movies either due to the high sense of patriotism"? It would seem like this sentence is contradictory.. Are the musical traditions in Thailand influenced by Indian classical music(Kirtan, etc..)?
> 
> Are you in college in Alberta? If so, what major are you pursuing?


 
"We don't watch our own movies either due to the high sense of patriotism" it's a sarcastic phrase. We are not nationalist at all and we love American culture lol.... Foreign movies always mave alot more money than domesticly made movies. Thai music is not influenced by Indian music although we have some such as the drum and the vina but it is more like mix, chinese, persian, khmer.... totally mess-up lol... I'm not in colledge yet... i'm in High School... but I've taken AP before cuz it's a hard core studying in Thailand... so by grade 9 I was able to take AP abonitial classes. 

If you dont know who hema malini is she is the one in the old movie Sholay.... lol... 

Prastha means place...like the suffix -alay or -stan....  in this case it would mean  The City of Lord Indra. (which is also a synonym of the name of the fortified old downtown of Bangkok which means the Jewel of Indra)

another way of using -prastha might be:
- vati (femn. of the suffix -vata (he who has)

Eg. Sarasvati = Sara= Pool or Water + vati= She who has water = The Goddess of water and is also the name of a river in India.
Amaravati= A+mara+ vati 
A is a suffix equal to Non or Un in Eng.
Mara, Mrita, Mata= dead
+vati = The city of the Undead, or The city of Immortality
notice that Pura or city, is prefer to be femeninized, in Thai we even use the femenine declension for the word Pura +ini = Puri (read Buri) as in Kañchanapuri(buri)= The City of Gold. Another reason why it is either Pura or Puri but never Pur in Thai is because Pur is unpronouncable. The closest way to pronounce Pur is Poon and it does not sound nice. lol

The word Indra is also use as a suffix to identify something as being the lord of.... such as 

Suriyendra= Suriya+ Indra= The King of the Sun or the Solar King
Bhumindra= Bhumi+ Indra= Lord of the Land, which in this case means King
Rajendra= Raja + Indra= King of Kings
Gavindra= Go+ Indra= Lord of the Cow(notice the stem changing of the word Go. The vowel O and U will turns to -av when it has been conjugated such as Dhanu(bow, as in arrow and bow) +agama(the arrival of) = Dhanvagama= The arrival of Sagitaria= December)
Mahindra= Maha+Indra= The Great Ruler
Gajendra= Gaja+ Indra= Lord of the Elephants (or Lord Ganesh)

another suffix that is similar to -indra is -pati (eg in Rashtrapati)
Pashupati= Lord of the Animals ( Lord Shiva)
Grihapati= Master of the House

and if someone has a Pati (I suppose you know this) it means she has a husband since he is her master. (same as in Swami or Sami) 
In Thai wife is Bharya and husband is Sami, not Swami, this word is reserve only for people of a higher class and the word wife would turn into Mahesi, the "MAJOR" wife (not queen) of a King is Agra Mahesi and Queen is Rajini. If her Swami is given the title Maharaj instead of Raja she would autometicly turns into a Maha Rajini.(notice its not Rani like Hindi). 

Here is an English word in Thai that appears in where it shouldn't .... the word is REGENT. It has been introduced lately in 1890...something... when our King went to visit European countries and his Agra Mahesi (not queen, she was highly educated) did his work for him while he was out travelling. 
The concept of queen was not that popular back then. Not every king needs to setup a queen. They could have 60+ wives but non of them is queen since there can only be one queen and once she is she will be for the rest of her life and her child would become a king (there had been a case where a queen did not give the power to her child after the death of her husband and she remarried with a Brahman and took the throne which resulted in a shifting from one dynasty to another) this is why the concept of queen was not a popular idea until 1800s.


----------



## Jhorer Brishti

Wow, Pivra, that's a lot of Sanskrit.. Did you have a formal study of the language for your AP Thai classes(in this case, what does AP stand for? Advanced placement like the college courses I'm taking in High school?)?

What does the word Prajaapati mean in Sanskrit? It has the pati suffix and in bengali it means butterfly. Pasha(posha) in bengali means tame or domesticated and comes from one of the sanskrit words for animal. Animal, in the strictest sense of the word is jeebjantu although pashu is sometimes also applied usually in combination with paakhi(bird) from Sanskrit Paakshi..
Mrittu is death in bengali and we have a number of cities and settlements in Bangladesh that have the Pur suffix like Rangpur(city of colors), Dinaajpur(not exactly sure of what this means), Vikrampur(read Bikrampur), Chandpur(city of the moon), Faridpur(Farid's city), Pirojpur, Lakshimpur, Meherpur(Meher's City), Jamalpur(Jamal's city),etc..
Is Baria, another suffix of sorts because there's a district in the eastern portion called "Brahmanbaria" which probably has something to do with Brahma, or Brahmans.. Strangely we have no names that have the "Indra" root in them.. 

Surya(pronounced Shurjo) seems to be a tatshama word for the sun and sunset is Suryastho(Shurjostho, combination of Surya and astho which refers to a position or setting) 

It's interesting to note that Sami means husband in Thai since in bengali Swami which is pronounced Shaami, means the same thing. Bau or Stree is used to refer to a person's wife. 

I'm in High school as well, my last year in fact.. What grade are you in(Is college your next destination,too?)?


----------



## Pivra

I'm in grade 10 and yes AP means advance placement (which i took in grade 9) Education in Thailand  (especially in private schools) is very H- core lol so .... u know ... some of us have gone mentally sick 'cuz of school. (which is pretty much sad...) 

Prajapati means (Praja = population, residents, citizens + pati = leader of the people.... lord of mankind...something like that) 

Paksha, Pakshi(pronounce= paksa, paksi) also mean birds in Thai
another word is Vihok.... which I think comes from Veha+ the suffix -aka... which is a Sanskrit suffix for a collective noun... (eg. Arayaka= Araya+aka) so it means those who dwell on the sky. 
another very common word in thai for bird is nok... which I have no idea about its origin. 

 I have taken..."some" Sanskrit when I was taking high level Thai for grade 9... I think things get more and more Vedic as the grade goes higher... such as studying the philosophy of Bhagavatgita... the way early Arayan settlers of India lived....how does Ramayana came to exist as litterature (which we have learned some already), Indianization of the Suvarnabhumi (un united Thailand), Emperor Ashoka, life of the Buddha, How did Hinduism came to almost non existance in Thailand when once it built a great empire, Hinduism- Buddhism;the total opposite of the complete  harmony, and etc. Students that don't want to take this H-core course can take pure- Thai litterature..(lots of words are in old Thai and a very differnt sentence structure than the Indianized High level Thai (imagine... Beowulf vs. Shakespere)), or Thai music...  <<< these are options offered by the school for students who pass Thai 30... (which 1 level can take more than 2 years...cuz some students have Thai as their second languge)<< its an international school.. Thai class is not madatory for non- Thais unless they want to.


----------



## Jana337

Ladies and gentlemen,

Let me remind you of the forum rules:


> Please stay within the topic area of the forum you are posting a message in.
> Stay on the topic of the first post in each thread. If you wish to talk about a related subject, open a new thread.
> Ask about only one topic in each thread. If you have more than one question, open a thread for each of them.


 I am afraid that this thread already contains several topics (I would be willing to split it but - as I am not an expert in the subject matter - only if someone tells me which posts should be in new threads). Moreover, it is getting slightly chatty. I am closing it.

Needless to say, you are welcome to open new Sanskrit threads complying with the aforementioned rules. 

Bye,

Jana


----------

