SV: Latin, Sanskrit, Arabic

[JoatSimeon at aol.com]

[ moderator re-formatted ]

In a message dated 9/11/99 12:22:46 AM Mountain Daylight Time,
lmfosse at online.no writes:

<< In addition to Vidyanath Rao's information, I would like to add that
>Sanskrit existed at different levels of proficiency. It was not only a
>religious language, it was also an epic language, and it was apparently - in a
>simplified form - used as a lingua franca all over India after the Prakrits
>had become too different to be mutually comprehensible.

-- just as Latin was in the post-Roman West.

>It may not have been the "mother tongue" of many people, but otherwise, it
>must have been the English of ancient South Asia.

-- the _Latin_ of ancient South Asia.

There was never an area outside South Asia where Sanskrit continued to be
used as a living language, as is the case with English.

For that matter, there are several million people now in South Asia who do
use English as their mother tongue, learned in childhood, besides the tens of
millions who learn it as a secondary language acquired in adulthood.

As far as I know -- correct me if I'm wrong -- there was no large group in
ancient South Asia who used Sanskrit as their household language after the
divergence of the Prakrits.