Re: origin of the first alphabet

From: Neeraj Mathur (neemathur_at_hotmail.com)
Date: 02/10/05 

Date: Thu, 10 Feb 2005 10:41:15 -0000

<ranjit_mathews@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:1108010234.913631.90870@c13g2000cwb.googlegroups.com...
> andrew_woode@hotmail.com wrote:
>> in Sanskrit 'e' and 'o' were 'ai' and 'au' in origin
>
> Hindi [E:] & [O:] are allophones of [aI] & [aU] and originate from
> Sanskrit [aI] & [aU]. Do you have a source of information that Sanskrit
> [e:] & [o:] originate from PIE/ protoAryan [aI] and [aU]?

The Sanskrit 'diphthongs' - arranged in the alphabet after the long vocalic
[l:] (which doesn't actually exist in any word) - are as follows:
e < [ai]
ai < [a:i]
o < [au]
au < [a:u]

In front of a vowel in a Sanskrit word, these become ay-, a:y-, av-, a:v-
respectively.

There is plenty of evidence within Sanskrit itself for this; it was
recognized by the Indian grammarians (hence the reason for the placement).
For instance, the present tense of Class 1 verbs have a root strengthened to
guna grade, and the thematic vowel added between the root and the endings.
Thus from the root <s'uc> we get <s'ocati>. From <ji> however we get
<jayati>, and the -y- here is just a consonantal allophone of the -i- in
what was originally a diphthong The infinitives of these words are <s'oktum>
and <jetum>. Also <gai> gives a present <ga:yati> which has a similar story.

As far as Indo-European evidence, it is certainly not lacking: cf. Greek
<keitai> = Skt <s'ete> and several other examples.

Neeraj Mathur

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