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mdp2021 • yesterday at 5:39 PM • 3 replies • view on HN

> That still does not make Sanskrit an ancestor language of English

You are taking 'ancestor' in a strict technical sense, which was clearly not my intention.

> though both English and Sanskrit do share a common ancestry several thousand years ago

And those roots can be found and recognized in the subsequent languages, and there lies the value.

Replies

ben_w • yesterday at 6:18 PM

> You are taking 'ancestor' in a strict technical sense, which was clearly not my intention.

Blutly, this was not obvious, and what you suggested would have been equally true if you'd said:

  Learn Lithuanian. You were writing in a descendant language just now. If you learnt the roots, you would understand the descendants better.
Because Lithuanian has about as much in common with PIE as Sanskrit does.
nkrisc • yesterday at 6:32 PM

That wasn’t clear to me. Yes, they share similar roots because they have a common ancestor language. Just like any pair of extinct or extant languages descended from PIE.

messe • yesterday at 5:54 PM

> which was clearly not my intention.

You did not express that clearly enough then.

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