The Quartet
-Four similarities between Indian and European languages.
Linking languages and finding similarities between what’s your mother tongue to a new language is one of the keys to gaining fluency in a language. Most of us are very comfortable in speaking our local indian languages. We’ve been listening to and speaking these right from the time when we were kids.
Today, let’s look at 4 similarities between these Indian languages which we can call our comfort food to the foreign delicacies of European languages which we aim at mastering.
Ps: Keep a check of the fun vocab quick quiz that follows every similarity. You never know that right there might be your first step at mastering the language of your dreams.
1) Emphasis on the pronunciation of every syllable while speaking.
Unlike the fast American dialects of English, European languages lay quite an emphasis on the way the words are pronounced. Every syllable has a unique pronunciation and a different way of using your tongue and face muscles to express the meaning of what’s spoken. European languages, just like most other Indian languages, avoid apostrophes and prefer the use of full words which keeps the essence and beauty of the language intact. Overall, diction of the words is essential in both European as well as Indian Languages.
Quick Vocab: What does the French word ‘Dent’ (pronounced as d-on-t) mean?
Hint: It means the same as its Hindi and Marathi words which sound very much the same!
2) A differentiation between the informal ‘you’ and the formal ‘you’
Unlike English, most other European languages like Indian languages have a distinct use of words for what we call ‘तुम’ and ‘आप’ in Hindi. The second person direct speech is divided to an informal ‘you’ used to address younger or same age counterparts and a formal respectful ‘you’ which is used when you address the other person with respect. In French for instance the informal you is called ‘Tu’ while the formal ‘you’ is called ‘Vous’. In Spanish the formal takes an ‘Usted’ while the informal remains ‘Tu’. Similarly in marathi we have the informal as ‘तू’ while the formal takes a ‘तुम्ही’.
Quick Vocab: What color name is the Spanish word ‘Naranja’ (pronounced as na-ra-nya)?
Hint: It is the exact color in Marathi and Hindi too!
3) Derivations from a parent language.
European languages are derivatives of the parent language ‘Latin’ while all Indian languages are a derivation from the parent language ‘Sanskrit’. Both the parent languages being interlinked, a set of vocabulary lies common to the two sets with variations only being in pronunciations.
Quick Vocab: What does the German word ‘Mich’ mean?
Hint: Yes, it’s the same as the marathi word!
4) The millions of dialects every language has.
‘इकडे’ , ‘अटे’, ‘इथं’ all of these mean the same English word ‘here’. They aren’t synonyms but they’re the same word in multiple dialects of the language Marathi! Most Indian languages have a number of dialects. Every 20 feet you walk leads you to a different dialect of marathi in a lot of districts in Maharashtra and if facts are considered, this is the situation with most other Indian languages. Similarly, European languages are said to have mutated every mile as we move from the center to the boundaries. Spanish that we study in non-european countries is the pure form of Spanish if we look in indian terms it’s like the version on Hindi where ‘मूर्ख’ means ‘बेवकूफ’ but every city has a different version of ‘मूर्ख’ used while the OG word is rarely used.
Quick Vocab: What does ‘Nom’ in French mean?
Hint: Do we need any!
There are many similarities between European and Indian languages. Knowing similarities and differences between the known and the unknown makes it easier to bridge the gap and as the gap decreases you take a step closer to your goal of mastering the language of your dreams. Your mother tongue is not just any other language on your CV, it’s the language in which you think and perceive the world so there’s no other way to learn a new language, gain a new perspective than by linking it to your own mother tongue.
After all in the words of Nelson Mandela :
“If you talk to a man in a language he understands, that goes to his head. If you talk to him in his own language, that goes to his heart.”
By Shamika Nayak
Find me on Instagram :
@shamikanayak
I express through my writings and love talking and interacting with new people.
