Re: Burushaski

From: Richard Wordingham
Message: 53699
Date: 2008-02-19

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "stlatos" <stlatos@...> wrote:

> I've just begun looking at Burushaski and it is obviously an
Indo-European language
> closely related to other Indo-Iranian languages and Armenian (like
Khowar, Nuristani
> languages, etc.) in every vocabulary group. Why hasn't this been
seen before and
> acknowledged?

This post seems to be exactly six weeks too early - or so I deduce
from the subtle reference to Armenian. Are there not a good many
similarly unacknowledged IE languages in SE Asia? The example I know
best is Thai, which has the Indic family terms (cognates to Sanskrit
_pita:_, _ma:ta:_, _bhra:ta:_ (this one not in common use), _putra_,
_putri:_, _putri:_), numbers one to ten (and a few others, like '16'),
body parts (_çi:rSa:_ 'head', _pa:da_), animals (_satwa_ 'animal',
_siGha_, _zunaka_ 'dog') and so on. I have quoted the related
Sanskrit forms, as the Thai forms are unrecongisable unless you know
the correspondences.

Richard.