Friends,

I apologize for the late response, but I have been away (in India) for
a week or so.

Normally, to say that an English word (like 'curry') has an Indian origin
(or has 'roots' in India) would mean that this word was borrowed into
English from an Indian language, probably but not necessarily during
the colonial period. That is no doubt the case with 'curry' and most
of the other words listed by Yong Peng in his original post. (Of course
it might sometimes be difficult to identify the source word or language
precisely.)

As has been pointed out, there are words on the list which do not meet
this definition, for example 'father'. This word existed in English (with
varying pronunciation) long before English had any contact with Indian
languages. It is related to words in many Indian languages due to their
common Indo-European origin, but it is simply a mistake to imagine that
therefore 'father' has an Indian origin. Using this definition, one could
equally well say that the Pali word 'pitu' (and hundreds or thousands of
others) has an English origin.

The list presented by Yong Peng is a good example of muddled or
misinformed thinking about language. Apparently the problem is not
so much with Yong Peng himself, as with the uncited sources where
he got his list.

George Bedell

--- In Pali@yahoogroups.com, "Ong Yong Peng" <palismith@...> wrote:
>
> Dear Gunnar, Jacques and Ardavarz,
>
> thanks for highlighting the words of contention. This is not exactly my area of interest, and I do recall now that we did discuss about "serpent" and Pali "sappa" many moons ago on this list.
>
> I believe the sources, which I refer to, include English words which have common Indo-European roots or are inherited indirectly from India. Just like what you have already discussed.
>
> metta,
> Yong Peng.
>
>
> --- In Pali@yahoogroups.com, Jacques Huynen wrote:
>
> "serpens" probably comes, in all Indo-european languages, from a root SRP meaning "creep".
>
> > * father
> > * mother
> > These are common Indo-European stems, perhaps used already in Original Indo-European somewhere north of the Black Sea, and found in Teutonic languages long before England had any contact with India; also in Ancient Greek, in Latin (pater, mater) and in the Romance languages. I don't know about the Celtic, Slavic, Baltic, and Iranian languages.
> >
> > * serpent
> > Borrowed from Latin (serpens), probably through French.
>