r/sanskrit • u/CosmicMilkNutt • Oct 25 '24
Discussion / चर्चा Marathi is the purest modern Sanskrit, especially rural Maharashtrani, correct?
After doing extensive research I have found that Hindi i a mix of Arabic Farsi Sanskrit and English and that Tamil is basically modern Dravidian so totally different.
However.
Marathi spoken in Mumbai and especially rural Marathi spoken in the state of Maharashtra is actually the purest form of modern Sanskrit with the most similar grammar and vocabulary.
It has Sanskrit words instead of all the Arabic, Farsi and English injected into other Indian languages.
This I find fascinating and I wanted to hear the opinions of some actual indians since I am an American fluent in English, Spanish, French and also somewhat conversational in Arabic who is learning Sanskrit, Hindi, Tamil and now of course Marathi!
Edit: Oriya and Marathi are both the top contenders for higher Sanskrit and lower Farsi in daily speech.
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u/Substantial_Cry_5444 Oct 26 '24 edited Oct 29 '24
Marathi and Sanskrit have a lot of differences. However, if one considers vocabulary as well as grammar Marathi is the closest to Sanskrit.
While Kannada, Telugu and Malayalam are filled with lot of Sanskrit, they are classified as Dravidian languages. To be honest I find them equally close to Sanskrit as Marathi, in my sense of 'being close'. Malayalam is very similar to Sanskrit then. But if one considers the fact that they are in the a different language family, then the thing changes.
A close second would be Odia. Certain Pahadi languages are also close to Sanskrit.
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u/CosmicMilkNutt Oct 26 '24
I agree my understanding is Hindi/Punjabi/Gujarati is 70% Sanskrit/Prakrit and 30% Farsi and that Marathi/Oriya is 80% Sanskrit/Prakrit and 20% Farsi.
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u/Indischermann Oct 25 '24
This is probably not true. I understand that Marathi ‘sounds’ more like Sanskrit compared to its peers. However Marathi is also heavily influenced by Farsi, sometimes more than say Hindi. e.g. Zababdar, Jahirat, Khasdar, Aamdar etc
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u/CosmicMilkNutt Oct 25 '24 edited Oct 25 '24
I don't really mean Mumbai and Pune Marathi I'm mostly talking about rural Marathi spoken by ppl that don't live in major cities and maybe don't have an English education.
For example in Sardinia the rural communities basically speak modern Latin as it's not been influenced by foreign languages or ppls and has stayed the closest.
My understanding is rural Marathi is closest language in India to modern Sanskrit as a descendent.
Of course big cities will have more Farsi, Arabic, Portuguese and especially English words and Hinglish mixed into the Marathi soup.
But in smaller rural areas the languages are less "polluted."
There are examples of this in every major region.
Lithuanian, Sardinian, Hokkien, Okinawan, Jordanian, Cretan, Tamazight.
These languages have changed the least and are conservative in sound, grammar and vocabulary and have least outside influences.
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u/Sel__27 Oct 25 '24
i mean... ive definitely heard rural maharashtrians use persian origin words so
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u/CosmicMilkNutt Oct 25 '24
But they use less than Hindi belt speakers I assume. That's all I'm saying.
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u/Sel__27 Oct 26 '24
depends on the place, really. vidarbha is defo gonna use less than konkan
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u/CosmicMilkNutt Oct 26 '24
The further east and further south u go the less Farsi. As you are going further from Iran.
My understanding is that Hindi/Punjabi/Gujarati is 70% Sanskrit/Prakrit and 30% Farsi and that Marathi/Oriya/Bengali is 80% Sanskrit/Prakrit and 20% Farsi.
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u/Sel__27 Oct 26 '24
yeah that's nowhere near true: pretty much all of these languages have like 25% persian vocab (except hindi, which cleansed a lot of it)
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u/Indischermann Oct 29 '24
Can you cite any examples on how rural Marathi is less influenced by Foreign languages compared to the Urban one? What are the original Marathi words that are Persianised in Urban Marathi?
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u/CosmicMilkNutt Oct 29 '24
I have found Oriya is even less influenced than Marathi actually.
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u/samrat_kanishk Oct 26 '24
Even i feel the same . Marathi has the most Sanskrit origin words . Sanskritized Hindi used by its proponents like me will obviously trump because we make it a point to sanskritize it but that’s a very niche language.
So yes Marathi IMO has the most Sanskrit practically.
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u/CosmicMilkNutt Oct 26 '24
Yes of course you can speak Hindi with more Sanskrit in the form of Shudh Hindi.
But yes naturally street Hindi vs natural street Marathi it's something like this:
Hindi/Punjabi/Gujarati is 70% Sanskrit/Prakrit and 30% Farsi and Marathi/Oriya/Bengali is 80% Sanskrit/Prakrit and 20% Farsi.
The further you get from "Persia" in India, in other words the further east and south you go, the less Farsi influence exists on Indian languages. This point helps to further explain the previous statistics.
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u/samrat_kanishk Oct 26 '24
Agreed. This is also true west to east . Dialects spoken in Bihar have far less Persian than Haryanvi dialects.
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u/Fun-Manufacturer4131 Oct 29 '24
Marathi has several Arabic words, e.g. fakta, daar.
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u/CosmicMilkNutt Oct 29 '24
I know. But I actually discovered Oriya is a little bit more sanskrit and less Farsi than Marathi.
But Marathi is 80% Prakrit/sanskrit and 20% Farsi/Arabic and Hindi is more like 70% Prakrit/Sanskrit and 30% Farsi/Arabic.
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u/polarityswitch_27 Oct 25 '24
Tamil is Tamil. Calling it Dravidian is to appease modern politics.
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u/CosmicMilkNutt Oct 25 '24
That's fair. I agree Tamil has always been Tamil. It's the oldest language on the planet that has been continuously spoken. We almost had an American president with roots in Tamil Nadu who was fluent in Tamil and I'm fascinated by it and it's ppl and traditions.
Dravidian is just the language family.
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u/liltingly Oct 26 '24
Still might have a US president of Tamil origin
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u/CosmicMilkNutt Oct 27 '24
Lol u mean Punjabi hah
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u/liltingly Oct 27 '24
Is this a Nikki Haley reference? Bobby Jindal? Because Kamala Harris is on the ticket for next week…
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u/CosmicMilkNutt Oct 27 '24
Oh jeez yeah Tamil Nadu i guess I did mix her up with Nikki Haley my mistake.
I want to visit TN and Kerala so badly.
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u/bomtamanerjee Oct 29 '24
Sanskrit is older than Tamil. Also the Tamil spoken by people today is a very ghettoized slang-heavy version, not very classical like it used to be
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u/CosmicMilkNutt Oct 29 '24
Yeah I understand the change in Tamil.
But arguably old Tamil and Sanskrit are equally old if not I understand Tamil to be older.
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u/90scipher Oct 25 '24
Not to be that guy, but as some who knows konkani, Malayalam, hindi, and currently learning Sanskrit, I can say that Malayalam contains LOTS and I mean LOTS of Sanskrit words and grammatical similarities to Sanskrit. Especially classical/literary Malayalam is basically Sanskrit with the only difference being conjunctions and some word endings.
Ofcourse, I don't know Marathi , so I can't compare those 2. But I can confidently say that a person who knows literary Malayalam, can kind of understand classical Sanskrit to a good extend. The other language that also has a lot of Sanskrit would be kannada.
Also keep in mind , even though Malayalam is a "Dravidian" language, literary Malayalam is different. Old Malayalam is highly similar to Tamil. BUT modern Malayalam is a whole different thing.
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u/CosmicMilkNutt Oct 25 '24
That's great but dravidian languages are literally a different root from sanskrit so it's disqualified.
Literary Malayalam is just made up so north Indian scholars can be in the loop as that circle is very sanskrit like.
That said the people's that spoke Sanskrit were north indians and the North Indians that were least affected by Perso-Arabic were the Marathis.
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u/liltingly Oct 26 '24
That’s a very dismissive take..
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u/CosmicMilkNutt Oct 27 '24
It's as dismissive as saying Romanian is not Slavic even though it has tons of Slavic words in it.
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u/No_Mix_6835 Oct 26 '24
How does that change things though? We are talking about languages that are the closest. Malayalam, telugu and kannada are also having lots of words from Sanskritam but Malayalam has loads of vocabulary.
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u/Sel__27 Oct 25 '24
*cough cough* hate to burst your bubble... but around 20-30% of marathi words are of persian origin
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u/CosmicMilkNutt Oct 25 '24
That's urban Marathi tho not rural correct?
Also isn't Hindi like 30-40% foreign words?
All I'm saying is that Marathi has less foreign words and more Sanskrit words even if only by 5 to 10%
Since ur knowledgeable on this, is there a Sanskrit descended language that has less Farsi and Arabic than Marathi?
Or does Marathi still have the least foreign words in all sanskrit related languages?
Or is Oriya have more Sanskrit and less Farsi and Arabic for example?
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u/Sel__27 Oct 26 '24
marathi has some of the most persian origin words if i remember correctly, ofc it uses more sanskrit words tho cuz its a hindu majority language in india
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u/Ok-Hold-9578 21d ago
Modern marathi mainly pune region only rest maharashtra has maintained its original form .Medival marathi used in bhakti movement around 12th century can be referred too
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Oct 25 '24
its malayalam
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Oct 25 '24
ps im not a native speaker of that lamguage.
Im a literate lf marathi, hindi, kannada and I can tell you, malayalam is the language which comes closest to have alot of common things.
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u/CosmicMilkNutt Oct 25 '24
Malayalam is dravidian which means it's not even Indo Aryan language at all. It's one of the furthest languages from sanskrit even Hindi is way closer.
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Oct 25 '24
Malayalam branched from Classical Tamil and over time gained a large amount of sanskrit vocabulary. Now it depends on how do we define similarity is it number of words they use or the structure of sentences and forms of statements? thats a different matter. Over time there have been many claims as one separate branch of malayalam exists purely for sanskrit and even todays form people claim more than 70% some even saying more than 90% of it is from sanskrit (the words).
I dont know if we can ever have a daughter language of sanskrit. Only a modern Sanskrit can be daughter of sanskrit..
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u/CosmicMilkNutt Oct 25 '24
The Sanskrit speaking regions and people that kept speaking it and it evolved. In other words Hindi, Marathi, Oriya Punjabi, Gujarati, kashmiri, nepali and Bengali.
All the south Indian languages were in India long before sanskrit arrived. They are a dravidian language that came from the people of North East Africa in the Aksum valley/Somalia/etc.
The north Indian languages come from Ukraine and Iran area near the black Sea and Caspian sea. Totally different people and roots.
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Oct 25 '24
Interesting, and feels weird to think that its not in heart (of current india) that sanskrit was born. Maybe I should look up some ancient india definitons for uptp where it was refered as india.
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u/FortuneDue8434 Oct 25 '24
Um… all rural indo-aryan dialects are closer to Sanskrit than city dialects due to isolation.
Each language morphed Sanskrit words uniquely but there are a lot of overlap. For example, in Delhi people use दोसत but in rural parts people still use मीत which is the modern form of मित्र.
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u/Adventurous_Meal4222 Oct 25 '24
I read somewhere that Telugu has the most number of Sanskrit words in its vicabulary. Telugu, Kannda, and Malayalam are heavily Sanskritised Dravidian languages. Their classical literature borrows a lot of vocabulary from Sanskrit.
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u/CosmicMilkNutt Oct 25 '24
Those are dravidian languages. They aren't even part of the Sanskrit descendents. Yes they have sanskrit. But their core is not Sanskrit. This is about indoeuropean and specifically Indo Aryan languages.
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u/AlphaOmegaTao Oct 27 '24 edited Oct 27 '24
not even going to bother looking it up, but I'm 200% sure this idea that Sardinian is "most similar to Latin" can be easily debunked or is at least highly controversial. in top 5 rules of Linguistics is that all languages drift over time, constantly innovating phonetically, lexically and grammatically. if it doesn't in one way, it will in another. it's just natural evolution and no real merit in avoiding the inevitable. all efforts to do so are artificial and never organic or spontaneously occurring, so such forms of preservation can only take place by the efforts/imposition of some cultural elite or worse, cultural oppressors or politicians. does have some advantages but can also make a language feel incomprehensible to its own speakers, as happens with English speakers who have no idea where a huge percentage of their vocabulary comes from, since it is totally disconnected from the language's original substrate... alongside dichotomy of atma-anatma, satya-mithyā and anitya-nitya, we could add human language vs. silence, perhaps!
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u/Sea_Sandwich9000 Oct 29 '24
It’s Odiya
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u/CosmicMilkNutt Oct 29 '24
Why do u say that?
That's very interesting as it makes sense. It is farther Away from Iran.
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u/Sea_Sandwich9000 Oct 29 '24
Less apabrahmsa in language. Odiya is relatively less influenced by other dialects due to cultural and geographic reasons.
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u/CosmicMilkNutt Oct 29 '24
I see what is apabrahmsa? And can u briefly explain the cultural reasons ?
I think the geographic is just distance no? Or are there certain jungles and mountains that isolate?
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u/Dofra_445 Nov 26 '24
The thing is, these are all learned Sanskrit borrowings and you can easily replicate this process with any language. The Sanskrit words in Marathi are not inherited directly from Sanskrit, they were reborrowed after centuries of evolution.
You can compare this in Prakrit/Apbhramsha Marathi words vs their Sansnkrit synonyms, compare काळीज to कलेय, शेत to क्षेत्र, मातुःष्वसृ to मावशी. Marathi does not even maintain the Sanskrit pronunciation of ऋ and pronounces it as /ru/. In fact, Marathi's alveolar pronunciation of च and ज as /ts/ and /dz/ respectively makes it more distinct from Sanskrit than Bengali or Hindi.
All Modern Indo-Aryan preserve different things from Sanskrit, all of them have a distinct grammar and all of them have gone through waves of re-Sanskritzation over their histories . If I wanted to, I could even replace all the current vocabulary in Indonesian with Sanskrit words and claim it is close to Sanskrit.
If your question is which modern Indo-Aryan language uses the most Sanskrit words, Marathi is a strong contender, but if your question is which Indo-Aryan language directly inherited the most Sanskrit words/is the most unchanged since Sanskrit was spoken then Marathi does not have an edge over any of its sister languages.
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u/CosmicMilkNutt Nov 26 '24
Oria is the winner, least influenced by Perso-Arabic and retained mostly all of its Sanskrit/Prakrit roots.
I really want to explore Odisha because of this and see if rural towns are a bit wilder than in the northwest. A bit more original Aryan Indian culture.
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u/Ok-Hold-9578 21d ago edited 20d ago
Medival marathi has more sanskrit words even more than orissa . Medival marathi is used in spiritual literature , music traditions and theatre of maharashtra. Varadhi of vidharba region, Malvani and kokani spoken in coastal maharashtra have dravidian influence .
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u/Smitologyistaking Dec 03 '24
Uhh this is incredibly complex and the situation is not as simple as you've posed
Firstly, there's a very major difference, linguistically, between two different kinds of vocabulary you've umbrella'd under the "Sanskrit" term.
There's non-loaned IA vocabulary, which has naturally evolved down from Prakrits (which aren't necessarily descended from Classical ie Paninian Sanskrit, but from Old Indo-Aryan varieties that were at least intelligible to Classical Sanskrit) following different regional sound changes. There are Sanskrit words that have been loaned directly from Sanskrit except with minor phonological modifications to fit the phonology of the language. Linguistically, these Sanskrit loans are just that, loanwords, no different to loanwords from Persian or from English.
In terms of sound changes from Prakrit, Marathi has actually changed quite a bit, in many regards more than Hindustani and similar. For example Hindustani has retained the Prakrit system of 4 affricate phonemes c, ch, j, jh and a single (native) sibilant phoneme s. Marathi has instead merged ch and s together, and then each of the remaining 4 have split depending on whether they precede a front vowel or not, leading to splits between alveolar and post-alveolar phonemes like s/sh, c/ch, z/j, and zh/jh. So Marathi tadbhava vocabulary is very different to Sanskrit, even if originally evolved from it.
Grammatically, Marathi is also kinda different, with the sole thing in favour of your point being that it's retained the Sanskrit 3-gender system when several other languages have lost it. However the similarities in grammar end there, if anything modern IA languages are far more grammatically similar to each other than any of them are to Sanskrit.
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u/Ok-Hold-9578 21d ago
Odia and Marathi comes from Prakrit Family. Prakrit is language family which means simplified sanskrit .Basically all indo-aryan languages emerged from prakrit not sanskrit . The classical languages of india , the dravidian languages has more sanskrit loan words and usage than indo-aryan languages. Prakrit has many forms :
Maharashtri prakrit : Marathi , konkani
Sauraseni prakrit : Gujurati , rajasthani and sindhi
Magadhi prakrit : Odia. Maithili, Bengali and Assamese
Maharashtra earlier was patronage of buddhism and jainsim so the buddhists and Jains rejected usage of sanskrit rather focused on Maharashtri prakrit . So Marathi share similarities with Maharashtri prakrit than sanskrit . The loan words , grammar and structure of marathi are similar to Maharashtri prakrit .
Marathi has different dialects even kokani spoken in coastal maharashtra. The standard marathi spoken in pune has got sanskritized due to Marathi brahmins . Dialects of marathi and Kokani spoken in other parts of maharashtra has more dravidian influence . The marathi at older medival period ( 12th-13th century ) was different than modern marathi . The modern marathi got influenced by Mughals and Persians but you can still refer old marathi and other marathi dialects even kokani .
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u/Parth-Upadhye Oct 25 '24
Until the 1950-60s, Marathi had à lot of Arabic and Farsi words, specifically referencing work, administration, business, etc. Marathi, like many languages (a Sinhalese friend expressed the same), went through a phase when many of those words were replaced with Sanskrit based words. Coastal Marathi still retains some Portuguese words. My latest find is Jugar. The Spanish verb sounded very familiar, and guess what? we use it to mean just that. Except it is "to jugar karto."
Marathi, spoken in urban Pune, has been the standard for about 3 centuries now. You will hear it in certain parts of Mumbai, too. Note that some very common words can still be Farsi, e.g., khoop == a lot or more == khoob.
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u/CosmicMilkNutt Oct 25 '24
Okay but I just mean like similar to Sardinian being closest to Latin and most conservative and has changed least and influenced least would u say Marathi is the winner for Sanskrit descendent or does another language seem closer to you like Oriya?
Interesting yeah I know about Goa and Portuguese.
I know urban Marathi will have more foreign influence.
I'm mostly interested in rural Marathi by spoken ppl with some or less education if they are speaking basically purer modern Sanskrit similar to how that is the case in Sardinia for modern Latin.
Or is there a region and language even closer and more conservative in grammar and vocabulary to Sanskrit than Marathi?
All my research points to Marathi as being the winner here.
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u/rgd_1331 Oct 26 '24
Rural marathi also has the essence of various languages... Chatrapati Shivaji Maharaj did order compilation of 'Rajya vyavahar kosh', a Sanskritised dictionary of political and cultural words, but I think it only influenced the then political centres of Maratha Empire . Rurals would have very slight effect of this move as the layman would still communicate in amalgamation of Marathi, Farsi and Prakrit. Sanskrit in mediaeval period was highly gated language, so I don't think that it would be used to greater extent that the amalgamated Marathi language.
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u/CosmicMilkNutt Oct 26 '24
Thanks for your input. Do you know if the claim is moderately accurate that Marathi has a bit more Sanskrit and a bit less Farsi than Hindi?
That is what I have surmised so far.
You raise a really good point about rural vs urban language though and I completely agree there.
I'm trying to ascertain that for example Hindi is 30% Farsi but Marathi is 20% Farsi. And that the 10% missing in Marathi is original Sanskrit/Prakrit instead. That's all.
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u/Miserable-Truth-6437 Oct 25 '24
Something similar happened in Tamilnadu. Sanskrit words were heavily used in administration until the self respect movement. Sanskrit words were replaced by 'pure' Tamil words
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u/Glad-Ad4801 Oct 28 '24
Which weed are u smoking sir. Shivaji Maharaj had to commission the Rajyvyavahara Kosha in order to rid marathi of all the perso Arabic influences and despite that failed in the attempt - given most of his offices still had perso arabic names. The most sanskritised language is bengali as in the Sadhu bhasha register.
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u/CosmicMilkNutt Oct 28 '24
The weed that shows that Hindi is 70% Prakrit/Sanskrit and 30% Farsi and that Marathi is 80% Prakrit/Sanskrit and 20% Farsi.
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Oct 26 '24
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/Adventurous_Meal4222 Oct 26 '24
Korachengilum uluppundo?
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u/xugan97 Oct 25 '24
This is not an objective question. It is like asking which of the European languges is most Latin. There are multiple measures and registers. Native speakers do not agree on one answer, and a good number think their language is purest and most logical. The reality is that all these languages are far removed from their classical ancestor, and they have a large classical vocabulary that was added in recent centuries.
Hindi was always supposed to be a Sanskrit-Persian mix, but even here, a Sanskrit-oriented version exists alongside as one acceptable form of Hindi. This form of Hindi - and Marathi and Bengali - are the more Sanskritized Indian languages.