Linguaphiles

The Oxford Etymologic Dictionary (OED) considers Ego / I as if it were a self-standing word developed within the Germanic and 'Indo-European' languages with a mere meaning of 'I / me / self, myself':[Spoiler (click to open)]

I (pron.)
12c., a shortening of Old English ic, the first person singular nominative pronoun, from Proto-Germanic *ek (source also of Old Frisian ik, Old Norse ek, Norwegian eg, Danish jeg, Old High German ih, German ich, Gothic ik), from PIE *eg- "I," nominative form of the first person singular pronoun (source also of Sanskrit aham, Hittite uk, Latin ego (source of French Je), Greek ego, Russian ja, Lithuanian aš).
Reduced to i by mid-12c. in northern England, later everywhere; the form ich or ik, especially before vowels, lingered in northern England until c. 1400 and survived in southern dialects until 18c. It began to be capitalized mid-13c. to mark it as a distinct word and avoid misreading in handwritten manuscripts.
https://www.etymonline.com/word/I

ego (n.) by 1707, in metaphysics, "the self; that which feels, acts, or thinks," from Latin ego "I" (cognate with Old English ic; see I); its use is implied in egoity.
https://www.etymonline.com/word/ego

местоим., укр. я, др.-русск. язъ, я (и то и другое – в Мстислав. грам. 1130 г.; см. Обнорский – Бархударов I, 33), ц.-сл. азъ ἐγώ, реже ѩзъ (см. Дильс, Aksl. Gr. 77), болг. аз, яз (Младенов 702), сербохорв. jа̑, словен. jàz, jâ, чеш. já, др.-чеш. jáz (совр. чеш. форма – с начала ХIV в.), слвц. jа, др.-пол. jaz, пол., в.-луж., н.-луж. jа, полаб. joz, jо.
Праслав. *аzъ отличается своим вокализмом от родственных форм, ср. др.-лит. еš, лит. àš, лтш. еs, др.-прус. еs, аs, др.-инд. ahám, авест. azǝm, др.-перс. аdаm, арм. еs, венет. еχо, гр. ἐγώ, лат. еgо, гот. ik "я". Наряду с и.-е. *еǵ- (гр., лат., герм.), существовало и.-е. диал. *eǵh- (др.-инд., венет.). Недоказанной является гипотеза о существовании *ō̆go наряду с *еgō на основе слав. аzъ и хетт. uk, ug "я" (Мейе – Эрну 342 и сл.; см. Вальде – Гофм. I, 395 и сл.). Не объяснена еще достоверно утрата конечного -z в слав.; весьма невероятно, чтобы она совершилась по аналогии местоим. tу (напр., Ягич, AfslPh 23, 543; Голуб – Копечный 147), а также чтобы долгота начального гласного была обусловлена долготой гласного в tу (Бругман у Бернекера, см. ниже). Более удачна попытка объяснения аzъ из сочетания а ězъ (Бернекер I, 35; Бругман, Grdr. 2, 2, 382), но см. против этого Кнутссон, ZfslPh 12, 96 и сл. По мнению Зубатого (LF 36, 345 и сл.), в этом а- представлена усилит. част. *ā, ср. др.-инд. ād, авест. āt̃, ср. также др.-инд. межд. ḗt "смотри, глядь!" из ā и id; Педерсен (KZ 38, 317) видит здесь влияние окончания 1 л. ед. ч. -ō; сомнения по этому поводу см. у Бернекера (I, 35). Для объяснения -z привлекают законы сандхи (Сольмсен, KZ 29, 79); ср. Бернекер, там же; И. Шмидт, KZ 36, 408 и сл.; Вакернагель – Дебруннер 3, 454 и сл.
http://www.classes.ru/all-russian/russian-dictionary-Vasmer-term-17126.htm

ich (Ger.), Εγώ [ego] (Gr.), ego (Lat.), io (Ital.), yo (Sp.), I (Eng.), jag (Sw.), я [ja] (Slavic)...

However, should one look beyond the hypothetic *constructions, established by the German philologists in the 19th Century, one would see an obvious Nostratic relation of the above words with the meaning of ' I ' to the following words with the meaning of ' 1 (one)':

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Any Sanskrit or Devnagari experts out there?

This is a friend’s ring.  I have pretty much zero knowledge of Indian languages, so I can’t make much of it.  Its chunky design doesn’t help either.  Here’s my attempt at a transcription:

ऊामडाहृात्गटा

uāmaḍāhṛātgāṭā

There are a couple of things in there that I don’t feel confident about.

1. What’s up with the long block starting with what looks like ा (ात्ग)?  I’ve moved the ā ा back to the previous letter, but maybe it should be त्गि (tgi)?


2. The letter before it looks like it might be ha ह plus something, but if it’s हृ or हॄ does attaching an ā ा to it still make sense?

Of course, then there’s the actual meaning...

Has anyone learned two languages at once? How was that experience? I'm currently taking Sanskrit at my uni, but I also want to learn Japanese by self study. They're not related; therefore I won't be concerned about confusing the two. I'm ready to dedicate my time to both languages.
On to self study. For monetary and schedule reasons, I'm attempting to teach myself Japanese. Has anyone taught themselves a language? How did it go?
My plan and resources for Japanese is:

• Working with a textbook
• Constantly listening to Japanese media
• Possibly finding a local language partner
• Get a Japanese penpal
• Constant self testing

That is my plan so far.

So I've decided to start learning Sanskrit, and today I got Michael Coulson's Teach Yourself Sanskrit from the library. I checked previous entries and I couldn't really find much, so I was wondering what people thought of it. Is there a significantly better book out there that's not incredibly difficult to get in the US, or is it not so bad?

Also, I was walking past a store the other day (closed, unfortunately, so I couldn't just go in and ask) so I couldn't ask about a sign they had posted. My guess is that it's in Gujarati, but I'm not sure. What does it say (the part you can see, anyway)?

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Thanks!

And this is also a tattoo post.


A friend's father wants to get "Be the change you want to see in the world" in Sanskrit as a tattoo. Does anyone here have an idea how to say that naturally in Sanskrit? He figured that because Gandhi was Indian that there must be a Sanskrit version of his quote. I'd really appreciate it if anyone had an idea of how to write it, or, if not, some possible resources for the answers. :)

I apologise if my sentences are strange. English is not my first language. :)

Thank you.

I'm a linguistics geek, and if I can't answer a question, at least I know here to ask (That's you people :P).

So anyway, a friend of mine wanted so cryptic language that would amount ro "architect of your own destruction" for a RP campain. I knew Latin was not much of an option unless I could find suitably obscure words, however a bit of research brought up a fragment from 2 Peter (2:1) that would word: "επαγοντες εαυτοις απωλειαν" (epagonted heautois apoleian). If I'm not mistaken, Ancient Greek usually uses the past participle as an agent noun, and "εαυτοις" is the same in all three persons of the plural (IIRC), so this could reasonably be constructed as "bringers of your/their own destruction", right?

I nonetheless noted that if it was Latin and Greek, his players would definitely be able to google a translation, especially with a transliteration, so I'm looking for a Sanskrit equivalent (or equivalents), but this is WAY out of my league. Any help?

A friend asked me to have another friend in my department translate a phrase into Sanskrit for her for an art project, but my Sanskrit expert's out of town for the next two weeks and she needs it sooner. Can any of you help? Here's the phrase:

You cannot control the actions of others; you can only control your reaction.

I do not know any Sanskrit, but a text I am using has a few footnotes in Sanskrit. I was wondering if anyone could give me a general idea about what they say. (Should have something to do with sesames and/or religion?)

I'm writing a short fable for a class, and I'd like to give two of the characters names in Sanskrit or Pali. One of them is clever, so I'd like to name him "clever", and one is very compassionate, so I'd like to name him "compassion." Or something along the same lines. If it matters, both of them are male.

(The names are supposed to be obvious, in case you're wondering.)

I've tried looking up names on my own, but I'm mostly finding names of gods and mythological figures, which I'd like to avoid, and the dictionaries I've found are too confusing for someone who's not familiar with the languages.

Can anyone help?

I really don't *need* to know this, but it's driving me nuts, not least because I've spent an hour and a half trying to reproduce the text in question using devanagari characters which I don't actually know, using a keyboard layout which, even in the QWERTY form, is still half guesswork for me, and three different websites. All this because although I could get the characters to show up on my screen, I couldn't cut and paste them.

Finally, I gave up and took a screenshot. It's from this page which uses the Shushi TT fonts, and it gives a lot of prayers, giving the I-assume-Sanskrit, a transliteration, and a translation.

Screenshot here. Moderately large picture.

Explanation, in case you don't want to click through: in this particular case, it's the "ya devi sarvabhuteshu" slokas. The web page author gives a few examples to show the form, and then just gives the word which is inserted in each new phrase. E.g., "Ya devi sarvabhuteshu chetanetyabhidhiyate, namastasyai, namastasyai, namastasyai namo manah [sic]. -- Salutations again and again to the Devi who abides in all beings as consciousness." Then there's "Ya devi sarvabhuteshu buddhirupena samsthita, namastasyai, namastasyai, namastasyai, namo namah. -- Salutations again and again to the Devi who abides in all beings in the form of intelligence."

After that, there's just a list of attributes, which are supposed to be, "inserted after the 'ya devi sarvabhuteshu.' All of them, I notice, end in '--rupena.' I can't find this in the online dictionary I've got for Sanskrit, but I'm guessing that's what's getting translated as 'in the form of.' I also can't find 'sarvabhuteshu' (presumably I'm not finding these things because they're not in their root forms, although other possible answers also exist) but my dictionary gives 'sarvabhuutaani' as 'all existing things.' So possibly sarvabhuteshu means 'within all existing things' or something like that.

There's a little too much 'possibly' and 'presumably' in all that.

Here's my actual question: in 'chetanetyabhidhiyate' and 'buddhirupena samesthita', is there anything which should be repeated when the new words are inserted - for instance the bit that gets translated as any part of 'who abides in all beings as/in the form of--'* - which should be retained? Would the next line of the prayer be "Ya devi sarvabhuteshu nidrarupena, namastayai, namastayai, namo namah"? Or is there a word/suffix/phrase/whatever missing that's needed to make that actually make sense?



* There shall be no Wonder Twins references, y'all. I have spoken.