RE:Sanskrit is a dead language
by Maximus Decimus Meridius on Apr 28, 2007 09:36 AM Permalink
Yes, but Tamil is not related to greek. Sanskrit and Greek are closely related - no language is as close to sanksrit as greek and vice versa. Eg: Sanskrit has a dual number (a single word for 2, in addition to singular and plural). Identical in Greek. Latin has only singular and plural. With 8 levels of inflection, each noun takes on 24 forms in both. In Latin, there are only 12 forms for a noun. Similarly, verbs in Skr and Greek take on 9 forms vs 6 in Latin.
Greek has a middle voice - called Atmanepada in sanskrit. The verb conjugates differently when you do something to yourself vs someone else. No other indo-european language has this.
Not everyone studies languages for speaking it. Sanskrit is taught as part of comparative linguistics - a field that studies similarities in languages and classifies them. Sanskrit is usually studied as the representative language of the indo-iranian sub branch of the language family.
