Talk:Classical language

message: Objectives
* Give an accurate understanding of classical languages
* Give an up-to-date list of the number of classical languages — Preceding unsigned comment added by Avedeus (talk • contribs) 23:22, 15 February 2011 (UTC)
thread_title: Untitled

message: * Has not been officially declared yet
* Will not be in the Antiquity category, there are only two ancient classical languages of India: Sanskrit and Tamil
* During the Sangam era, there was little differentiation between Dravidian languages, much less Tamil and Malayalam.
Please discuss further.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Avedeus (talk • contribs) 23:22, 15 February 2011 (UTC)
thread_title: Malayalam as a classical language?

message: Tamil is the first legally recognized Classical Language of India, as formally announced by the then President of India, Dr. Abdul Kalam, in a joint sitting of both houses of Parliament in 2004. The name ‘Tamil’ is an Anglicized version of the native name, the final letter usually transcribed as the lower ‘l’ or ‘zh’.
;Origins:
A few scholars have linked the origins of Tamil to that of Sanskrit; however, unlike most of the other established literary languages of India, the origins of Tamil are independent of Sanskrit. Tamil has the longest unbroken literary tradition amongst the 4 major Dravidian languages (Tamil, Telugu, Kannada and Malayalam). 
Tamil tradition dates the oldest works to several millennia ago; the earliest examples of Tamil writing we have today are in inscriptions from the 3rd century BC, which are written in an adapted form of the Brahmi script (Mahadevan, 2003). Archaeological evidence obtained from inscriptions excavated in 2005 dates the language to around 1000 BC.
Tamil has had its share of borrowing words from other languages, notably that of Sanskrit words during the medieval period. This was, however, removed by many 20th century purists, notably Parithimaar Kalaignar and Maraimalai Adigal. This movement was called ‘thanith thamizh iyakkam’ (meaning, pure Tamil movement). Tamil, thus, in formal documents, public speeches and scientific discourses is largely free of Sanskrit loan words.
While other pre-Aryan languages were happily courting Sanskrit and Prakrit (600 BC-600AD), Old Tamil stood firm in its corner refusing to yield.
;Where Tamil is spoken:
Tamil is the official language of the state of ‘Tamil Nadu’ in India. It is also widely spoken in other southern Indian states, the Union Territory of Pudhucherry, North east Sri Lanka and Malaysia.
;Dialects of the Language and where they are Spoken:
Twently-two current dialects of ‘Tamil’ are listed in ‘The Ethnologue’ which include Adi Dravida, Aiyar, Aiyangar, Arava, Burgandi, Kasuva, Kongar, Korava, Korchi, Madrasi, Parikala, Pattapu Bhasha, Sri Lanka Tamil, Malaya Tamil, Burma Tamil, South Africa Tamil, Tigalu, Harijan, Sankethi, Hebbar, Tirunelveli and Madurai. Other known dialects are Kongu and Kumari. Although not a dialect, the Tamil spoken in Chennai (capital of Tamil Nadu) infuses English words and is called ‘Madras Bashai’.
;Thirukkural:
One of the most notable literary and ethical treatises in the Indian languages, Thirukkural, is written by Thiruvalluvar. There is a general consensus among the historians and literary authorities that Thirukkural was written around 2000 years ago. 
Dr. Albert Schweitzer, Nobel Laureate, notes that, “There hardly exists in the literature of the world a collection of maxims in which we find such lofty wisdom as in Thirukkural”
Dr. G. U. Pope, a Christian Missionary and Translator of Thirukkural in English writes, “The Kural is an integral painting of a civilization which is harmonious in itself and which possesses a clearly recognizable unity." 
India’s father of the nation, Mahatma Gandhi, notes, “I wanted to learn Tamil, only to enable me to study Valluvar’s Thirukkural through his mother tongue itself…. It is a treasure of wisdom…”
;Interesting Facts about the Language:
Classical Hebrew terms like tuki and ahalat are close to the Tamil words tokai and akil respectively. Although English words like 'sandalwood' and 'rice' are borrowed from the Greek language, their origin, some claim, is in fact Tamil.
Even the minutest of fractions have a place in ‘Tamil’ language. Some interesting examples include the term immi referred to the fraction of 1/320 x 1/7, one-seventh of this fraction termed as anu, one-eleventh of an anu as mummi and one ninth of a mummi as kuNam. 
;Tamil’s Love for the Language:
The Tamil speaking people in the state of ‘Tamil Nadu’ in India are very passionate about their language, and feel that if Hindi, the national language of India, enters their land, their classical language and ancient culture/tradition would be no more, citing cities like Mumbai, Kolkata, Hyderabad where the native language is rendered nearly auxiliary.
In an address in 1962, former Tamil Nadu Chief Minister, C N Annadurai, made the following statements opposing imposition of Hindi: "It is claimed that Hindi should be common language (in India) because it is spoken by the majority. Why should we then claim the tiger as our national animal instead of the rat which is so much more numerous? Or the peacock as our national bird when the crow is ubiquitous?” 
Annadurai kept up the rhetoric in Parliament, saying, "Since every school in India teaches English, why can't it be our link language? Why do Tamils have to study English for communication with the world and Hindi for communication within India? Do we need a big door for the big dog and a small door for the small dog? I say, let the small dog use the big door too!"
The language issue still evokes strong passions among Tamils and the words of Annadurai are fondly remembered.
;On Why Tamil is a Classical Language:
University of California, Berkeley, holds a ‘Tamil’ Conference annually. Its Chair in Tamil Studies, Prof. George L. Hart, writes, “To qualify as a classical tradition, a language must fit several criteria: it should be ancient, it should be an independent tradition that arose mostly on its own and not as an offshoot of another tradition, and it must have a large and extremely rich body of ancient literature. Unlike the other modern languages of India, Tamil meets each of these requirements. It is extremely old (as old as Latin and older than Arabic); it arose as an entirely independent tradition, with almost no influence from Sanskrit or other languages; and its ancient literature is indescribably vast and rich.”  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.195.13.109 (talk) 07:02, 12 March 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: However:  1) Linguists don't change their views as a result of political declarations by parliaments.  2) Please don't use any of the above as a basis for putting Tamil before Sanskrit on the list.  As has been discussed at extreme length in the archives, the views of scholars would have to change substantially before Tamil could be placed before Sanskrit on the list. AnonMoos (talk) 10:22, 12 March 2011 (UTC)

text: Unfortunately, reputable scholarly sources date the beginning of Tamil literature more like 200 B.C.  Since alphabetic writing was introduced to India through the northwest (Punjab etc.), I really don't know why Tamil would be expected to be the first language to be written. AnonMoos (talk) 22:43, 5 October 2017 (UTC)

text: As discussed extensively in the talk page archives of this article, Brahmin priests of the 500 B.C. to early A.D. period didn't think that writing was important, and were sometimes actively opposed to writing down sacred scriptures, since they were worried it might undermine their oral culture.  Sanskrit doesn't have an alphabet, since it was written with each of the regional alphabets in just about every region of India.  Tamil has an alphabet because it was spoken in one region... AnonMoos (talk) 05:20, 28 January 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  Tamil the only true classical and totally Indian language 

message: Tamil was oldest surviving classical language. Oldest Tamil inscription dated 540 BCE. So Tamil was one of the ancient classical languages of the world.
Other dravidian languages came from Proto-dravidian. But one Language was closer to Proto-dravidian Language. So we can see Tamil was the Proto Dravidian Language.
Tholkappiyam was second Sangam literature. That was also used in third Sangam.
Parun3247 (talk) 08:14, 5 October 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: Unfortunately, reputable scholarly sources date the beginning of Tamil literature more like 200 B.C.  Since alphabetic writing was introduced to India through the northwest (Punjab etc.), I really don't know why Tamil would be expected to be the first language to be written. AnonMoos (talk) 22:43, 5 October 2017 (UTC)
thread_title: 2017

message: Oldest Sanskrit inscription dated  1st Century CE! But Sangam literatures like Purananooru dated 400 BCE! First of all Sanskrit ddon't have own script! Oldest Tamil Brahmi inscription found in porunthal and adhichanallur. Those are older than ashokan Brahmi! Ok we will prove that!   Parun3247 (talk) 14:55, 3 November 2018 (UTC)
replies: text: As discussed extensively in the talk page archives of this article, Brahmin priests of the 500 B.C. to early A.D. period didn't think that writing was important, and were sometimes actively opposed to writing down sacred scriptures, since they were worried it might undermine their oral culture.  Sanskrit doesn't have an alphabet, since it was written with each of the regional alphabets in just about every region of India.  Tamil has an alphabet because it was spoken in one region... AnonMoos (talk) 05:20, 28 January 2019 (UTC)
thread_title: 2018

message: Why is German not listed as a classical language when it is just as old as Celtic and others, even in the formalized sense?  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 108.0.209.200 (talk) 02:56, 6 June 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: Old High German could qualify or come close to qualifying, I guess (not sure what the consensus of scholars is)... AnonMoos (talk) 20:37, 22 July 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Where is German? 

message: :Yep, the list is pretty ridiculous and obviously driven by nationalist POV – everybody wants their language as a classical language on the list. Despite the "Classical" label in "Classical Gaelic", Old Irish fits the idea of classical language much better than "Classical Gaelic"/"Classical Irish" (terms not familiar to me from Celtology), and Classical Mongolian, although not an ancient language, is ignored completely...
:A reasonable method would be to prune the list and require citations for entries: only languages and stages described as "classical" in a reliable source should be admitted. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 00:18, 13 March 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: An anonymous IP has been adding a lot of entries over the past few months.  There may be lax criteria, but there's a lack of single-topic nationalistic tendentious editing of the type which usually creates controversy on this article, so I've been letting them stay in.  See this diff to get some idea of the changes... AnonMoos (talk) 04:06, 13 March 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: If you pay attention to the quite specific criteria at the beginning of the article – it should be ancient, it should be an independent tradition that arose mostly on its own, not as an offshoot of another tradition, and it must have a large and extremely rich body of ancient literature –, Old Saxon definitely does not fit them, as it is almost a fragmentarily attested language (Trümmersprache); apart from the Heliand and Genesis, its monuments are small, consisting of short texts. It is best described as a "small corpus language" (Kleinkorpussprache). Old High German is better attested, but the corpus is still quite limited. Only Old English comes close to the definition, if we are generous. Really, if a language (or language stage) is never really referred to as "Classical [language]" in the first place, it's dubious, as a good rule of thumb. "Classical Hungarian" and "Classical Icelandic" are misleading, and I think these entries are BS, but Early Modern Spanish is sometimes referred to as "Classical Spanish" and associated with a "Golden Age", which makes it an arguable example (even if it is not exactly an ancient language); the same for Early Modern French, though these are so modern it's still a stretch. Not every non-contemporary language (or language stage) with a not entirely insignificant corpus is a classical language, unless you wish to declare pretty much every written and significantly standardised (nor tiny) language current in the 18th/19th century classical, which makes the term pretty meaningless – and, significantly, incompatible with the criteria mentioned in the article itself, which are nowhere near this lax. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 02:39, 17 February 2016 (UTC)
replies: text: The influence of petty nationalism can seen in the separate listing of Old East Slavic, Old Ruthenian, Old Bulgarian, Middle Bulgarian and Old Serbian. These are only slightly differing national standards ("redactions"). Church Slavonic in general, on the other hand, is a reasonable candidate for "classical" status. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 02:48, 17 February 2016 (UTC)
replies: text: That said, I still think the list is of interest; certainly the listed languages can be said to fulfil analogous roles in their respective literary and cultural traditions to that played, for example, by Classical Greek in the Greek, of Classical Arabic in the Arabic, and of Classical Chinese in the Chinese tradition. Still, I don't feel comfortable dubbing them "classical languages". For example, Middle Scots plays an analogous role in the history of Scots too, but would anyone call Middle Scots a classical language? Hardly. And how can English have as many as three classical stages, including two separate medieval classical stages? The Old English corpus isn't all that large, and the Middle English one isn't either. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 21:42, 16 October 2016 (UTC)
replies: text: Probably a lot of them are literary norms rather than true classical languages. (For example, many Old English scribes who did not speak a West Saxon dialect nevertheless attempted to write in the West Saxon literary norm, which could be considered the quasi-"standard" form of Old English, or the closest thing to a standard which existed at that time.)  Maybe if we had a Literary norm article, many could be moved over there...? -- AnonMoos (talk) 01:37, 19 October 2016 (UTC)
replies: text: I think that to some extent this kind of languages do fulfil a role that could be called classical – Middle Scots is a "flowering" period following the formative Early Scots period and preceding the increasingly English-influenced Modern Scots period, and it is now looked towards as exemplary within the Scots tradition, so you could speak of "Classical Scots". However, it fits neither of the criteria set out by Hart, and neither do "Classical" Icelandic or "Classical" Catalan. I don't think that "literary norm" quite conveys the intended concept – Old Icelandic, Old Catalan, Old/Middle English and Middle Scots aren't particularly uniform at all (unlike Old Irish, for example, at least dialectally, though not so much in spelling). However, regrettably, I can't come up with anything better, either. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 01:09, 20 October 2016 (UTC)
replies: text: Old Icelandic was a variant of Old Norse, and could be considered plenty classical as the language of the sagas.  "Literary norm" as linguists use it doesn't really mean rigid standardization in the sense of the modern French educational system, but rather a particular dialectal form (or inter-dialectal koine) which attracts speakers of other dialects when writing.  There's a lot of dialectal variation in the attested Old English literary corpus, but nevertheless, during a certain period "West Saxon had become a well-established literary dialect, and was used as something of a standard language" (A Campbell's "Old English Grammar", 1959).  In Middle English, after the early period a form of London-influenced-by-East-Midlands semi-koine gained increasing predominance, etc. etc. AnonMoos (talk) 07:24, 22 October 2016 (UTC)
thread_title: 2014

message: "Literary norm" was a redlink when the discussion above took place, but now it links to Linguistic norm.  It might be a good idea to transfer languages which are not truly classical to that article... AnonMoos (talk) 22:40, 30 October 2020 (UTC)
thread_title: 2020

message: I reverted the move of Kannada from the "Middle Ages" section to "Antiquity". The subject is well-defined, it belongs to the period when literary works were actively produced; languages ordered by the earliest inscriptions are in List of languages by first written accounts. I also removed the reference for its Indian classical status, it belongs to Classical languages of India and of no value here. 178.94.17.196 (talk) 14:32, 18 July 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: Now the same about Malayalam, for 202.79.203.43: The list of languages by their first written account is a separate article, here you mark the period when the language was actively used for literary works. I myself went to Malayalam article and found one literary work that may imply the beginning of literary tradition, since you all don't seem to grasp the goal here. 178.94.135.200 (talk) 12:40, 2 August 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Classical Kannada 

message: Hopefully the sock-puppet attacks on this article will now cease, since the sockpuppeteer was found to be running about 50 Wikipedia accounts!.  I've removed my perfunctory discussions (such as they were) with sockpuppet entities from this article talk page since they don't serve any real purpose now... AnonMoos (talk) 12:33, 18 February 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  Sockpuppetry attack on this article

message: As you see ,Old persian has not been used in this article. aramic has been used incorrectly instead of old persian . in ancient Iran we had 2 persian empires . Achaemenid (1'st persian empire) and Sasanid (2'd persian empire). their official language was old persian (Achaemenid) and middle persian (Sasanid) in order .So I corrected this mistake . --10:51, 21 October 2020 Amins69
:In the Achaemenid empire, Old Persian was used as the language of certain royal inscriptions (the longest and most famous being the Behistun inscription), but Aramaic seems to have been used much more as a language of practical administration for the empire, especially in the areas west of Persia proper.  AnonMoos (talk) 21:18, 21 October 2020 (UTC)
thread_title: Old Persian

message: To all the users, still the date the article is lacked two languages (Tamil and Persian) in classical studies section, I updated this. So please don't change the real content. Ram Dhaneesh (talk) 15:00, 15 September 2021 (UTC)
replies: text: Unfortunately for you, you're confessing to vandalism, since you tampered with a quotation to make Edward Sapir say something which he in fact did NOT say in his 1921 book.  I really don't understand what the purpose such quote falsification is thought by anybody to serve. AnonMoos (talk) 08:05, 16 September 2021 (UTC)
replies: text: P.S. As has been discussed before, Tamil is an "internally" classical language (possessing a long glorious tradition of literature, etc), but is simply not an "externally" classical language (influencing a wide range of other languages over a wide range of time, as was the case with Latin, Greek, Arabic, Sanskrit, or Chinese).  With respect to Persian, it's certainly true that in many medieval Muslim realms it was necessary for a gentleman to know Persian to be considered to be fully educated, but Persian was very much second behind Arabic, and was mainly learned in order to read poetry.  There are only a relatively few languages which have been heavily influenced by Persian... AnonMoos (talk) 04:22, 18 September 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  Fixed Typo 

message: is sanskrit older than tamil 2409:4072:6E93:7D9B:980F:97A5:8816:BD4C (talk) 03:46, 16 January 2022 (UTC)
replies: text: The question is almost meaningless in that form.  However, if you ask "Are the earliest-surving Sanskrit texts older than the earliest-surviving Tamil texts?" and/or "Was there an attested standard literary form of Sanskrit before there was an attested standard literary form of Tamil?", then the short answer is "Yes"... AnonMoos (talk) 06:55, 17 January 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  tamil language 

message: The citation literally says "There are just five languages that have had an overwhelming significance as carriers of culture. They are classical Chinese, Sanskrit, Persian, Greek, and Latin." but above it is written "Edward Sapir in his book Language would extend the list to include Chinese, Arabic, and Sanskrit:"
Why is Arabic included even it isn't mentioned in Edward Sapir's citation? Why is Persian not mentioned although it is mentioned in Sapir's citation?  -- Preceding unsigned comment added by 149.233.35.210 (talk) 11:11, 30 January 2022 (UTC)
replies: text: It was pure vandalism, of course (though I'm having difficulty figuring out when it was added -- the protection template confused things for the usual page watchers, I guess).  For some reason the Sapir quote is a magnet for vandalistic quote falsifiers.  The text of Sapir's book is freely available on-line, by the way... AnonMoos (talk) 16:34, 29 March 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  Persian