http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IMWostFwwJc

(skip the commercials in the beginning story begins around 1:39. Notice the boy using the word nama.

So Namaste means “(I) bow (namaH) asti (to you)”

नमः अस्ति = नमस्ते

It also means “I salute you” or “I offer my respects to you”

Other variations are “Namo” means “Salutation”

BTW I am no sanskrit scholar. They tried to teach it for a few years in the Indian school I went to but I can confidently say they could name one kid in a class of 70 students speak retain more than 10 words. I Can hardly speak more than 2 or 3 sentences but sanskrit words are very familiar to me because as a Brahmin I am required to chant mantras during important occassions when rituals are performed and sooner or later one can make out rough meanings with the gestures one is expected to make during the rituals.
The word “Namoh” or “Namo” features very commonly whenever I chant it I pour ghee into the sacred fire . Something like “oh lord here I offer you this or that”.
Thats how I know but I could always bullshit about this stuff too. Its a dead language after all.. hehehee

Let me try to extend your experiment above:

SAMA/same > German (zu)sammen, Swedish (till)sammans, etc.
HUM/human > Latin homo
MANN/mind > Latin mens (whence “mental”)
SAKAR/Sugar > German Zucker, French sucre….
MATRU/mother > Latin mater, German Mutter, French mere….
Ditto for PITRU
NAMAH/Name > German Name, French nom, …

Is that NAMAH the Nam- in Namaste, by the way? If so, the -te (deus, dieu…) could be “god”. As in: “in the name of god”….

Since I discovered you blog last week. I have been finding a new gem everyday. At times it feels like you have been wandering the streets and alleys in my brain and presenting topics that I ponder over too. And you do such a wonder job of putting them to words and presenting them.
For some time I have been collecting english words of indian origin and sometimes they have a sanskrit or tamil connection and other times they have the colonial connection. Sometimes i I only have an intuition that they could be connected but I don’t know any linguist or scholar who can confirm my intuition. So here is a initial list :

Language Word English
——— —— ———-
Sanskrit Sama Same
Sanskrit OM (HUM) Human ( Cosmic syllable or sound of universe
Sanskrit/Hindi Manav Man
Hindi Aadmi Man (but by way of Adam- first man)
Hindi Mann Mind
Hindi / Tamil Sakar /Sakarai Sugar
Sanskrit Matru Mother (in most language mother starts with ma)
Sanskrit Pitru F(ph)ather (by way of patter)
Sanskrit Namah (self) Name

There are lot more to list here but as a general rule I find that words related to spirit or cosmos or inner self or human existence or relationship to humans and nature tend to have a sanskrit origin probably denoting that the origins of where we came from and our purpose are hidden in the words that were used to describe our existence in relation to the universe and these words probably found their way into other indo-european languages as well.

Incidentally, what was the name of that dinosaur?

The Daily News, although beginning with venomous, a little further down in their article fell off the wagon and wrote “in poisonous reptiles such as a Komodo dragon.”

And according to DB-Techo.com, “scientists have discovered that a type of dinosaur from more than 125 million years ago may have used poisonous venom to kill its prey.”

Poisonous venom. In the words of Colonel Jessup, “Is there another kind?”

Thank You!

Monique from Québec

But it makes sense: Poison comes from Latin poito (potion), via potare (drink).

Ironically, the spelling (ie written language) has changed less than the spoken, though. You see that by looking at the weird English spelling of, say:
- thought
- brought
- might, etc

In each case, the ‘gh’ is now silent but reminds you that it came from the German/Dutch (ie, germanic)
- (ge)-dacht
- (ge)-bracht
- macht.

I’m delighted to have you, clearly an expert on these matters, here on the HB.

If you have looked into these three ways of tracking tribal movement and are able to analyze them, we’d love to know. Don’t bust a gut, but do let us know if you have something to share.

(As with almost all of you, I don’t know your walk of life. You may be a published academic on the subject.)

Replying to 2). The Finno-Urgric speaking group seem to have migrated to Europe well before the Indo-Europeans and were pushed into these pockets in the Baltic states and Hungary by Indo-European languages. In the history of the Finno-Ugric group, it is assumed the language came to Europe from parts of China 12 to 14,000 years ago. The Indo-Europeans arrived around 6 or 7,000 years ago, depending on which theory you believe but definitely after the Finno-Ugric, so Hungary should be shown as grey in this map of 500 AD. I think 3) applies in this case.

Of course, the Basque language (and its dialects) is the other European language which is not part of the Indo-European group, but the Basque area is shown correctly in grey on the map.

The more you research this, the more conflicts in theories you find, so this comment has skipped over a lot of details. There are 3 ways of tracking the historical movement of tribes. You can track them by archaeology, historical linguistics and genetics. The results from each of these 3 branches do not always agree and there are many conflicting theories.

Off topic, but related: If you eat a snake and you die, the snake was POISONOUS. If the snake bites you and you die, it was VENOMOUS. (I just, once again, read “poisonous snake” in an article, in which case I always get confused as to what may have been the intended meaning.)

There’s probably another, discrete, dynamic at work that makes English so easy. the great simplification of late-middle English being one possibility.

There are three possibilities:

1) The mapmaker simplified. Then again, he did leave the Basque lands (also non-Indo-European) out, so that seems unlikely.

2) The Finno-Ugric peoples were NOT YET in what we call Hungary in 500AD. Do you happen to know, John?

3) The map-maker made a mistake.