Growing English

When people hear or read the word “Aryan”, they probably think about Nazism, a fascist ideology that defends the supremacism of a “superior German race”, which led to the torture, dehumanization, and death of Europe’s Jewish, Romani and other racialized people, LGBTQ+, and people with disabilities.

 

Aryan (ārya आर्य) is a Classical Sanskrit term which means “one who does noble deeds; a noble one” (WIKIPEDIA, 2020) it was also used to refer to the Indo-European language branch spoken in Iran and India (ALGEO, 2009, p. 51). However, in XIX, some Philologists referred to the Indo-European Family as “Aryan”. In 1861, Max Muller, a German Scholar of Comparative language, religion, and mythology, was the first writer to mention the existence of an “Aryan Race” (DAVID and NICHOLLS, 2016, p. 96).  In 1926, Gordon Childe, Australian Archeologist, specialist in European Prehistory, published a book called The Aryans, which was full of archeological and linguistic arguments in an attempt to establish the supposed homeland of the Indo-European Family.

 

According to Colin Refrew, a British Archeologist and Paleologist, the discussion about a homeland it wasn't purely academic, once the “German Scholars preferred and Indo-European homeland in Northern Europe”. The “Aryan race” Theory then became more and more popular in Germany. While some authors opposed to it, other writers argued that the Aryans were a biologically superior group of humans, based on it's Nordic Traces, while the Semitic were considered an “inferior race”. Muller was deeply saddened that his studies were used to justify and reinforce a false ethnic superiority based on nordic traces. In 1888, he wrote that "an ethnologist who speaks of the Aryan race, Aryan blood, Aryan eyes and hair, is as great a sinner as a linguist who speaks of a dolichocephalic dictionary, or a brachycephalic grammar".

 

Since this term was appropriated by the Nazis, Linguists substituted “Aryan” to “Indo-European”, a term without a racist connotation, that refers “only to the culture of a group of people who lived in a relatively small area in early times and who spoke a more or less unified language out of which many languages have developed over thousands of years.” (ALGEO, 2009, p. 52). The Academic words, must always be free of prejudice and a sense of superiority, in language and race.

"Indo-European is a matter of culture, not of genes."
— John Algeo 

FOR FURTHER READING

CHILDE, VERE GORDON. The Aryans: A Study of Indo-European Origins. London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & CO,. LTD, 1926. 264 p. Disponível em: http://ignca.gov.in/Asi_data/21510.pdf. Acesso em: 12 out. 2020.

Aryan. Wikipedia contributors. 2020, October 15). In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Disponível em: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Aryan&oldid=983612531. Acesso em: 17 out. 2020.

ALGEO, John. The Backgrounds of English. In: THE ORIGINS and Development of the English Language. 6. ed. Boston: Wadsworth CENGAGE Learning, 2009. cap. 4, p. 49-77. ISBN 978-1-4282-3145-0.

John R. Davis & Angus Nicholls (2016) Friedrich Max Müller: The Career and Intellectual Trajectory of a German Philologist in Victorian Britain, Publications of the English Goethe Society, 85:2-3, 67-97, DOI: 10.1080/09593683.2016.1224493. 

ARYAN. In: ADVAMEG, Inc. (org.). World Culture Encyclopedia. [S. l.]: Advameg, Inc, 2010. Disponível em: https://www.everyculture.com/South-Asia/Aryan.html. Acesso em: 16 out. 2020.

William Jones (18 September 1745 - 27 April 1794) was a British orientalist and became a judge in India. He realized that India has a lot to offer in the meanings of sciences and arts, and certainly has benefited from it. He translated the Laws of Manu (Manumriti) to English and then, many other works of literature; was the first western to study and write a paper on Indian Classical Music, etc. There's no doubt that he was a man of a brilliant mind considering all those conquests. But he is most acknowledged by proposing that  Sanskrit, classical Greek, and Latin shared a language root in common. Lately, this root was named "Proto-Indo-European". The discovery popularized the comparative linguistics (If you want to know what is comparative linguistics, click here), which led to new theories, techniques, and studies of the Proto-Indo-European languages. 

source: Navrang India

Thanks to his initiative, today we have the Kurgan hypothesis, that proposes that the Proto-Indo-European lived in the Pontic-Caspian steppe of Eastern Europe in the 4th millennium BC. Their language probably split into different languages around 3.500 BC, when they expanded from their original settlement into different parts of Europe and Asia (Jana, 2014). However, in the 20th century, historical linguists discovered the Anatolian and Tocharian languages, which led to a change in some linguistics features and to the acceptance of the Laryngeal Theory (laryngeal consonants that later disappeared from all Indo-European languages except the Anatolian). There are many other possible relationships, but they remain controversial. This lack of pieces of the puzzle persists because there are no written records of Proto-Indo-European, that is the reason why the scientists use methods as reconstruction, comparative, and works with some hypothesis. 

Here is the main division of Indo-European languages (Anthony, 2007):

• 1. Anatolian (4200 BC, Asia Menor, extinct)
• 2. Tocharian (3700 BC, China, extinct). 
• 3. Germanic (3300 BC, earliest runic inscriptions from around the 2nd century AD, earliest coherent texts - as the translation of the Bible into gothic by Wulfila). Old English manuscript tradition from about the 8th century AD. Many contributions).
• 4. Italic (including Latin and the romances languages, 3000 BC)
• 5. Celtic (3000 BC)
• 6. Armenian (2800 BC)
• 7. Balto-Slavic (2800 BC)
• 8. Hellenic (2500 BC)
• 9. Indo-Iranian (2200 BC)
• 10. Albanian (attested from the 14th century AD).

There are many other Indo-European languages, but they are all extinct and the knowledge that we already have is limited due to the lack of information and contributions. 

The information above was taken from:

PROTO-INDO-EUROPEAN. In: CHAMONIKOLASOVÁ, Jana. A Concise History of English. Masarykova Univerzita: [s. n.], 2014. cap. 2, p. 7-15. ISBN 978-80-210-7480-4. Disponível em: https://digilib.phil.muni.cz/data/handle/11222.digilib/131572/monography.pdf. Acesso em: 18 set. 2020.

"Sir William Jones who made the ancient language Sanskrit known world over – British India", Navrangin India, (September 18, 2020).

"Biography of Sir William Jones". Kamat’s Potpourri - The History, Mystery and Diversity of India, (September 18, 2020).

"Sir William Jones". 1911 Encyclopedia, (September 18, 2020).