"There may be instances in world history where a dominant or highly influential elite who were few in number were nonetheless able to impose their language on a subject population. (I suspect that could have happened where the conquered population was also small in number and ravaged by war, disease, and the like. But then, would they have survived at all?). North India, Pakistan and Afghanistan 3500 years ago have been suggested as examples of such a scenario, with a relatively small number of Aryan warriors supposedly being able to impose Indic languages upon the native population. In light of the above discussion, I find this to be an unconvincing explanation of how IE languages entered the subcontinent. The fact that a significant portion of the population in these countries possesses blue eyes, fair skin, and brown or even blond hair (where the environment makes these traits which are more suited to northern latitudes disadvantageous from the standpoint of survival) would seem to indicate that sizeable numbers if IE speakers actually did intrude upon the subcontinent and have left not only their linguistic but their genetic imprint upon it as well."
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
Academics from the United StatesPeople from OhioLinguists from the United StatesPhilologistsSinologists
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
Victor H. Mair
8 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by Victor H. Mair ā
Related Quotes
"The same binome is printed in as many as half-a-dozen or more different combinations of characters that have been useā¦"
"As a working Sinologist, each time I look up a word in my Webster's or Kenkyusha's I experience a sharp pang of depriā¦"
"On July 4 1983, I met with officials of the Committee for the Reform of the Written Language in Peking. They informedā¦"
"If only there were a lexicographer of Liang Shih-ch'iu's ability who also had the perspicuity to arrange his dictionaā¦"
"There is a widespread public misperception, particularly among the New Age sector, that the Chinese word for ācrisisāā¦"
"Victor has always cast his nets widely, and he could routinely amaze us with observations far afield from the Chineseā¦"
"Mair claims to be interested, for a variety of noble reasons, in āthe search for the Indo-Europeans and their homelanā¦"
"Scientific education is catholic; it embraces the whole field of human learning. No student can master all knowledge ā¦"
"Honest investigation is but the application of common sense to the solution of the unknown. Science does not wait on ā¦"
"Years of drought and famine come and years of flood and famine come, and the climate is not changed with dance, libatā¦"