Languages

(Harappan Script -Image from the Internet)

Languages, Art, Architecture,Culture, History has always excited me. Call me boring or what you will I might be among the only few people of my generation who love visiting a museum and finding co-relation between similar sounding words across different languages.

My brother and I love watching this animated manga series on TV. Earlier they used to show the dubbed version, but this season being the last, they are showing it in Japanese with English sub-titles. Apart from enjoying the show, I also try to guess the Japanese words, one word I picked up is Jeev - it seems to mean free. In Hindi, a Jeev would be a living thing. Last night was really hillarious for my brother and me, as the show was aired in Japanese without the sub-titles. Neither of us know Japanese and love this show so had to depend entirely on the scenes to guess the story. The situation was comic as well as we made our own dialogues on the basis of the speech and tone.

I had a discussion with a friend today who is trying to learn Hindi and it got me thinking about the origin of languages. We have such a vast type of languages, from those based on pictorial symbols like Chinese and Japanese to those written from Right to Left like Arabic and Urdu to those written from Left to Right like English and Hindi.

A big mystery regarding languages that I have seen is the Indus Valley Script. I remember in school, while teaching the subject, our history teacher gave us the script and asked us to decipher the script. The script had not been decoded that time and she told us - "You never know, maybe you'll discover the answer."
It was fun and exciting, and recently when the script was decoded, it was really an amazing feeling watching the news.

I believe they are in the process of decoding every text and scripture that they have found from that era now. Hope to read what was it that was engraved on the things from that time in a short period of time.