Some seven years ago when I wrote a blog post (and also an ezine article)on the Sumerian language, describing why I thought that it was not a linguistic isolate but belonged to the Austric group of languages, some linguistic historians scoffed at the suggestion. It seems they were so seeped in existing theories that they did not want to open their mind to new thoughts as is common in many areas of knowledge since ancient times. The old post is here
Since this post several new studies have emerged that have
described the close similarities between Sumerian and Archaic Tamil. The modern
form of that language is still spoken by millions in southern India and its
archaic version is well documented. The Similarities between Sumerian and
Archaic Tamil are not just ephemeral but clear. Not just words are similar but
entire sentences and one would have to be blind not to see that both
languages belong to a common group. There are several references and
discussions on it on the net now that an interested reader can find for example,
http://www.araichchi.com/Sumeria/Sumeria_Linguistics.html
An
older study by Muttarayan has provided
hundreds of lexical correspondences and other linguistic data supporting the
family relationship between Sumerian and Dravidian languages.(Muttarayan, K. L., J. Tamil Stud., 1975, 7, 41–61.)Recently this author has discovered that there are several older studies comparing Tamil and Sumerian that have been ignored by the main stream scholars. There is a need now for a rigorous compilation of all these older works into a comprehensive comparison.
Tamil, especially Archaic Tamil although classified in a different Dravid group is either a more developed subset or has a close relationship with the Austric/Australoid group of languages as different from the Indo-European group.. Although upon further reflection some of the statements of the original article need revision however its central assertion that Sumerian is not an isolated language but rather belongs to the Austric group of languages appears to be verified. it may be pointed out that blog posts are not written as carefully as scholarly articles but that does not mean that none of them contain any valuable information. They can serve to articulate an idea that may later be pursued with the thoroughness and referencing required for a peer reviewed journal article.
Thus the original deduction of this author stands vindicated that ancient Sumerian was not an isolated language but rather belonged to the Austric group of languages.This language has been identified as Archaic Tamil
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