How come Hindi, Urdu, and Persian are Indo-European languages but Arabic isn't?

[Swarthy_Syndicate]

This is something that's always caught my attention. Turkish I understand is completely different because the origin of the Turks can be traced all the way back to the Mongols. I can see the connection with Persian but Hindustani (Urdu and Hindi) just completely throws me off. I see way more similarities between Arabic and European languages than I can with Hindi/Urdu. Arabs as an ethno-linguistic group also developed much closer to Europeans than South Asians did. How come you have to cross a huge swath of the Middle East before the Indo-European connection continues?

For example, I find South Asians have much harsher accents in English compared to Arabs, even though they were historically colonized by the British Empire who spoke English while almost no Arab nation has been truly colonized by Anglos.

Another point would be the fact that the sounds in Arabic sound less "foreign" compared to the sounds in Hindustani. Even when native speakers speak their own Hindi/Urdu it's almost like they have an accent within their own language that they're speaking. Lots of forced sounds and pronunciations that sound completely alien to other Indo-European speakers. Arabic can be pretty guttural but it sounds far less alien compared to Hindustani. Same with Persian.

So, is the connection mostly a fairy tale or is there something I'm missing here? Am I not looking deep enough? I do not in any way see how Hindu/Urdu are more Indo-European than Arabic. Both grammatically and phonetically.

[Zoro]

This is something that's always caught my attention. Turkish I understand is completely different because the origin of the Turks can be traced all the way back to the Mongols. I can see the connection with Persian but Hindustani (Urdu and Hindi) just completely throws me off. I see way more similarities between Arabic and European languages than I can with Hindi/Urdu. Arabs as an ethno-linguistic group also developed much closer to Europeans than South Asians did. How come you have to cross a huge swath of the Middle East before the Indo-European connection continues?

For example, I find South Asians have much harsher accents in English compared to Arabs, even though they were historically colonized by the British Empire who spoke English while almost no Arab nation has been truly colonized by Anglos.

Another point would be the fact that the sounds in Arabic sound less "foreign" compared to the sounds in Hindustani. Even when native speakers speak their own Hindi/Urdu it's almost like they have an accent within their own language that they're speaking. Lots of forced sounds and pronunciations that sound completely alien to other Indo-European speakers. Arabic can be pretty guttural but it sounds far less alien compared to Hindustani. Same with Persian.

So, is the connection mostly a fairy tale or is there something I'm missing here? Am I not looking deep enough? I do not in any way see how Hindu/Urdu are more Indo-European than Arabic. Both grammatically and phonetically.

At first I wasn't about to take the time to answer your question it sounded a little trollish but just in case you really don't know I'm posting this. How a language sounds is not a criteria of whether a language is Indo-European or not.

Let's use Kurdish as a an example of an Indo-European language since Kurdistan borders Arab lands. So if any Indo-European language would be closest to Arabic you would expect Kurdish to be the one.

You can go to www.elinguistics.net to compare any 2 languages of the world.


First let's compare Kurdish with ARABIC to see how related they are. Here we see that the score is 91 meaning unrelated. :

[IMG][/IMG]
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Next, let's compare Kurdish with one of the most geographically eastern Indo-European languages, SANSKRIT. Here we see the score is 65 meaning remotely related meaning even Kurdish (Indo-European) is not related to a neighboring Afro-Asiatic language, Arabic but rather related another geographically distant Indo-European language Sanskrit.

[IMG][/IMG]
[IMG][/IMG]


Next Kurdish to Urdu. Score is 59 meaning related.

[IMG][/IMG]
[IMG][/IMG]

[Tauromachos]

Because Persians and Indians are Indoeuropean folks.

Indoeuropean people lived in various places all over Europe and West till South Asia.


North Indians even score some Steppe ancestry Yamnaya and have R1a among their haplos but
the Indian R1a is a clade of its own different from the European ones.

[Swarthy_Syndicate]

Because Persians and Indians are Indoeuropean folks.

Indoeuropean people lived in various places all over Europe and West till South Asia.


North Indians even score some Steppe ancestry Yamnaya and have R1a among their haplos but
the Indian R1a is a clade of its own different from the European ones.

Aren't Arabs also Indo-European folks? They are racially Caucasian (like all Semites) and are genetically more similar to Europeans than they are to Africans.

[Dirdepo]

Aren't Arabs also Indo-European folks? They are racially Caucasian (like all Semites) and are genetically more similar to Europeans than they are to Africans.

No, your statement is false.

[Swarthy_Syndicate]

No, your statement is false.

How is it false man... there is no "Semitic" race. They have certain features which are peculiar to that region no doubt but their skulls are identical to that of Europeans and most South Asians. Likewise Jews (also a Semitic people) are racially Caucasoid, not Negroid or Mongoloid.

Curly hair isn't an excuse either. It tends to be curly in the Mediterranean sense, not nappy in the African Negroid sense. So if we associate "Indo-European" with "Caucasoid", then Arabs certainly fall into that category do they not.

[Lorca]

Because they belong to two entirely separate language families...

Arabic is descended from Proto-Semitic, which itself descends from the Proto-Afro-Asiatic language. The descendants of which include Ancient Egyptian, Berber, Semitic, Cushitic, and several other language families.

Hindi & Urdu are Indo-Aryan languages. Persian is an Iranian language. All of these languages descend from Proto-Indo-Iranian which in turn descends from Proto-Indo-European.

How a language sounds has virtually nothing to do with its typology.

[rohan]

It sounds like a bit trollish. Like everyone said indo Aryan and Iranian are from indo European language family and arabic is afro Asiatic and why are you bringing in accents here. Just look at Europe before you speak about that you find a different accent from a place to place. There are many accents just in London. Looks ,genes,accents have nothing to do with language.

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[PanCytryna]

As others have said, it's not matter of what accents do people have when speaking English, but from what proto-languages (very archaic form of languages, that usually weren't attested and are reconstructed) do they descend. This is often visible in grammar; compare Indo European affixation +adding of sounds to the words to change their form) and ablaut (changing one vowel sound to another), with Semitic system, where forms are changed by replacing all the vowels with other ones. So, for example, كتاب (kitāb), meaning book has plural كتب (kutub), while borrowed into Urdu, it's plural is کتابیں (kitābẽ). Also, it's worthy to look into related basic words, such as English "mother", Latin "mātēr", Persian "مادر" (mādar) and completely unrelated Arabic أم (umm). Hope I helped.

[PanCytryna]

As others have said, it's not matter of what accents do people have when speaking English, but from what proto-languages (very archaic form of languages, that usually weren't attested and are reconstructed) do they descend. This is often visible in grammar; compare Indo European affixation +adding of sounds to the words to change their form) and ablaut (changing one vowel sound to another), with Semitic system, where forms are changed by replacing all the vowels with other ones. So, for example, كتاب (kitāb), meaning book has plural كتب (kutub), while borrowed into Urdu, it's plural is کتابیں (kitābẽ). Also, it's worthy to look into related basic words, such as English "mother", Latin "mātēr", Persian "مادر" (mādar) and completely unrelated Arabic أم (umm). Hope I helped.