I’m moving my posts from Reddit to Lemmy before delete them.
This post is from 2021-03-09.
this post was submitted on 16 Jul 2023
582 points (97.5% liked)
Memes
45546 readers
1214 users here now
Rules:
- Be civil and nice.
- Try not to excessively repost, as a rule of thumb, wait at least 2 months to do it if you have to.
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Years ago I studied Malayalam while living in India (Malayalam is the language of Kerala state on the southernmost tip of the country). When I learned the grammar I was surprised to see that it had nominative, dative and accusative cases just like German, which was convenient since I'd studied German in high school. Turns out the grammar had actually been sort of imposed on Malayalam centuries ago by a wandering German monk.
couldn't stop laughing. could I have a source please?
Hermann Gundert. I was a bit off: he was a missionary rather than a monk, and it was a century and a half ago rather than "centuries ago". His book on Malayalam grammar was called Malayalabhaasha Vyakaranam. My Malayalam tutor at the time told me that Gundert learned the language in one week, which seems a bit unlikely.