Knowra William Jones William Jones William Jones (1746–1794) was a British judge and philologist in colonial India. His 1786 address argued that Sanskrit, Greek, and Latin shared a common source, helping establish comparative Indo-European linguistics.
Asiatic Society : A scholarly society founded in Calcutta in 1784 to study Asian history, languages, and cultures. Jones founded the society and delivered his influential language address there.
Comparative linguistics : The study of languages through systematic comparison to establish historical relationships. Jones’s comparison of Sanskrit, Greek, and Latin became a landmark in this method.
Indo-European studies : The scholarly study of the languages, peoples, and cultures associated with the Indo-European language family. Jones’s observation became a starting point for sustained study of the family’s origins.
William Jones (Orientalist) : A British orientalist and judge in India, distinct from other historical figures named William Jones. The name is shared; this page concerns the philologist who made the 1786 language comparison.
Calcutta : A city in eastern India, now officially called Kolkata. Jones lived and worked in Calcutta while serving as a judge and scholar.
Proto-Indo-European language : The reconstructed ancestor of the Indo-European language family, inferred through comparison of its descendants. Jones proposed the lost common source that later scholars reconstructed as Proto-Indo-European.
Franz Bopp : A German linguist who developed comparative grammar of Indo-European languages in the nineteenth century. Bopp turned the broad relationship Jones noted into detailed grammatical comparison.
Noah Webster : An American lexicographer and spelling reformer, best known for his dictionary of American English. Webster shaped English usage, while Jones investigated relationships among languages.
Supreme Court of Judicature at Fort William : The British colonial court established in Calcutta in 1774. Jones was appointed a judge on this court, bringing him to India.
Cognate : A word in one language that descends from the same ancestral word as a word in another language. Related vocabulary supplied evidence for the common ancestry Jones proposed.
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