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Sanskritisation is the process of introducing features from Sanskrit, such as vocabulary and grammar, into other languages. It is sometimes associated with the "Hinduisation" of a linguistic community, or less commonly, with introducing a more upper-caste status into a community. Many languages throughout South Asia and Southeast Asia were greatly influenced by Sanskrit (or its descendant languages, the Prakrits and modern-day Indo-Aryan languages) historically.

Sanskritisation often stands in opposition to the Persianisation or Englishisation of a language within South Asia, as occurs with the Hindustani language, which in its Sanskritised, Persianised, and English-influenced registers becomes Hindi, Urdu, and Hinglish/Urdish respectively. Support for Sanskritisation in South Asia runs highest among Hindu nationalists.

Sanskritization of the names of people and places is also commonplace in India.

History

Ancient era

Modern era

During the medieval era, the Indian languages had taken in a lot of Perso-Arabic influences as a result of Muslim invasions, particularly in the northwestern subcontinent; colonial-era education policies, religious nationalism, and the influence of some of the more Sanskritised Indian languages played a role in Hindus and Muslims increasingly separating in terms of their linguistic influences, with Hindus tending towards the usage of Sanskrit words and the Sanskrit-associated Devanagari script for writing Hindi.

Since the 1947 Partition of India, the Indian government, which at one point considered making Sanskrit the national language, instead has sought to further Sanskritise Hindi, considering it to be easier for Indians to learn, and as a way of distancing Hindi from the Urdu spoken in the newly formed country of Pakistan (though Urdu continues to have official status in several Indian states, such as Uttar Pradesh). Sanskrit has been used to form new words to describe modern concepts and technologies in several South Asian languages by forming calques based on English words. In addition, Sanskrit words that have been nativised into other languages have been mixed with words from other language families, such as the Dravidian languages, to form new words.

Cultural debates have emerged over how much Sanskrit should appear in Hindi and how acceptable Persian and English influences should be, with Hindu nationalists favouring Sanskritised Hindi, opposing Urdu in part because it is a Muslim-associated language, and some boycotting the Hindi-language Bollywood film industry for featuring too much Urdu and English in its movies.

De-Sanskritisation

The de-Sanskritisation of Tamil started during the 1950s. These attempts at "de-sanskritization" came to see the language having altered to remove a lot of the Sanskrit borrowing.

See also

• Sanskrit revival
• Sanskritism
• Prestige (sociolinguistics)
  • Linguistic purism

References

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• Sanskrit
• Linguistic influence