The Source Book On Sikhism

Teutonic and Romance Languages

The evolution of Punjabi from the original Aryan speech, of which Sanskrit is the best representative extant, has followed exactly the same rules of transformation, as governed the evolution of modern Teutonic and Roman languages from the parent speech. The main Teutonic languages are German, Dutch, Danish, Norwegian, Swedish and English and owe their birth to a common source. The family of Romance languages includes French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese and Romanian. They are more or less direct descendants of Latin. Both old Teutonic and Latin, along with Slavonic, Armenian and Sanskrit, are believed to have originated from a common parent speech, called by German scholars, the Ursprache.