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When did Sir William Jones propose that Sanskrit, Greek, and Latin shared a common source?
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Indo-European languages
Approximate locations of Indo-European languages in contemporary Eurasia.
In 1786, the British orientalist Sir William Jones proposed that Sanskrit, Greek, and Latin shared a common source. He put forth this hypothesis during his presidential discourse to the Asiatic Society of Bengal, suggesting that these languages likely descended from a single, ancestral language that no longer existed. This observation provided a foundational impetus for the development of comparative linguistics in the 19th century.12