Knowing the history of the Gujarati language can help me learn the language because by learning where the language originated I can make connections to the culture and context associated with the language.
For example, I am aware that Gujarati is an Indo-Aryan language evolved from Sanskrit. Therefore, I can understand the ties associated with the language and the demographics of the language, because from Sanskrit, Hindi was also developed.
Gujarati like many other Indian languages revolve closely around family, food, and Indian culture. This is extremely important to know, because unlike the English language, there are formalities in Gujarati that must be used throughout the language. Consequently, one would refer to his dad differently than he would refer to his peer.
Additionally, India was ruled for many a century by Persian-speaking Muslims. As a consequence Indian languages were changed greatly, with the large scale entry of Persian and its many Arabic loans into the Gujarati lexicon. One fundamental adoption was Persian's conjunction "that", ke. Also, while tatsam or Sanskrit is etymologically continuous to Gujarati, it is essentially of a differing grammar (or language), and that in comparison while Perso-Arabic is etymologically foreign, it has been in certain instances and to varying degrees grammatically indigenized
This is just a small example of why knowing the history and background of my language is terribly important.
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