Semitic languages

[S.A.M.]

In response to a link I posted:

For the population of the eastern Mediterranean, and particularly we have evidence from the northeastern part, there were about one-third Semitic speaking, one-third Hurrian speaking [people from east central Turkey], and one-third Indo-European. That was the population of the eastern Mediterranean in the Late Bronze and early Iron Ages.http://www.mytown.ca/ev.php?URL_ID=118446&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC&URL_SECTION=201

I got this response from CheskiChips
Theologically they should all be semitic languages ANYWAYS, since they all came from Shem. Non-semitic languages did exist, and were derivative of Ham and were seen in Sumer, AND Bavyl. These languages were later eliminated by the presence of Persian influence which was also of Shem. The inconsistency of Semitic languages is more than likely the integration of ham and shem rather than the degradation of shem. As Hebrew today (as a language) still contains all of the letters.

Perhaps Fraggle could decode this for me?

[mathman]

I am not Fraggle, but it seems CheskiChips is using the bible to do lingusitics. It is like Intelligent Design to do science. I feel it has the same validity.

[Gustav]

ja
it is a dead giveaway when one prefaces a post with "theologically speaking",

[Fraggle Rocker]

. . . . the presence of Persian influence which was also of Shem. . . .This is a dead giveaway too. Whoever wrote this knows nothing of anthropology or linguistics. The Persians are not Semites ("sons of Shem"), they are an Indo-European people. Persian is not a Semitic language, it is Indo-Iranian. You'll recognize that by comparing the numerals to Sanskrit, or perhaps your own native language if it's Indic and not Dravidian. (You probably speak Hindi anyway.)

Farsi: yek, doe, se, char, panj, shish, haft, hasht, noh, dah.

Hindi: ek, do, teen, chaar, pannch, chhah, saat, aath, nao, das.

Sanskrit: eka, dva, tri, catvaras, panca, sat, shapta, ashta, nava, dasha. (Sorryt, I have no idea how bad these transliterations are that I picked at random.)

In biblical mythology, Shem and Ham were two sons of Noah who helped repopulate the world after the flood. Shem's line gave rise to the tribes we now call "Semitic," Elam (the Elamites), Asshur (the Assyrians), Aram (the Aramaeans), Arpachshad (the ancestor of Abraham and therefore of the Chaldeans and their descendants the Hebrews) and Lud (the Lydians). Ham's line gave rise to the enemies of the Hebrews: Canaan (the Canaanites), Mizraim (the Egyptians), Cush (the Ethiopians) and Phut (the Libyans). (I don't know whether the Arabs, a relatively new ethnic group, were mentioned in the bible, but they have always been considered a Semitic people.)

20th- and 21st-century linguistics (using massively parallel computing) and anthropology (using DNA analysis) has of course rendered all of this into the bullshit that it is. We know that the Hebrews, Phoenicians, Lebanese, Palestinians and several other ethnic groups who do not comprise a happy family are ALL descended from the Canaanites. In fact it's quite plausible that the original Palestinians were simply the Canaanites who decided not to follow Abraham and become Jewish.

More than 100 years ago linguists found plenty of evidence to combine the Semitic and Hamitic languages into a single family, and now we're pretty comfortable with the hypothesis that the ancient Egyptians, the Coptic and other Cushitic peoples, the Arabs, Assyrians, Palestinians, Jews, and a number of other ethnic groups throughout North Africa and Asia Minor all spoke or speak languages in what we now call the Afro-Asiatic family, of which Semitic is just one branch.

Furthermore, to make the rather large white supremacist faction within fundamentalist Islam even angrier, we cannot say for certain whether the ancestral tribe of these people originated in Asia and then some of them repatriated themselves to Africa, or whether they originated in Africa and followed the Homo sapiens diaspora into Asia. The evidence is sketchy and what little there is can be interpreted either way.

The bible is a valuable source of history but everything in it must be cross-examined carefully because the bullshit is stated with the same conviction and sincerity as the truth. To be fair, the writers of the bible may have had access to more legends than we do, but they didn't have access to most of the scientific evidence we have.

[S.A.M.]

Thanks Fraggle, I had no idea linguistics was such a complex field. :)

[DiamondHearts]

Furthermore, to make the rather large white supremacist faction within fundamentalist Islam even angrier, we cannot say for certain whether the ancestral tribe of these people originated in Asia and then some of them repatriated themselves to Africa, or whether they originated in Africa and followed the Homo sapiens diaspora into Asia. The evidence is sketchy and what little there is can be interpreted either way.


What does that mean?

[DeepThought]

What does that mean?


Oh come now... Pakistanis, for a start, are notorious 'racists' in my experience. Breeding with blacks is a huge taboo in Pakistani culture, for obvious reasons.

I remember reading about a Black British guy who misguidedly traveled to Pakistan to help a female friend, and who was then thrown in a cage and kept prisoner like an animal.

Racism in a multitude of forms pervades the very fabric of Pakistani society. Our thoughts and speech betray an entrenched, dogmatic belief in the role of race, gender, religion, and ethnicity as primary determinants of human nature.

- Zia Ahmed (Pakistani Journalist)

Link (http://www.chowk.com/articles/6100).


This is why your constant berating of Western people as racist is ultimately no more than attempt to secure more economic power for your own people.

(Excuse me for my off topic post).

[S.A.M.]

Not all Pakistanis are the same. The place I worked in Saudi, one of the Pakistani guys was in love with a black girl. "Racism" in South East Asia is more cultural than color. People want you to marry into your own community, regardless of color; they want someone they can identify with. You'll find this in India too.

[Fraggle Rocker]

What does that mean?About four years ago amid the chaos in Sudan (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A16001-2004Jun29.html), Muslim Arab militiamen were raping African women, calling them "black" and "slave," and saying thing like, "We want to make a light baby."

[DiamondHearts]

About four years ago amid the chaos in Sudan (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A16001-2004Jun29.html), Muslim Arab militiamen were raping African women, calling them "black" and "slave," and saying thing like, "We want to make a light baby."

You said African women, but you failed to mention that the victims were also Muslim. Why is Arab and Muslim synonymous when only 20% of the Muslims in the world are Arabs? Do we refer to the genocide in Rwanda as a Christian genocide (both sides were Christian mainly)?

It's quite interesting how when Muslims kill each other the fault lies with Islam (even though it may be fundamentally opposed to the teachings of Islam or the practice of the Muslims of the world) and when Christians kill each others its based on ethnicity, politics, etc.

Double standards.

[DiamondHearts]

I'm Pakistani and some of my greatest models are African Americans such as Brother Malcolm X, Marcus Garvey, Warith Deen Muhammad, and many more. Your point is invalid because I literally know dozens of Pakistanis married to African Americans who live in New York City. Islam transcends race, and racism is forbidden in Islam. Also, there is no concept of pure blood for Muslims, all human beings are equal.

[S.A.M.]

About four years ago amid the chaos in Sudan (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A16001-2004Jun29.html), Muslim Arab militiamen were raping African women, calling them "black" and "slave," and saying thing like, "We want to make a light baby."

You might be interested to know that both groups were black.

http://www.juancole.com/2005/03/googlesmear-as-political-tactic-google.html

But the "Arabs" of the Sudan are black (some are brown or lighter shades of black, but not by any means all, and anyway so are e.g. Eritreans just to the south). The Sudanese "Arabs" just speak Arabic or identify with the Arabs. It isn't a matter of US-style race, which is based on color. Moreover, the people of Darfur are Muslims and many know Arabic. So the massacres in Darfur are not about "Arabs" versus "black Africans." They are between two groups of Muslim black Africans.

Sudanese Arab

http://www.juancole.com/graphics/janjawid.jpg

Sudanese non Arab

http://www.juancole.com/graphics/darfur.jpg

People are strange. I have had white people tell ME how tedious some colored people are. Hello? Did you notice the color of my skin??? :D

[CheskiChips]

This is a dead giveaway too. Whoever wrote this knows nothing of anthropology or linguistics. The Persians are not Semites ("sons of Shem"), they are an Indo-European people. Persian is not a Semitic language, it is Indo-Iranian. You'll recognize that by comparing the numerals to Sanskrit, or perhaps your own native language if it's Indic and not Dravidian. (You probably speak Hindi anyway.)

Farsi: yek, doe, se, char, panj, shish, haft, hasht, noh, dah.

Hindi: ek, do, teen, chaar, pannch, chhah, saat, aath, nao, das.

Sanskrit: eka, dva, tri, catvaras, panca, sat, shapta, ashta, nava, dasha. (Sorryt, I have no idea how bad these transliterations are that I picked at random.)

In biblical mythology, Shem and Ham were two sons of Noah who helped repopulate the world after the flood. Shem's line gave rise to the tribes we now call "Semitic," Elam (the Elamites), Asshur (the Assyrians), Aram (the Aramaeans), Arpachshad (the ancestor of Abraham and therefore of the Chaldeans and their descendants the Hebrews) and Lud (the Lydians). Ham's line gave rise to the enemies of the Hebrews: Canaan (the Canaanites), Mizraim (the Egyptians), Cush (the Ethiopians) and Phut (the Libyans). (I don't know whether the Arabs, a relatively new ethnic group, were mentioned in the bible, but they have always been considered a Semitic people.)

20th- and 21st-century linguistics (using massively parallel computing) and anthropology (using DNA analysis) has of course rendered all of this into the bullshit that it is. We know that the Hebrews, Phoenicians, Lebanese, Palestinians and several other ethnic groups who do not comprise a happy family are ALL descended from the Canaanites. In fact it's quite plausible that the original Palestinians were simply the Canaanites who decided not to follow Abraham and become Jewish.

More than 100 years ago linguists found plenty of evidence to combine the Semitic and Hamitic languages into a single family, and now we're pretty comfortable with the hypothesis that the ancient Egyptians, the Coptic and other Cushitic peoples, the Arabs, Assyrians, Palestinians, Jews, and a number of other ethnic groups throughout North Africa and Asia Minor all spoke or speak languages in what we now call the Afro-Asiatic family, of which Semitic is just one branch.

Furthermore, to make the rather large white supremacist faction within fundamentalist Islam even angrier, we cannot say for certain whether the ancestral tribe of these people originated in Asia and then some of them repatriated themselves to Africa, or whether they originated in Africa and followed the Homo sapiens diaspora into Asia. The evidence is sketchy and what little there is can be interpreted either way.

The bible is a valuable source of history but everything in it must be cross-examined carefully because the bullshit is stated with the same conviction and sincerity as the truth. To be fair, the writers of the bible may have had access to more legends than we do, but they didn't have access to most of the scientific evidence we have.


Fraggle, I appreciate the intelligent rebuttal. The quote lifted was from a string of theological arguments, which was the choice of source. I could have cited anthropology, the two have significant disagreements. Also pardon my preference to biblical terminology.

I did have to study linguistics for some time, and my anthropology is not great but I have had to read some. The argument that I was stating that Persians were of shem was that of modern Persia. Of which was actually founded on Hammitic language. The key is that the latter was never written down and was actually adapted to fit another language stucture (in written form). The cause of the merger was that of Ishmael moving east and creating a mixed state. The later creation of a hammitic language resulted in a tonal language, opposed to the consonant languages of shem.
--

I believe your associations are incorrect, I will correct the ones I know from the top of my head as I have been taught and it is written.

Chaldeans (Sumer) came from Nimrod of Cush of Ham.
Assyria came of Sumer. Bavyl of Assyria.
Also from Nimrod was the Akkadians by way of Accad.
Cush (of Ham) also gave Mizraim which gave way to Naphtuhim which ended to Egypt and Casluhim which were the Phillistines. (Who Palestinians claim)

Shem gave to Elam, Ashur Lud etc etc. and Aram. Which Aram (There were not Aramain people with individual identity.). Also, Arpachshad to shela, to eber. Joktan to Almodad.

Arpachshad to Shela to Eber to Peleg to Reu to Serug to Nahor to Terah to begot Abram.

Abram and Sarai moved to Canaan (Present day Israel).

Sarai could not conceive so born was Ishmael through the wife of Hagar. Hagar descended (daughter of pharoah) of Mizraim.
Then Sarai could conceive so born through Abram AND Sarai was Isaac. From Isaac and Rebekah (daughter of Nahor) came Jacob and Esau.
From Jacob came the Israelites.
From Esau came the Turks.
This is the cause of the genetic similarities between the two.
Esau gave to the Edomites, which lived near Canaan.
They were the leaders of Rome, but not the citizens of Rome and are often in history written to be called the Jews. BUT were not the ancestors of Ashkenazim.


From Ishmael were the original arabs. Later interbred with Egyptian and eastern hammitic descendants, which caused change to their lineage.
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Modern DNA is not evidence. As I stated, the intermixing of the tribes of the region through conquest has blurred any reality between genetic difference. In fact the only Jewish marker of significance is the kohen marker, which is found in nearly all Arabs. The kohens are said to be decended of a man named Pinchas, who was not of shem anyways, he was of ham. Which gives rise to the question, what's the true standing on the distinction? Claiming a displaced persons DNA is not similar to the local DNA is not evidence...because they were displaced for 2000 years and were not in the gene pool.
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I stated that Hammitic languages didn't very early on create their own language in written form. Rather took the languages of shem, and THAT's the reason for a total lack of evidence. It wasn't until pro-Indo that there was evidence of a separate language entirely. While all of the languages local were written in semitic form, they were not pronounced the same. Arabic today is a semitic language pronounced semitically. Original hamtic languages resemble tonal languages.

--
I have nothing to add to your final statements.

I do hope you find this to be atleast a theologically backed argument. I'm not trying to say science is wrong at all, but interpreting what you're looking at is what gives science value.