The Massive Linguistic Ignorance

Discussion in 'Linguistics' started by kmguru, Dec 11, 2006.

  1. kmguru Staff Member

    Messages:
    11,757
    The two great hoaxes of today:
    1. All human life began only in Africa.
    2. Language and agriculture were developed in the Middle East.
    This book shatters both.

    Sample
    The Massive Linguistic Ignorance


    Almost every dictionary, thesaurus, lexicon and book written in the west state that English language evolved mostly from German and Greek. They proclaim so without studying very ancient languages spoken elsewhere. They state with authority that the very popular prefix poly-, meaning ’very’, ’several’ etc. originates from Greek polys ’several’. They do not know that Greek polys comes from ancient Indian Tamil word ’polivu’ ’many’. Similarly they state in ignorance that English words such as policy, politics, politician, poll (what people think or do) police etc evolve from Greek polis, poleos ’city’ without looking at ancient Indian Tamil word palli ’village’. Similarly every word related to head is credted to Greek kefali ’head’ ignoring the ancient Indian Tamil word for skull ’kapaalam’. Ancient Indian Sanskrit word maatra means ’measure’ leading into the popular English word meter is not at all credited. Instead all these books say that meter evolved from Greek metron ’measure’. Even though ’new’ comes from ancient Sanskrit nava, they proclaim in ignorance that it originates from Latin novus. Ancient Indian Tamil has called earth tharrai for thousands of years. Yet modern linguists say in ignorance that Latin terra is the origin for all earth related words like atterraaneus (earth-borne), conterraneus (fellow countryman), tarmac, termite, terra sigillata(sealed earth), terrace, terrain, terrigena, territory, threshold, tour, detour, tour guide, trace v., track, tractor, traffic, trail, train, tram, transit, trash, travel, travelogue, tread, trench, trespass, trip, trolley, tropics, truck, inter and hundreds of related words. They are all connected with Tamil tharrai in one way or the other.



    See attachment link

    http://www.geocities.com/kmguru2000/Ignorance.doc
     
  2. Google AdSense Guest Advertisement



    to hide all adverts.
  3. Walter L. Wagner Cosmic Truth Seeker Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    2,559
    Kmguru:

    The similarities of the Tamil words and the Greek/Latin words shows they are both from the same Indo-European stock.

    It may well be that some English words trace directly from a Tamil ancestor word, already in the teutonic/early-English roots, rather that from Greek/Latin.

    However, much or our English language vacabulary is from the Latin from during the Roman conquest, or from the French version of Latin, during the Norman conquest. The language grammar, and the verbs, are primarily teutonic in origin.
     
  4. Google AdSense Guest Advertisement



    to hide all adverts.
  5. kmguru Staff Member

    Messages:
    11,757
    I am thinking the language evolved from Aborigines to Tamil to Sanskrit/Russian/Basque to Greek to Latin to the modern format of many. If that is true, then the Chinese civilization and the Indian civilization are two forks of human development. It seems the original language is common to the location of East Africa, India and Australian aborigines. The problem is these land masses were connected 150 to 200 million years ago. How can that be if language did not originate since 50,000 years ago! By then the land mass has moved. Unless humans have been here since then. Perhaps the whole process needs rethinking...
     
  6. Google AdSense Guest Advertisement



    to hide all adverts.
  7. Fraggle Rocker Staff Member

    Messages:
    24,690
    KM, your book is very poorly researched. Most of the citations given for the origins of English words are absolutely bogus. What they appear to be is clever independent thought by a person who has studied a number of languages but has not actually studied linguistics formally.

    No one claims that new is derived from Latin novus. At least not anyone who knows what they're talking about and is respected as an authority, such as a contributor to a dictionary or a textbook. New is related to the Latin word. "New" is one of many words from the original Indo-European language that survived in recognizable form in all or almost all of its descendants. Russian novy, Greek neos, etc.

    Other words that are nearly universal in the entire Indo-European family include many family relationships like mother and father, numerals like three and ten, and pronouns like me and thou. The fact that English new, German neu and Danish ny are so similar to the Latin word merely shows that they are related, not descended. These are Germanic languages and this particular word was handed down by the speakers of the original proto-Germanic language who migrated from somewhere in or near upper Asia Minor to Scandinavia around 3,000 years ago during the Indo-European diaspora.

    To say that English "evolved" from German and Greek is the kind of mistake that precocious high school students make. It is correct to say that English evolved from a language called proto-Germanic and that many English words have been borrowed from Greek and inserted into our vocabulary by priests and scholars. English did not evolve from German; English and German evolved from a common ancestral language. English did not evolve from Greek, it just contains a lot of borrowed words of Greek origin, and a lot of invented words made up of Greek roots like "petrochemical" and "photosynthesis." These were concepts unknown to the ancient Greeks and these are words made up by modern scientists from Greek roots. Everyone who studies language knows this. The author of this text is not much of a student.

    English borrows prolificly and probably has borrowed at least one word from almost every language on earth. I'm sure there's a Tamil word in our dictionary although I couldn't tell you what it is. But English is not descended from Tamil. Both are modern languages, whose ancestors went separate ways long ago.

    English and the Germanic languages are in the western branch of the Indo-European language family, along with the Romance (Latin) and Celtic subfamilies and a few singletons like Greek and Albanian. Tamil and the Indic languages are in the eastern branch, along with the Iranic and Balto-Slavic subfamilies and a few singletons like Armenian. The western and eastern branches separated at least 3,500 years ago when the two sets of Indo-European tribes decided to migrate in opposite directions. This is where the name Indo-European comes from. The two branches are, loosely, Indian and European.

    No one has ever suggested that Latin terra is the root for all the earth-related words in that list. Either this writer is painfully ignorant or else he is lying to us in order to make a bogus point. Many of them are Latin words, formations on the word terra, borrowed by English directly from Latin through the religious and scholarly connections formed during the Roman occupation of England in the early centuries of the first millennium CE, or assimilated from Norman French (a Romance language, most of whose words are descended from its ancestor, Latin) during the French occupation of England that began in 1066CE. Yet many of those words are not from that source. They simply show that the root TR is common in words of Indo-European origin having to do with the earth, not that the Angles and Saxons who gave us our language were genetically or culturally descended from Tamils through some strange migratory or colonization program that has escaped the notice of several thousand years of history meticulously documented by the people of India, Persia, Russia, Greece, Rome, France and many other locations through which these forces of migration or colonization would absolutely have had to pass.

    They are all connected with the Tamil word, as you say. No one is disputing that. But they are not derived from it. They are simply related because all of these languages share a common ancestor.

    No one claims that language was developed in the Middle East. There are language families in Polynesia, Africa and the Americas. For that matter there are at least two language families in the Middle East: Indo-European and Semitic. Massively parallel computing has reduced the number of families by uncovering hitherto uncorrelated commonalities among groups. For example the Indo-European, Finno-Ugric-Ural-Altaic, Semitic, Sino-Tibetan, Malayo-Polynesian, Mongolian, Japanese, Korean, and many other groups turn out to be members of one giant Eurasiatic family. It's looking like there are no more than two language families on the planet, and judging from the current state of the research it's a good bet that there is only one. This would mean that language was invented in Africa and is at least a 70,000 year old technology. It suggests that language was the critical technology that permitted humans to successfully migrate out of Africa in the first place, by facilitating a higher level of planning and communication than had ever been needed before.

    As for agriculture, that is not my specialty. (I am a reasonably well educated amateur linguist so I have no qualms about calling this guy an idiot when it comes to linguistics.) But the origins of civilization are of great interest to me, and there is no question that, to date, evidence indicates that farming was indeed invented in the Middle East. The oldest cultivated plant that has been discovered is the fig, dating to 9500BCE, and it was found where figs grow naturally, in Mesopotamia (or possibly Anatolia, I haven't got the details handy).

    Agriculture in all other regions was developed later. It is, however, fair to hypothesize that not all agricultural societies borrowed the technology from the Mesopotamians. Clearly the Olmecs and Incas did not, for their ancestors had left Asia long before agriculture had been invented there. The Egyptians, Chinese and Indians may very well have invented agriculture independently, just as they did with civilization itself.

    Sorry dude, but the only "massive linguistic ignorance" is in the head of this writer. This paper has obviously not passed through a proper peer review process. It's a sad fact of today's communication industry that any book that purports to contradict established science can be published and ignorant Americans will buy it. The same people who believe TV "wrestling" is a sport.
     
  8. kmguru Staff Member

    Messages:
    11,757
    Interesting post. Here is what Wiki says about the origin of language:

    The origin of language (glottogony, glossogeny) is a topic that has been written about for centuries, but the ephemeral nature of speech means that there is almost no data on which to base conclusions on the subject. We know that, at least once during human evolution, a system of verbal communication emerged from proto-linguistic or non-linguistic means of communication, but beyond that little can be said. No current human group, anywhere, speaks a "primitive" or rudimentary language. While existing languages differ in the size and subjects covered in their several lexicons, all human languages possess the grammar and syntax needed, and can invent, translate, or borrow the vocabulary needed to express the full range of their speakers' concepts.

    So the author presented his views. Now we wait for other experts to review. The flat-earth society not withstanding....

    Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!

     
  9. kmguru Staff Member

    Messages:
    11,757
    More from Wiki:

    Out of India Theory (OIT) is the hypothesis that the Indo-European languages (I-E) originated in India, from which they spread into Central and Southwestern Asia and Europe. The theory suggests that the Indus Valley Civilization was Proto-Indo-Iranian (in obsolete or popular terminology, "Aryan"). It suggests the spread of Proto-Indo-European from within Northern India. It uses mainly archaeological and Vedic textual references. This theory is not favored by the Indo-Europeanist community. The majority of the Indo-Europeanist community favours the Kurgan hypothesis postulating a 4th millennium BC expansion from the Pontic steppe. The opposite theory is the Indo-Aryan migration theory which argues the reverse events.

    Read the rest at:

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Out_of_India_theory
     
  10. Prince_James Plutarch (Mickey's Dog) Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    9,214
    The Out of India Theory is widely discreditted and empirically refuted by halotype analysis and linguistics.

    Two big reasons:

    Finno-Ugric derived words in Sanskrit, but no Dravidian words in the rest of Indo-European.

    Haplotypes in India which are also found commonly in Russia and Eastern Europe.
     
  11. IceAgeCivilizations Banned Banned

    Messages:
    6,618
    Genesis 10 provides the template for the early migrations.
     
  12. IceAgeCivilizations Banned Banned

    Messages:
    6,618
    Does anyone know of a good source which discusses the language affinities between the Basques and the ancient Mexicans? I'm particularly interested in the a-t-l suffix and prefix which are common to these two people groups across the Atlantic from each other.
     
  13. Prince_James Plutarch (Mickey's Dog) Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    9,214
    Genesis 10 does no such thing, IceAgeCivilizations. The Bible is not a linguistic document and is factually inaccurate for all its mythic past.
     
  14. IceAgeCivilizations Banned Banned

    Messages:
    6,618
    The Greeks considered Iapeti to be a demi-god, the ancient Hindus called him Pra-japeti, son of Manu, and this was Japheth, Noah's son, the progenitor of most of the Greeks, and many of the Hindus, of course, Cham (Ham) was the progenitor of many other of the Hindus, and some of the Greeks (Chronos, Cham), so we see the Biblical template undergirding these ancient traditions.
     
  15. Prince_James Plutarch (Mickey's Dog) Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    9,214
    That is simply an ad-hoc extrapolation by Flavius Josephus. Like many other early Roman Jewish and Christian authors, he simply fit things in where he thought to.

    There is no link with a Titan (not a demi-God) and some son of Noah.

    By the way, it is clear that Noah did not exist. Noah is a throwback to the Sumerian mythology which helped spawn the earlier parts of the Bible. The Enuma Elish basically spawned Genesis.

    You shall also note that genetic and linguistic evidence discredits any connection with Noah.
     
  16. IceAgeCivilizations Banned Banned

    Messages:
    6,618
    And how does it supposedly discredit any connection to Noah?
     
  17. Prince_James Plutarch (Mickey's Dog) Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    9,214
    Genetic evidence places the proto-Indo-Europeans in the Ukraine or Turkey around 10,000 BC.
     
  18. IceAgeCivilizations Banned Banned

    Messages:
    6,618
    Sans Josephus, Genesis 10 is the basic template for the early migrations away from Mesopotamia, note Rama, Cush, Elam, Asshur, Javan (Iawan, Greece), Cana'an, Sheba, Dedan, Tarshish (Tharsin, Tartessos, Seville), Sidon (Posidon), on and on, quite remarkable, archaeology confirms Genesis more and more all the time.
     
  19. IceAgeCivilizations Banned Banned

    Messages:
    6,618
    So what's to prevent moving that up to around 2500 B.C.?
     
  20. Prince_James Plutarch (Mickey's Dog) Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    9,214
    IceAgeCivilizations:

    Actually, archaeology has never proven any of Genesis until one gets farrrr into the later chapters, and only then in minor points.

    But no, these sons of Noah are not related to historical figures, nor are they the sires of nations. There is no evidence of that, and indeed, much evidence to suggest that it is plain wrong.

    Unless Noah was an Indo-European warrior riding on horses across Western and Southern Eurasia, your argument falls to pieces.
     
  21. Prince_James Plutarch (Mickey's Dog) Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    9,214
    What prevents moving it up to 2500 BC? Science. You know, the thing which is used to make objective claims about empirical observations.
     
  22. IceAgeCivilizations Banned Banned

    Messages:
    6,618
    Noah: Manu, Deucalion, Ogyges, Manoa, Mannus, Nu, Nuah, Noe.

    Ham: Cham (Cambodia, Khambat), Chronus (against Noah), Chronos (time man, precession mapping), Khem (Khemit/Egypt).

    Japheth: Seskef (Norse), Iafeth (Welsh), Pra-japeti (Hindu), Iapetos (Greek).

    You do admit that the ancients often worshipped real people as demi-gods?
     
  23. IceAgeCivilizations Banned Banned

    Messages:
    6,618
    And what are those constraints for you timeline, or are they "unmentionable?"
     

Share This Page