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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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If Avi comes back with, "Israel, just like me" I'll be in very great doo-doo. But I shall clamber out of it the best way I know how. By keeping schtum. He's a New Yorker and my Communing with the Spirits contains the line
| I nipped out for a fag and some respite |
so he already thinks I meant the YMCA. Already.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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Michael Rosen's Radio 4 series Word of Mouth is fitfully interesting and this week it was 'Old and New English' https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m00282ry all about Anglo-Saxon. I found it too depressing to listen for more than a few minutes but this sentence spoke volumes
| Today we'll be discussing Old English or Anglo-Saxon as we called it when I was in my first year of an English degree in 1959. |
What I found interesting was that
1. The term Old English wasn't current in 1959
2. It had to be explained that Old English is Anglo-Saxon in 2024
3. Rosen doesn't regard the change in terminology as in any way significant.
It is the same period of time and has the same intention as when they were changing Dark Age to 'Early Middle Ages'. It doesn't need me to point out that
1. Anglo-Saxon is a specific language, Early English isn't.
2. The Dark Age is a specific period of time, the Early Middle Ages isn't.
3. That's how to slip things through without having to demonstrate them.
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Wile E. Coyote
In: Arizona
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I can never get my head round this. I can't see why when everyone else on all other continents has continuity of language from the Palaeolithic we don't, unless of course you think of Basque.
| The Paleo-European languages (sometimes also called Old European languages)[1][2] are the mostly unknown languages that were spoken in Neolithic (c. 7000 – c. 1700 BC) and Bronze Age Europe (c. 3200 – c. 600 BC) prior to the spread of the Indo-European and Uralic families of languages. The vast majority of modern European populations speak Indo-European languages. However, until the Bronze Age, non-Indo-European languages were predominant across the continent.[3] The speakers of Paleo-European languages gradually assimilated into speech communities dominated by Indo-European speakers, leading to their eventual extinction, except for Basque, which remains the only surviving descendant of a Paleo-European language.[4] |
Ortho's solution is to seek confirmation by looking at the genes of the Basques, imagine their surprise when they find that the Basques are not genetically any more hunter-gatherer than the rest of us.
So now we know that the enigmatic Basques were invaded like everyone else but their invaders, being a tad nicer/muti-cultural, decided to stick with the existing older Basque language. It's either that or the language was wiped out, but then they found a written document with some ancient markings in the margins....maybe they translated this and reintroduced it?
That will be it.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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The advances in genetics was supposed to settle everything but guess what? It confirmed what the linguists had been saying all the time. What a coincidence.
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Boreades
In: finity and beyond
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| Mick Harper wrote: | | Oh, and one thing more, Indo-European is a completely bogus concept. |
Coincidentally, a book written by Saint Sheila of McGregor has just arrived. This is "Archaic Gaelic", volume five of her series of books printed and published on Amazon.
I am encouraged by her introduction.
| Let me begin by saying that to enjoy and understand this book an interest in Highland culture is probably essential but no knowledge of Gaelic, alive or archaic, is required. |
Which is encouraging because my working knowledge of the Gaelic is limited to ordering uisge beatha.
Skip two paragraphs and get to this:
| After more than two centuries of research no evidence has been found to support the Indo-European thesis. |
I shall endeavour to find some suitably archaic Gaelic words to casually drop into conversation. It will be an improvement on complaining about the dreich weather.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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This is excellent news so far as it goes. But it's ridding linguists of the idea that Hindi, Urdu, Bengali etc are closely related to English, Italian, Old Church Slavonic etc that's the bigger enchilada. Even though Gaelic is no longer related to English, Italian, Old Church Slavonic etc she may wish to deal with this in an appendix to Volume Six. Tell her.
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Boreades
In: finity and beyond
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Too late!
Vol.6 is "Flying By Night: Scottish Witches and Fairies".
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Boreades
In: finity and beyond
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Vol.8 may be of TME interest: "Beacon Saints".
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Boreades
In: finity and beyond
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But not yet shown as available on Amazon.
Perhaps in the meantime, Vol.7?
| Fire!: How Language Began. |
Saint Sheila puts the boot in, in the most elegant manner.
| Indo-European scholars assume as a fact that Europe was invaded in the Neolithic by farming people who spoke Proto-Indo-European and who somehow exterminated or absorbed all the earlier hunting and herding people who occupied Europe from the Arctic Circle down to the Mediterranean. In a remarkably short time, so the story goes, this new language had evolved into Sanskrit, German, Latin, Greek and all the other related languages of Europe. The Indo-European proposal is wrong. The facts on which the Indo-European vision and all its subsidiary or derivative theories are based have never moved beyond speculation. As a basis for scientific debate they are affected by the logical fallacy one can never prove a theory by listing facts which support it. . |
What's she done then?
| This book investigates the origins of European languages. In large part its author is motivated by frustration with the lack of progress in the field of historical linguistics, and creates a new indexing tool for words, termed the Table of Equivalent Consonants (or TEC). Readers will find that the TEC is easy to understand and use. It can be used with every language in Europe. It is compatible with existing rules governing the formation of words and the equivalence of sounds. There is not anything quite like it in any publications in the field of linguistics. This volume is the seventh to appear in a 12 book series, Culture and Language by Sheila McGregor. | |
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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Fillet and post it. I assume she's using Kindle Direct to self-publish like me. And selling about the same number of books to judge from her numbers. Put her in touch if you think we might benefit from technical pillow talk.
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Boreades
In: finity and beyond
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I would if I could, but she's reclusive. I did have an email address for her while she was living in France. But she moved. IIRC, I did trace her to a new home in Scotland, overlooking Doggerland. I can virtually walk past her new home on Google Street View and virtually knock on the front door. My respect for her privacy precludes me from mentioning the address here.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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The problem here is one I talk about in Revisionist Historiography. When you are dealing with a minority language, the only experts are the people who speak the minority language. No-one else is going to learn it just for the minority rewards that will accrue. When you speak a minority language you are inordinately fond of it and ever anxious to find other minority language-speakers to hang with. Lest you hang etc etc
This is not to deny there may well be links between Basque and Armenian. Language or people.
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