Let's talk about ancient languages. I'm fascinated by the association between so-called "Semetic languages" and "Indo-European" languages. It seems like some people have falsely claimed that Indo-European is the only white race, and so the Semetic group is "the other", but so much evidence points to the contrary. First of all, race and languages are distinct ideas, but let's more forward with the analysis.Indo-European languages use Phoenician script. Why is that? It would seem to me that Phoenician and PIE had to have been mutually intelligible for that to happen, but PIE was a difference of dialect in speech, like Portuguese vs Spanish. They could have been more distinct, like Latin vs German, but still close enough that ideas were exchangeable. This to me suggests that they grew apart from a common origin rather than merely shared culturally. I would guess that if Atlantis was real, then when they came east, they settled the coasts, and in the Med, it became the Afro-Asiatic languages, and as it spread north it took on a new shape in the form of PIE, then that came south and replaced the pan-Mediterranean language group of proto-Semetic. Another curiosity: Egyptian hieroglyphics are elaborate drawings that can boil down to simple letters. Supposedly you can also translate them to Mayan figures/letters. The book on Atlantis by Donnelly did this. Aside from mentioning this as evidence of unexpected language spread and evolution, I wonder what the purpose of this was. Did we originally write in concepts, which had a grammar of their own, and then we took common sequences of concepts and turned those into words, thus almost every word referred to multiple concepts (except for individual symbols that could stand on their own as a word).Would hieroglyphics have been a way to beautify language, to obscure its meaning (hide letters in images), to make it more transparent (show true meaning of letters), or to create an intelligible language for many dialects?
>>17969963Also, there are a lot of ancient near eastern language that we can't really categorize. That blows my mind. For instance, the origin of Aramaic is just 1200 BC Syria. Where did those Syrians get it from? Who knows.Another observation. Agglutination is a really curious trait that Caucasian languages have in common with ancient Sumerian and Babylonian, which until now have not really been categorized to my knowledge. I don't think this necessarily means the Caucasians conquered or settled Sumer. It could also be that Sumerians (or their descendants) eventually had to migrate north, or maybe they were far more widespread at once point.
>>17969969I'd love to know of the more ambitious projects to unify language and uncover these hidden/forgotten movements of peoples. Academia is boring and gutless. Some authors are cranks, but Donnelly put forth some interesting data (which I have not really confirmed yet, to be fair).
>>17969963Singing came before talking and writinghttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=usuV0ScJZkU
>>17969963>I'm fascinated by the association between so-called "Semetic languages" and "Indo-European" languages. There is no association, sorry to ruin your fantasy. We have words that are not accepted by everyone for things as banal as salt, for example. This is normal when groups have mutual trade. The supposed words for in Celtic languages are better due to contact with a Semitic or Mediterranean Hamito-Semitic language, rather than chance or universal linguistic phenomena. Read Gensler on this "Semitic connection" nonsense. The rest of your post, stinks like a corpse in the desert, disposable
Language distinctions come from the Tower of Babel
>>17969963>I would guess that if Atlantis was real, then when they came east, they settled the coasts, and in the Med, it became the Afro-Asiatic languages, and as it spread north it took on a new shape in the form of PIE, then that came south and replaced the pan-Mediterranean language group of proto-Semetic.I thought this was a serious linguistics thread, but it's just poldumb
>>17969984Besides the word salt, a non-Semitic loanword from PIE and bull from Semitic loanwords, there aren't many widely accepted words, in fact, we don't even know the origin of PS and it's not as reconstructed as PIE, in fact, it's barely reconstructed.
>>17969990There are academic terms for the same group of people. Why are you being such a pain in the ass? Solutreans, Paleo-Europeans, Basque, Guanche, the X haplogroup in northeast Native Americans, redhead Pharaohs and Berbers. On and on. Regardless of what you name it or which theory you try to use to show evidence for it, it's just a race of people living in the Atlantic who could take boats all over the place and who correlate strongly with certain cultural traditions (possibly astrotheology, for instance).
>>17969990Can you prove him wrong?
>>17969982Implying musical notes were the first language, which would give the starting "alphabet" a size of whatever number of frequencies you can distinguish, unless you put the frequencies into groups, and then your alphabet would be each note in that system. There are 7 musical notes in the western system, and if you used 3 octaves (like a high, middle, and low voice), that would give you 21 letters. That would be in the neighborhood of the most popular alphabets today.
>>17969963>Egyptian hieroglyphics are elaborate drawings that can boil down to simple letters. Supposedly you can also translate them to Mayan figures/letters. The book on Atlantis by Donnelly did this.The book on Atlantis came out in 1882.Ancient Egyptian reading only got into full swing around the 1860s and Mayan writing would remain gibberish until the 1970s.He didn't know shit about Mayan, effectively just being the same kind of retard as the pajeets promoting "E=mc^2 + AI" today.
>>17970000>Besides the word salt, a non-Semitic loanword from PIE and bull from Semitic loanwords, there aren't many widely accepted words, in fact, we don't even know the origin of PS and it's not as reconstructed as PIE, in fact, it's barely reconstructed.America and Britain have tons of different words for things, and we've only been separated for 250 years.Different words may pass into common usage. Rather than assuming any commonality is just "loan words", how about we consider the possibility that most of the language changed and the loan words were actually common ideas that remained.
>>17969963Apparently the claim that script originated with the phoenicians is probably not true. Vinca had something resembling a script, and many of the symbols can be found in Greek and Etruscan. Phoenician influence is overrated due to certain members of the merchant caste that have embedded themselves in western faculty.
>>17969963Right but you missed the part where the Israelites traveled to Brittania and made the Celtic languages
>>17970005>there are academic terms for the same group of people>lists multiple different groups of people
>>17969963PIE is descended from a Semitic branch of AfroasiaticFor example, the Proto-Indo-European verbal root *h1ed- "to eat" is cognate with Proto-Afroasiatic *ʔet- "to eat" > Fyer (WChadic) et "to eat"; Sidamon (ECushitic) it- "to eat".
>>17969963>I'm fascinated by the association between so-called "Semetic languages" and "Indo-European" languages.The appropriate comparison would be not Proto-Semitic to Proto-Indo-European, but Proto-Afro-Asiatic to Proto-Indo-European, since Semitic is not a top-level family. (Some branches of Afro-Asiatic are controversial but it's pretty clear at least some of them are related to each other.) In any case, there seem to be some Wanderwörter, but no one can demonstrate regular sound correspondences between PIE and PAA. (You're welcome to try.)>It seems like some people have falsely claimed that Indo-European is the only white raceFirst you'd have to have a coherent definition of "white".>Indo-European languages use Phoenician script. Why is that?Because writing has only been invented independently three or four times and spread outward from there. (Mayans, Chinese, Sumerians, and maybe Egyptians- it's not clear if the latter was informed by Sumerian writing.)>It would seem to me that Phoenician and PIE had to have been mutually intelligible for that to happenHow the hell do you figure? Scripts get adapted to unrelated languages all the time. It's just a matter of some Phoenician having picked up Greek as a second language or vice versa, and adapting the script for the other language.>Another curiosity: Egyptian hieroglyphics are elaborate drawings that can boil down to simple letters.Yes, because they originate as rebuses.>Supposedly you can also translate them to Mayan figures/letters.Eh? In what sense? I'm not sure what you're trying to say here.>Did we originally write in concepts, which had a grammar of their own, and then we took common sequences of concepts and turned those into words, thus almost every word referred to multiple concepts (except for individual symbols that could stand on their own as a word).No, speech came before writing, writing was developed as a way to record oral language.
>>17969963>Would hieroglyphics have been a way to beautify language, to obscure its meaning (hide letters in images), to make it more transparent (show true meaning of letters), or to create an intelligible language for many dialects?None of the above, it is how writing in Egypt first developed from rebuses. It was graphically simplified into Hieratic and Demotic.>>17969969>For instance, the origin of Aramaic is just 1200 BC Syria. Where did those Syrians get it from? Who knows.Aramaic is very straightforwardly a Semitic language.>I don't think this necessarily means the Caucasians conquered or settled Sumer. It could also be that Sumerians (or their descendants) eventually had to migrate north, or maybe they were far more widespread at once point.Agglutination has occurred independently in many different languages, it's just one of the basic groundplans language can take on.>>17969971There have been various attempts to reconstruct connections further back than the current consensus, but ultimately you have to be able to demonstrate regular sound changes; if you can't do that, you haven't demonstrated a relationship. (Dene-Yeniseian is looking promising, though.)Look, you seem smart and curious, but you really should pick up a basic linguistics textbook.
>>17970047You can trivially demonstrate regular sound correspondences between the core vocabulary of American English and British English. Can you do that for PIE and PS/PAA?
>>17970423Regular sound correspondences?
>>17970673>None of the above, it is how writing in Egypt first developed from rebuses. It was graphically simplified into Hieratic and Demotic.Just to clarify, rebuses are images referring to sounds, which then have to be interpreted correctly as words by the reader/listener, right?It seems like this process would be far more error-prone, no? Take the game of telephone and apply it to linguistic history, and then measure the weight of writing accuracy (by type of script) on it.>Dene-YeniseianLooks interesting. I think Native Americans have a lot of untold stories about how they fit into the rest of world history.>you really should pick up a basic linguistics textbook.I agree. It's been on my todo list. Let me know if you have any suggestions.
>>17970704>Just to clarify, rebuses are images referring to sounds, which then have to be interpreted correctly as words by the reader/listener, right?Basically, yes.>It seems like this process would be far more error-prone, no?If you had to re-figure out the rebuses every time, but eventually certain pictures became conventionally associated with certain words.>Let me know if you have any suggestions.Honestly the sci.lang FAQ wouldn't be a bad start:https://zompist.com/langfaq.html
>>17969963what do you think of philology?
>>17970006Certainly: Atlantis didn't exist.
