Swedish is NOT a Slavic Language

Linking to a professional translator's view of a question:

Why are there so many Slavic words/words of Slavic origin in the Swedish language?
https://www.quora.com/Why-are-there-so-many-Slavic-words-words-of-Slavic-origin-in-the-Swedish-language/answer/Mats-Andersson-16

Vikings in William the Conqueror's Ancestry

"Quora" (meaning a Quoran who is not named) put the question. I answered.

Q

How many Vikings went to Normandy and when did they go there? Did William the Conqueror have any Viking ancestry?
https://www.quora.com/How-many-Vikings-went-to-Normandy-and-when-did-they-go-there-Did-William-the-Conqueror-have-any-Viking-ancestry/answer/Hans-Georg-Lundahl-1

Hans-Georg Lundahl

none/ apprx Masters in Latin (language) & Greek (language), Lund University

17.III.2023

They certainly came a lot of them in Rollo’s time.

Here is the family tree of William the Conqueror:

1) William, 1028 – 9 September 1087

parents
2) Robert I, Duke of Normandy, 22 June 1000 – 1–3 July 1035
3) Herleva, 1003 – 1050

grandparents
4) Richard II, Duke of Normandy, died 28 August 1026
5) Judith of Brittany, 982–1017
6) Fulbert of Falaise, ?? - ??
7) unknown

great-grandparents
8) Richard I of Normandy, 28 August 932 – 20 November 996
9) Gunnor, 950 – 1031
10) Conan I of Rennes, died 27 June 992
11) Ermengarde-Gerberga of Anjou, 956 - 1024
12 - 15) unknown

great-great-grandparents
16) William Longsword, 893 – 17 December 942
17) Sprota
18 and 19) unknown, probably of Danish origin
20) Judicael Berengar, ?? - ??
21) unknown
22) Geoffrey I, Count of Anjou, 938/940 – 21 July 987
23) Adele of Meaux, 935 – 982
24 - 31) unknown

great-great-great-grandparents
32) Rollo / Hrólfr, died between 928 and 933
33) Poppa of Bayeux, born c. 880
34) = 20? / unknown
35) unknown
36 - 39) unknown
40) Berengar II of Neustria? / Pascweten?
41) unknown
42 - 43) unknown
44) Fulk II, Count of Anjou, 905 — 960
45) Gerberga, ?? - ??
46) Robert of Vermandois, 907 – 967/8
47) Adelais (914–967) of Burgundy
48 - 63) unknown

So, a great-great-great-grandfather of his, and the son, the great-great-grandfather, were born as Vikings. A great-grandmother, Gunnor, probably also had Danish background.

38 views

since yesterday

Hans-Georg Lundahl

18.III.2023

Median lifespan of those having known ones, 53:

35 35 47 47 49 49 53 55 59 61 64 68 81
35 35 47 47 47 49 53 55 59 60 64 68 81
01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 13

The Real Crime of Tyndale : Justification without Intending Subsequent Works

Takeaways : he wasn't finally burnt for translating the Bible, and leaving the harlot is not leaving Roman Catholicism. Quora question and exhchange below my answer.

Q

Did the Catholic Church burn William Tyndale at the stake? What crime did he commit?
https://www.quora.com/Did-the-Catholic-Church-burn-William-Tyndale-at-the-stake-What-crime-did-he-commit/answer/Hans-Georg-Lundahl-1

Hans-Georg Lundahl

Catholic convert, reading many Catechisms

Answered Feb 9, 2021

Theories:

• He translated the Bible to English;
• He translated “presbyteros” as “elder” instead of “priest” in the Bible;
• something else.

His Bible, with faults in translation, like those noted and alas defended by Kathleen Neuen, was not the cause of his burning, but of his exile from England;

Once he was taken before the Spanish Inquisition in Netherlands, he was in fact tried and executed for something else, namely, how he interpreted Romans 3.

His Inquisitor Jacobus Latomus had a correspondence with him, and we know from his preserved answers that Romans 3 was the key issue.

EDIT : it is Latomus’ answers to Tyndale that are preserved.

Nate Van Mack

6.V.2022

Catholic Church wanted power over the masses, Tyndale translating the Bible into English would give them all the info to see how far off the church had gone from the truth. They didn't want that so they premeditated his murder, him as well as countless others in wars etc Catholic organization is the most corrupt on the planet for centuries. They have no unity. Complete opposite of Jesus who taught to love others. That's why Rev 18:4,5 says;

And I heard another voice out of heaven say: “Get out of her, my people, if you do not want to share with her in her sins, and if you do not want to receive part of her plagues. 5 For her sins have massed together clear up to heaven, and God has called her acts of injustice to mind

God will completely annihilate all false religion very soon that have brought reproach on his holy name JEHOVAH, YHWH TETRAGRAMMETON

Hans-Georg Lundahl

6.V.2022

"Catholic Church wanted power over the masses,"

Christ's Church should want power over the masses. See Matthew 28 "teach YE all nations".

This was usually not opposed to but went hand in hand with encouraging if secondary at least extant translations to the vernacular languages.

Like in Belgium, back then [Spanish] Netherlands where Tyndale was burned, there was a Catholic Bible translation, like Delftse Bijbel of the Vulgate OT excluding the Psalms, and from John Scutkens Historiebijbel, they had also printed Gospels and Epistles.

As said, Tyndale fled from England due to translating into vernacular, which could have landed him in trouble with the English Inquisition (decided by the Parliament in 1401), but he was burned in a country where the Catholic Church did support or very recently had supported Bible translations, and where translating the Bible was not in itself a charge of heresy : in the then Spanish possession of the Netherlands.

"Tyndale translating the Bible into English"

Was an offense in England, but not in Belgium.

"would give them all the info to see how far off the church had gone from the truth."

Yeah, English peasants were generally so well educated overall, that just giving them a printed Bible was going to reveal things to them, even without comment! Not.

Also, the Bible contains proof that "the Church had gone from the Truth" : also NOT. On the contrary, according to Matthew 28, She cannot. See "all days".

As for getting out of a certain harlot, whatever the identity of the harlot is, it is NOT the Catholic Church as historically known, and leaving the harlot is NOT joining Protestantism, which in its Puritan and most Anticatholic form is simply one of the four leopard heads.

A Seven Headed Beast ...

Please note, the seven heads being seven kings means there are individual people in the appropriate part of the end times, but the kings having kingdoms, and religion and politics being intertwined (both on Christ's and on Antichrist's side), the identifications I gave would be fairly good. If I were to join you, I would apostasise and be joining a leopard beast, in one of its four heads. That I will not do.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

6.V.2022

If you or yours were to come to see the truth, I think a safer place to convert to Catholicism would be with this guy:

The Pope Speaks - Vatican in Exile

than with these guys:

Members - Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops

It seems I published this on the wrong blog, should have been Assorted Retorts. Obviously, the subject matter as such is here too, but the format goes to the other one.

On Quora : How can historians know the dates of things so specifically?

Most Quora questions are answered on Assorted Retorts, as per the format quora question in English ... but here I am putting it in content of philology category instead.

Q

How can historians know the dates of things so specifically?
https://www.quora.com/How-can-historians-know-the-dates-of-things-so-specifically/answer/Hans-Georg-Lundahl-1

Hans-Georg Lundahl

none/ apprx Masters Latin & Greek, Lund University

Answered 15m ago

For dates within the last millennium and some more, the events happened within the time that dates in Anno Domini have been in use.

So, an event happens, like a king acceeds to power, like Alfred of Wessex, it is noted along with death of his predecessor, Aethelred I, as one event within the “year of the Lord eight hundred and seventy one” or “dccclxxj”.

In other words, the people at the time did the job for the historians.

For events earlier than that, we have Roman “ab urbe condita” dating and also Byzantine version of “anno Mundi” dating.

Both overlap with use of Anno Domini, and both have used (since 46 BC) the Julian calendar, the same we use for AD years. Therefore, the translation is easy.

The first 708 years after founding of Rome were in other calendars, which makes things a bit trickier, and in certain cases when no AUC date is available, one has to do some adding and subtracting, and that can be tricky.

One man who did some work on it was Eratosthenes:

THE CHRONOLOGY OF ERATOSTHENES
By Darrell Wolcott
http://www.ancientwalesstudies.org/id143.html

Note, one of the things making it tricky even so is, some other old learned men had given other chronologies for fall of Troy (as is the starting point of Eratosthenes’ Chronographes).

Sometimes one has much less than that to go on, for instance with Ancient Egypt.

Here is a citation from Darrell Wolcott's paper, as bonus:

The 3rd-century BC Greek geographer and mathematician, Eratosthenes, used a diastematic system of dating events which proceeds by intervals between important events. The following chart shows his estimated dates of ancient events[1]:

The fall of Troy 1184 BC

interval of 80 years

The return of the Heraclidae 1104

interval of 60 years

The settlement of Ionia 1044

interval of 159 years

The regency of Lycurgus 885

interval of 108 years

The year before the 1st Olympiad 777

The First Olympiad 776

Other sources, including the list of Olympic game winners, tend to confirm this dating of the 1st Olympiad. We accept this date as well as all later dates proposed by Eratosthenes.

It can obviously be noted that Eratosthenes did not mark out "1184 BC" or other BC years here given, only the intervals of so and so many years.

It can equally be added that since 1580's we use Gregorian, no longer strictly Julian, calendar for AD years, but the calendars are very similar. For the time when AUC and Byzantine AM years were competing with AD, Gregorian was not yet in use.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Paris
Dedication of Our Lady at the Snow
5.VIII.2021

Romae, in Exquiliis, Dedicatio Basilicae sanctae Mariae ad Nives.

More Language Questions on Quora

Language questions on quora · More Language Questions on Quora

I

Which numbers replace which letters in Proto-Indo-European?

Hans-Georg Lundahl, amateur linguist

Answered 9m ago

One other man guessed you are asking of “the sounds represented by symbols h₁, h₂, h₃ and so on”

I’ll go with that. On the theory or one explicitation of it, h₁ would be normal h, the unvoiced version of any adjacent vowel or, lacking such, of ö, h₂ would be ach-laut, also unvoiced, and h₃ would be voiced (for once) version of it, with added labialisation.

The reason you write h₁, h₂, h₃ is that this is not definitely agreed fact, and these symbols are useful standins, in case someone else would come up with other sound values.

So, H1 leaves a following e as e, H2 makes it an a, H3 makes it an o, and they all disappear.

H1e > e H1a > a H1o > o
H2e > a H2a > a H2o > o
H3e > o H3a > o H3o > o

If the laryngeal (technical name for these) comes after vowel instead of before, they also make the e longer (long vowels are marked with following :).

eH1 > e: aH1 > a: oH1 > o:
eH2 > a: aH2 > a: oH2 > o:
eH3 > o: aH3 > o: oH3 > o:

A N D if there is no vowel next, they become e, a, o, like this (C=any consonant):

CH1C > CeC, CH2C > CaC, CH3C > CoC

These formulas are closer to solid fact (they aren’t solid fact even themselves) than identification with h, χ, γw.

One reason to have H3 as γw, voiced, is, some unvoiced C become voiced next to H3.

Note, all this is a theory on exactly how certain words none of which contain any proven different H1, H2, H3 in any language, while Hittite version of one or two of these is h (whatever that was), came to have the exact relations that they have between languages of the family today.

One more thing, one theory related to this one says that a did not exist in Proto-Indo-European apart from H2.

II

Would a Latin speaker from the beginning of the Roman Empire understand a speaker from the end of the Roman Empire and vice versa?

Hans-Georg Lundahl, knows Latin

Answered just now

Written Latin, rather easily. That’s why Latin written language is conservative, so later readers can understand earlier writers.

Especially from Caeasar’s time on. From Punic Wars or just after, with Plautus or Ennius, there would be some gap.

On the pronunciation side, arguably it would be at least as difficult as for a Swede to understand Danish. Prounciation changed, and the most radically changed pronunciations are not taught when teaching Latin, they are more relevant for understanding how French and Spanish arose (Iordanes who wrote in Spain and Gregory of Tours who wrote in France are best examples of Latin written as wrotten form of this pronunciation). Btw, we are not concerned with end of West Empire, or supposed such, we are more concerned with beginning of Carolingian one. The date 800 led to a “language divorce”.

Before : traditional pronunciation of Latin was given traditional spelling of Latin.
After the whole process : traditional pronunciation of Latin was spelled with a new spelling, as Provençal or French, traditional spelling, or a bit more arcvhaic, was now spelling of an archaising, restored pronunciation.

476, 4th September, when Romulus Augustulus is deposed, did not mark any linguistic revolution. 800 - 813 did, at the end of which part of above process was completed : written Latin then had both a popular/local and a learned/international pronunciation.

III

If someone is perfectly fluent in multiple languages and gets amnesia is it possible to forget they know the languages but still be able to speak and understand them?

Hans-Georg Lundahl, amateur linguist

Answered just now

Probably yes.

They would be amnesiac about learning, but rediscover fluency.

IV

Can a dead language be reconstructed from the substratum influence it imparted upon other speeches?

Hans-Georg Lundahl, amateur linguist

Answered 7m ago

In some linguistic aspects, those that are preserved in other languages as substratum.

For those who count Greek as descended from Proto-Indo-European rather than Indo-Europeanised in an Indo-European Sprachbund, “thalassa” is substrate from pre-Greek. According to this theory (the first), words in -tta / -ssa and some other ones (-ssos, -enai, -nthos) come from the pre-Greek language. So, you have reconstructed three, four endings from toponymy, along with a few roots.

Other option is of course, “thalassa” (or previous versions of word) always belonged to Greek and Indo-European traits of Greek were either borrowed from Greek to other IE, or from other to Greek.

The bottom line, languages can be reconstructed depending on two factors, the one is, how much trace they left, the other is, where they were related to the preserved languages. And that latter is sometimes a guess.

Were the Middle Ages that Terrible? (Quora)

Assorted retorts from yahoo boards and elsewhere : Medical Middle Ages : Cancer and Salerno Diet (quora) · Middle Ages on Quora (non Medical) · Φιλολoγικά/Philologica : Were the Middle Ages that Terrible? (Quora)

Seven answers out of ten:

Q

Why were the middle ages so terrible? How did people manage?
https://www.quora.com/Why-were-the-middle-ages-so-terrible-How-did-people-manage

A I

Kevin Chiu,

Learned history from reading and games

Answered Sat

Nope. That has to be one of the biggest misconceptions about European history still prevalent today.

The fall of the Western Roman Empire wasn’t a catastrophe which set technological and societal progress back by a thousand years. Life wasn’t worse in the Middle Ages compared to that during the Roman Empire. The Middle Ages were actually superior to Early Modern Europe in some ways. I’ll try to disprove some of the commonly held misconceptions about the Middle Ages.

Low life expectancy

Studies show that in the Middle Ages, the average life expectancy was 30–40 years. That piece of data is very misleading. The life expectancy was dragged down by high infant mortality rates caused by disease. The average adult life expectancy was in the 60s or 70s.

Terrible hygiene

A lot of people believe this because many hygiene facilities present in the Roman Empire such as aqueducts and baths were not present in the Middle Ages. That is incorrect. Most cities had public bathhouses which originated from or were inspired by Roman baths (they were called stewes in England). Everyone could afford to take at least a weekly bath. Smelling good and being clean was considered the correct etiquette. Everyone washed their hands before meals and brushed their teeth regularly. People did stop going to bathhouses during the Black Death because they rightly feared getting infected.



A medieval bathhouse

The Church burned thousands of women accused of being “witches” and suppressed science

This is very wrong. The mass witch-hunts occurred in the 16th-17th century, which is in Early Modern Europe, not in the Middle Ages. The Inquisition, though started in the mid-13th Century, did not inflict widespread persecution on Western European Jews and Muslims until after the Middle Ages. The Church normally did not suppress science. In fact, the Catholic Church was the main sponsor of scientific development and was valuable in preserving several Roman and Greek works. You can find a list of technological advancements from Medieval Europe in here:

Medieval technology - Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medieval_technology

People had to drink alcohol because water was dirty

No. Although beer and wine were the common beverage, it was because the common knowledge in the Middle Ages was that alcoholic beverages promoted good health. People still drank water from time to time. People also knew how to tell between clean water and dirty water. Water was added to wine to dilute it, disproving this myth entirely.

The Middle Ages were filled with famine

The Middle Ages actually produced much more food that the Roman Empire ever did in their western provinces. Agricultural innovations, warmer climate, and the rise of feudalism increased crop yields to levels never seen before. It was the Black Death and the Hundred Years’ War that decreased the peasant population to tend to farms, causing the myths of great famines in the Middle Ages.

Most of the terrible things that happened in the Middle Ages were outside of their control. The Black Death, Mongol invasion, Vikings, etc. Urban development stalled after the Fall of the Western Roman Empire because there simply wasn’t enough manpower or population to sustain the Roman urban culture. Feudalism also suddenly seemed to be the best idea. War was bad, but most periods of history were equally if not more violent. Massacres of heretics and non-Christians were not a normal occurrence. That is why events such as the massacre of the Jewish Rhineland population and the Albigensian Crusade are so unique and notable.

Eric Wang

Sat · 5 upvotes including Kevin Chiu

One little thing: most people didn’t know how to tell contaminated water from clean water until germ theory was fully accepted. This is best shown in the miasma theory of disease which persisted even long after the Renaissance. Often contamination and disease-causing water can’t be identified by looking at it.

Lawrence Caga

Sun

Medieval people knew how to distinguish between contaminated and clean water, they mostly smelled or tasted it. Look at the comments to this answer as well.

Tim O'Neill's answer to Did all of Europe during the Middle Ages really not realize that boiling water made it safe? Did an entire continent for hundreds of years really not realize that they could have just boiled the water and drank it?
https://www.quora.com/Did-all-of-Europe-during-the-Middle-Ages-really-not-realize-that-boiling-water-made-it-safe-Did-an-entire-continent-for-hundreds-of-years-really-not-realize-that-they-could-have-just-boiled-the-water-and-drank-it/answer/Tim-ONeill-1

Dennis O'Leary

Sat · 2 upvotes including Kevin Chiu

An excellent summary! We might also point out that, under Church auspices, the great European universities were established. The myth of rowdy, lecherous Medieval priests actually refers to typical college boys who joined the Dominican order to get a subsidized college education. The process of granting degrees at medieval colleges was substantially the same as today, with the sames grades of degree, culminating in doctor.

AJ Granderson

Sun

Your answer may be applicable to the Middle Ages. I don’t think it would apply to the Dark Ages, roughly 400–1000 AD. Yes, I know academics don’t like the term, but that was a DARK time. Nothing of permanence was built, the lack of Pax Romana meant free ground for the Vikings, the people forgot how to build roads of Roman quality, or aqueducts, etc.

Stuart Burgess

Sun

There is also a tendency to look at the 1000-year middle ages as one period, probably stemming from the dark ages perception of this period. It wasn’t and your messaging is anecdotal sometimes reserved for the late middle ages and sometimes relevant to the early middle ages, as modernisation spread and in some case adversely affected the people. For example, it is true that people benefited from better farming than the Roman period as the feudalism system got on a roll. It essentially meant the farmers in the country were producing more than they needed; however, this necessitated breaking the feast/famine cycle in the underlying crop management of the day, which changed with crop rotation strategies. This change didn’t happen until later in the middle ages and adaptation was even longer in coming. The industrial revolution was a result of the agriculture revolution of the 14th, 15th, and 16th centuries. The other point worth making is that the urbanisation, linked to people being able to do something other than farming for a livelihood, was very late in coming too. The average person from the 1000′s would agree with you some of your points on hygiene and health; however, as the population of towns became cities, without talking about the black death, urban dwellers had a much rougher life than their countryside equivalents once they hit a critical mass. The black death decimated the cities because they were unhealthy hovels (and beyond their control only out of ignorance) whilst the countryside was spared in comparison.

Sebastian J. Paez

Sat · 1 upvote from Kevin Chiu

I am so thankful for this answer, my lord!

Hans-Georg Lundahl

Just now

“Studies show that in the Middle Ages, the average life expectancy was 30–40 years. That piece of data is very misleading. The life expectancy was dragged down by high infant mortality rates caused by disease.”

While I independently agree for 60–70 for normal people and 50–60 for royalty, I wonder how the high child mortality dragging life expectancy down that far is documented.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

Just now

“Everyone washed their hands before meals and brushed their teeth regularly.”

Medieval tooth brushes have been found?

Or descriptions of rubbing teeth with fingers and perhaps salt?

Hans-Georg Lundahl

Just now

"Although beer and wine were the common beverage, it was because the common knowledge in the Middle Ages was that alcoholic beverages promoted good health."

High calory intake and high proteine intake are good for avoiding or quickly curing infections.

And beer and wine and cider were more accessible than fresh apple juice the year round. (I was accidentally spelling it "apple Jews" ... an idea for a hieroglyphic or logo?)

Hans-Georg Lundahl

Just now

"War was bad, but most periods of history were equally if not more violent."

I saw a statistic of European death in % due to wars

1200-1300 c. 12 %
1300-1400 (don't recall, but higher than previous, lower than following)
1400-1500 even higher (25-30%?)
1500-1600 somewhat lower
1600-1700 c. 40 %?
1700-1800 somewhat lower
1800-1900 even lower
1900-2000 bloodier than any previous (45 % or just 40 and I misrecalled the one for 1600-1700?)

Mylène Truchon

Sat · 1 upvote

I know someone who completed a master degree in Medieval history, so I guess he was a reliable source (I hope so). He once published an article on Facebook about the fact most workers in the Middle Ages had more vacations than us. Funny.

A II

Helena Schrader

PhD History, University of Hamburg

Answered Sun

Kevin Chiu’s answer is excellent, I would simply like to add that there is also a popular misconception about women being “chattels” in the Middle Ages. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Women had a much higher status, as well as higher levels of education and economic empowerment in the Middle Ages than in the so-called “Renaissance” and thereafter right up to the 20th century. An excellent source, detailing and presented a wealth of specific examples, is Regine Pernoud’s book “Women in the Days of the Cathedrals,” originally published in French by the Univ. of Paris press, but now available in English.

For those who want a shorter summary see:

Chattels - Or What Medieval Women were NOT
http://defendingcrusaderkingdoms.blogspot.fr/2016/08/chattels-or-what-medieval-women-were-not.html

Nortobi

Sun

Good stuff here.

A III

Hector Mac

Strategy Consultant at Government of the United Kingdom (2003-present)

Answered Sun

The Middle Ages aren’t the worst epoch in modern history. The Dark Ages is a misnomer based on 19th Century historians painting this historical period as a time when the Roman armies retreated from European and Asian / African countries, and the civilising, unifying influence of the Pax Romana and the sophistication, technical prowess and trading empire of the Romans was on the wane before completely disappearing. These catastrophic events were said to undermine European economies and political systems, and were compounded by major outbreaks of the Black Death which disseminated the European social structure in the middle ages and ruined the economy by killing off one third of the European population.

The tragedy of the plague and its dramatic impact on the medieval world is an uncontested fact. However, the adverse effects of this series of outbreaks and the sudden and complete decline of Roman rule and civilisation have been grossly exaggerated.

The Roman Empire did decline and fall, but more gradually; and its influence and innovations lived on in various forms in the different royal courts and political systems that superseded the Empire. The influence of Roman civilisation and Latin culture did not suddenly disappear leaving barbaric regimes fighting violent battles amongst themselves for hegemony in Europe, and illiterate backward peasants eking out a living in an increasingly insecure and dangerous world.

I will list what I consider to be the main features of the European Middle Ages which demonstrate that it wasn’t such a terrible time to be alive.

• Whilst the Black Death did undoubtedly kill off one third of the European population and cause severe labour shortages resulting in much farmland reverting back to wilderness, it also created significant opportunities which shaped the modern world:
  
  
• The shortage of labour created a market for labour and a wage based economy on a large scale for the first time in Europe. Peasants were able for the first time to sell their labour and helped create a monetary economy. This was further developed by the evolution of feudalism, from a direct feudal relationship involving prescribed services in kind by clients to their overlord, patron, to a monetary based system where clients (knights, yeoman etc) were no longer in a position to offer their services to bring in their Lord’s harvest etc and instead compensated their Lord for their lack of service with money. As a result the first banks and widespread money supply appeared for the first time in Europe (initially in Northern Italy), which together with the nascent financial markets and monetarisation of the economy set the foundations for modern capitalism and our current financial systems.
  
  
• The Church retained a large part of the knowledge of the classical world. The Dark Ages were mistaken assumed to be a period when the light of the Ancient World’s knowledge was lost. This is plainly wrong. It continued to burn brightly in monasteries throughout Europe. The dramatic influence of the Renaissance, when supposedly Europe rediscovered the Ancient World’s knowledge, is inaccurate and overstated. There were at least two major Renaissance eras, the first being in the 12th Century right in the midst of the so-called Dark Ages.
  
  
• The Renaissance periods were informed as much by contact - through trade and the Moors in Spain - with the Arab world as it was by the Catholic Church. The Arab world in the 11th and 12th Centuries represented the medieval world’s great flowering of the liberal and humanist arts, with poets and artists from Persia, and scientists and engineers from Egypt, referencing the Ancient’s art forms and creating something new. More so than the Church, the flourishing of the Arts in the Arab world preserved the texts and treatises of the Ancient philosophers and kickstarted the 12th Century Renaissance.
  
  
• The Catholic Church and the monasteries were however responsible for the establishment of the world’s first universities in Paris and elsewhere. The theme of Courtly Love and Chivalry transformed medieval society and civilised and disciplined the world of warfare and politics. Certain notable women, such as Christine de Pisan, not only furthered the Arts but also documented for the first time the female perspective in Europe. Equality and human rights progressed further than they had under the Roman Empire; and industry and business not constrained by the use of slaves innovated and invented new technologies and processes. Notably the sophistication of trading ships and the improvements in Cartology expanded the known world and strengthened the influence of European civilisation and set the roots for late 16h Century birth of imperialism and colonialism. Improvements in glass grinding led to the first proper telescopes and the mapping of the cosmos. Medieval alchemy led to an understanding of chemical properties and directly contributed to the birth of the sciences.
  
  
• Not everything was great,… obviously. Aside from the Black Death, repeated incursions of Mongol Hordes disseminated the European countryside and peasantry. Barbarism, frequent social violence (it’s remarkable how social violence was been a major safety issue and cause of early death right up until the late 18th Century), tyranny and disease continued to afflict the medieval world. But equally it should be remembered that the growth in superstition and fear of witchcraft, the increase in torture and the growth in warcrimes following the abandonment of Chivalry, and the subjugation and mass killings of native peoples in the Americas and Africa, all happened not in the Middle Ages but in the Early Modern Period.
  
  
• I hope this goes some way to providing you with a true picture of the ‘awful’ Middle Ages.

Michael Jacobs

Mon

You at one point refer to, “the 12th Century right in the midst of the so-called Dark Ages.” If that’s how you’re defining “dark ages,” fine, but I have always considered the term “dark ages” to refer mostly to the FIRST millennium of the Common Era, as Rome’s influence receded from the areas of its former Western Empire, and as the gradual crumbling of the existing legal structure of Roman law left law enforcement in the hands of sometimes competent, sometimes feckless locals. By the time of Aquinas and the Scholastics (are they the instigator of that 12th-century First Renaissance you mentioned, re-discovering Aristotle from Islamic sources?), the “dark ages” had been over for quite some time, as I would define them — ending probably with the rise of Charlemagne, and the defeat of the Spanish Moors’ attempted invasion of what would become France, along with the first inklings of re-centralization of political power and resurgence of inter-city travel and trade which that permitted.

A IV

Morton Gelt

software architect, history buff

Answered Sep 16

Not really. There was a “golden” time in Western Europe (11th-mid 13th centuries) prior to plague and little ice age that lasted a couple of hundred years. Medieval universities were set up. Ideas of learning started to spread. Trade increased, agriculture yields jumped everywhere from England to France to Kievan Rus. Infection diseases were not as common as what would happen a bit later. It all brought in increase in population in the West that overrun the supplies and by the mid 13 century quality of life fall, which last until 1350s.

That golden age ended with the little ice age (1300), nomads (mongol and turk invasions), crops failure, and finally the great plague.

A V

Kjell Andersson

Answered Sat

The Middle Ages were followed by the Early Modern era, a period when modern nation states were founded. History has been written by people loyal to their nation states. They had good reasons to trash talk the Middle Ages. It was done to make to get their Nations States to look better. History has also been written be many atheists who hate Christianity. Some have been Protestant who hated Catholicism.

It all worked to give the Middle Ages a bad reputation. Do not believe them. Christianity, Catholicism and The Middle Ages are a lot better then they are depicted as by people who hate them.

Alan Sloan

Sat

Those BEAUTIFUL cathedrals took some making and the workmen must have been very intelligent. The wages of a carpenter for two/three days would cover the week's food (it's 25 years since I researched this) but I imagine tools and clothing were expensive. Housing was elementary for working people, mainly, thatch, mud and sticks. Thise houses dissolved and melted back into the landscape they came from. The big medieval houses typically found around the Cathedrals were for the very wealthy so their high quality was not typical.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

Just now

“Housing was elementary for working people, mainly, thatch, mud and sticks.”

Possibly, but if it was warm, what’s bad with that?

A VI

Haitham Ali

Answered Sun

They were terribe in Europe. Not so in the Islamic world, maybe you haven't read much about it. While Europe was in its dark ages the Islamic world was in its golden age.



Islamic Golden Age - Wikipedia
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_Golden_Age

For an insight into this world, read about the travels of Ibn Battuta.

Ibn Battuta - Wikipedia
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ibn_Battuta

Hans-Georg Lundahl

Just now

“They were terribe in Europe.”

Where do you get that from?

“While Europe was in its dark ages”

Where do you get that from?

William Andersson

Sun

It really wasn’t all that horrible in Europe though, it’s been greatly exxagerated. Perhaps you should the other answers here, dispelling myths is always good.

Haitham Ali

Sun

What we learned in school was that sewage was running in the streets, sickness was rife, poverty, no tangible scientific advancement, witch-hunting….

I'll have a read

Hans-Georg Lundahl

Just now

"sewage was running in the streets"

It is called a gutter. You still have those between main part of road and trottoir and this means rain helps the cleaning.

In Paris it rains about 1 day in 2.

"sickness was rife,"

We actually got both plague and leprosy from the east. And apart from those, we were fairly healthy.

"poverty,"

Christ said, "the poor ye have always with/among you". There is poverty now.

If anything, the poor have a harder time now, since more looked down on (for instance, by immigrant Muslims)

"no tangible scientific advancement,"

If you or anyone in your family is wearing glasses, the irony is glaring. Glasses to correct eye-sight were invented by Roger Bacon in 1268 or before writing the book that year, after studying Al-Hazen (one of yours, btw).

"witch-hunting…."

More of it in Early Modern Age, actually.

And one witch cult in Germany seems to have practised Satanism and Abortion, Muslims would have killed them too.

Comment deleted

Mon

Haitham Ali

Mon

That's utterly ridiculous. Read man. I may not know about Europe during the “dark ages” except what I learned in school but even a simple Google search will show you the golden age lived in the Umayyad and Abbasid Islamic states, you can see in southern Spain until today the marvels of engineering that still stand, and you can thank the Islamic preservation and advancement of knowledge for sparking the Renaissance.

The islamic world was so powerful even English minted coins of the time bore the seal “no God but Allah, Mohammed his messenger”. Offa Rex, Anglo-Saxon King

Hans-Georg Lundahl

Just now

Looking up the Offa Rex reference:

"The coin shown in the image was minted by the Anglo-Saxon King Offa Rex (757-796 C.E.). It was discovered in 1841 C.E., and is displayed in the British Museum. This coin is an imitation of Muslim dinar in circulation during the eighth century."

There seems to have been found exactly one coin, it is in the British museum.

You have not shown any real evidence Offa of Mercia actually became a Muslim. Offa could have found a Muslim dinar, tried to remint it, and given up.

"Read man. I may not know about Europe during the “dark ages” except what I learned in school but even a simple Google search will show you the golden age lived in the Umayyad and Abbasid Islamic states, you can see in southern Spain until today the marvels of engineering that still stand,"

Not denying Muslims had technology.

"and you can thank the Islamic preservation and advancement of knowledge for sparking the Renaissance."

Which one of them?

A certain Medieval Renaissance started out with high reliance of Arabic texts of Aristotle, and it remained a student of Averroes, Avicenna, Al-Hazen even after getting access to good Greek texts of Aristotle, from Byzantium.

As to what you usually call "the Renaissance" it had very little to do with Arabic texts, more with even more Greek ones, and with indigenous ingenuity. By then some technology, in fine arts at least, had equalled and surpassed Muslim technology.

Steve Huck

Mon

The Islamic world is a psycho, mass murdering serial killer and sometimes Europe does stupid things to try and appease them, like minting coins, or today, accepting ISIS ‘refugees’.

A VII

Alex Richardson

studied at Bennington, NE

Answered Sep 16

Life had always sucked.

Ancient Rome had hundreds of thousands of people packed like sardines. Living conditions were accordingly not great.

The Romans enslaved people and burned entire cities to the ground.

Life had always sucked.

The main reason that the early medieval ages are so villainized is because they postponed Western centralization.

The western world had for some time been undergoing centralization that reached its apex with the Roman Empire:



Urbanization (see Ancient Rome) also reached a peak.

However, with the Migration Period, massive decentralization and deurbanization occurred.

It was no longer really safe to live in an open city anymore, with invasions and whatnot, which provided the impetus for manorialism, where people lived in rural fortified villages.

Usually, they made a deal with the land owner to live there. This evolved into feudalism.

This all caused a flight from the cities, where lots of trade happened. That and constant war caused trade and communication routes in the Empire to collapse.

In all, this meant that a 6th century Italian peasant was less in tune with regional happenings than a 2nd century one.

Eventually though, this deurbanization reversed, and here we are now:



So naturally the Early Medieval Ages are seen as a step back in terms of societal progress.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

Just now

“However, with the Migration Period, massive decentralization and deurbanization occurred.”

Not so massive as to actually interrupt cities.

Jacob Bieker

Oct 1 · 1 upvote

True, but, as a Roman, at least you could take a good, safe bath in a communal bathhouse and go home to write a memoir without worrying about having your town razed by Muslim raiders or berserkers. At least if you were rich and/or lived well inside the borders of the Empire.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

Just now

Most of the latter part of Middle Ages, you could that too.

In the manorial system, you probably took baths more privately.

Dennis James Slade

Oct 4

THE DESTRUCTION of the once great and powerful empire was devastating…..and the struggle for survival was in the forefront of the Romans at the time. Life and advantages began to disappear. The actual of fleeing from the city of Rome, was not completely understood…that life was totally vulnerable, and it continued for centuries. Therefore it is rightly named….Dark Ages as the beginning of the European Middle Ages. The struggle for survival will continue for throughout the Dark Ages. Somehow, and little by little—-Prosperity brought on the High Middle Ages….but that was about 500 years later.

Tom Guelcher

Oct 20

It doesn't matter the age you live in. Some will be unhappy and some won't. To say the Middle Ages were an unpleasant time is to say any age is an unpleasant time. Life is what you make it. Even if you were consigned as a slave and had to work 18 hours a day, it's what you make it. You could have a beautiful wife, lovely children, take pride in your duties and work, have a good relationship with your master, other workers. In short, it could be a happy life regardless of the circumstances.

Thomas Knowles

Sep 19

I’ve needed a word like ‘manorialism’ for a while now - thanks!

Haroun Lord

Sep 21 · 2 upvotes

“life had always sucked”

this would make a good title for History books.

Martin Lacika

Sep 22

or a youtube video

Lloyd Blunden

Sep 30

Love this answer. Vivid and concise. Wish it were 100 times longer.

John Bell

Oct 1

You're forgetting the influx/ importance of the topplers of the Roman Empire; a. Christianity b. The Vandals, Visigoths i.e. barbarians from the north. When i was in university, years ago, we were taught that the end of the Roman Empire was marked by the 1st emperor who was actually an adopted visigoth or barbarian who assimilated into the the Roman Senate or somehow into their political structure. I would guess about 400AD. Or 1617 BP.

Ancient times, but the Romans were great engineers, look at all their structures still standing, from the Midwest to Italy to England, and the coast of N.Africa , let alone the roads.

Thomas Berthil Lund Jørgensen

Sep 17 · 2 upvotes

Actually living standards for ordinary folks were by and large, better during the Medieval Ages, than during the height of the Roman Empire. This is implied by forensics of bones from said periods. Of course such methods are marked by a significant uncertainty, but it “seems” that the average living expectations during the Roman Empire, were as low as 25 years (huge child mortality, huge mortality among women giving birth) and even as low as 17 years for slaves. In the Medieval period, it has calculated (again of course with great uncertainty) that the average life span was around 35 years or more…! Better odds during the Medieval period for most people and better standards of living : Better nutrition, better clothing, better care of sick and elderly through the social network of the Church and its monasteries, better hygiene even…the Romans and Greeks were not as advanced in personal hygiene as they are often attributed…it was mostly only among the social elite, that hygiene was good ! The Medieval period were of course “tough living” compared to modern day society, but so were life in antiquity ! The Medieval period has a unfairly bad reputation !

Writing Advice, Quora

Q

How can I start writing a book, step-by-step?
https://www.quora.com/How-can-I-start-writing-a-book-step-by-step/answer/Hans-Georg-Lundahl

C on Q

Hi all,

I’d like to write a book. But I don’t know which point should I start. How can I make an outline to see which step should be done first, which step should be done next, and last? So that the book is not messy and cover all things that link to each other.

Feel free to recommend more tips!

Best.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

Writing? I've been doing that for some time.

Written just now

Quoting from Brian Dean:

“I try to know maybe ten events in the story before I write. That is, I know ten stops or locations on the path of the story. This means that when I start at the beginning and get stuck, I jump forward to the next known point and start writing there. Usually it doesn’t take long until I know what should go in that gap between sections.”

While I was more active on writing Chronicle of Susan Pevensie, I started out knowing four events, and wrote four chapters.

I then proceeded, naturally, not to write at the beginning and forward, but systematically filling in between sections.

Only sometimes writing forwards.

Tim O'Neill on Jews and Vatican (quora, link)

I have sometimes reposted material from quora here, but this one I just link. Tim O'Neill is not allowing me to post comments under his answers, so it would not contain any own contributions.

Did any Jews in Europe flee to Vatican City for better protection under the Pope? Did the Pope try to save those refugees?
answer by Tim O'Neill, Head Inquisitor against bad history.
Updated Jul 8, 2016 · Upvoted by Stefan Hill, Ioannes Petras, and Pontus Rudholm
https://www.quora.com/Did-any-Jews-in-Europe-flee-to-Vatican-City-for-better-protection-under-the-Pope-Did-the-Pope-try-to-save-those-refugees/answer/Tim-ONeill-1

Historians, Christians, Non-Christians

How different is history according to Christianity than history according to historians?
https://www.quora.com/How-different-is-history-according-to-Christianity-than-history-according-to-historians/answer/Hans-Georg-Lundahl

Own answer

Hans-Georg Lundahl,

History buff since childhood. CSL & Eco added to Medieval lore. + Classics.

Written just now

You have to clarify two points:

• 1 a) Do you mean pre-Roman history and pre-History or do you mean Medieval History?
• 1 b) Or, between them, Greco-Roman Antique History, including but not limited to life and times of Jesus?
• 2) What exact Historians do you mean? Do only modern historians count, or do Christian historians of pre-modern centuries count? Are you aware that many modern historians are Christians?

Meanwhile, assuming you mean only modern Historians count, I’ll give it a try for each of the periods.

• 1) In pre-Roman and pre-historic history, the difference is very marked, due to the fact that modern historians (including Christians) accept C14 dating and do not accept Genesis as a historic source.
• 2) In Greco-Roman antiquities, modern historians range from fully Christian to very anti-Christian, from those accepting Jesus Christ as God and Lord, over those who think the Gospels gave a human only rabbi a makeoever, to those who deny the Jesus of the Gospels even had a human model at all in the first place (the latter not being most typical). Not surprisingly, the topic on which they differ most is the life and times of Jesus and closely related topics.
• 3) And in Middle Ages, it is among the non-Christians (and Evangelical Christians) mostly non-professionals, non-historians who differ from the Catholic version of what happened.

Here is some more detail on the example of the Middle Ages.

For instance, all agree the Crusades happened, so pro- and anti-Catholic historians only disagree on whether they were justified or not. Same with Inquisition. Professional historians (outside East Block Communism and 19th C. Protestantism) tend to either think they were somehow justified or if not at least somewhat mitigated. BUT where versions of what happened differ, it is non-historians who disagree with Catholic Historians.

For instance, a Catholic Historian will say that Middle Ages had a Latin Liturgy and Bible because Latin was a vernacular in Late Antiquity and remained largely understandable to men starting to speak somewhat different even after Latin as now taught in school had gone out of use, partly also by adapting to popular pronunciation : in Church Slavonic, “of the lions” or the City which in German is Lemberg will be lvoov according to spelling (in Latin alphabet transcription), but in Russian it will be pronounced Lvoff and in Ukrainean it will be pronounced Lviv. So also with Latin a few centuries in into the Middle Ages.

This changed in 800, in the Empire of Charlemagne, because that is where Latin had been pronounced with greatest divergence. An Englishman who had learned Latin only as a “foreign language” in his country - but one which had been there for centuries as such - gave the Empire a much older pronunciation. Result, quickly noticed, people no longer understood if they were not clerks. Very quickly this in turn resulted in Sermons becoming mandatory, so nobody should miss what the Gospels was about. This happened in 813.

A professional historian of the Middle Ages (pro- or anti-Catholic) will not disagree with this.

The one who will claim that Latin was introduced or kept because or despite its being incomprehensible, is the Anti-Catholics who is NOT a professional historian.

Same as with claims the Catholic Church was against scientific research. Or that Columbus discovered the Earth was Round.

Curiously, when a fairly good historian who is an Atheist, like Tim O’Neill, corrects any of the urban legends about Medieval History, he is accused by non-historians of being a biassed Christian only posing as an Atheist. He is not.

After the Middle Ages, historians usually disagree more along lines of factions (including within Christianity) than about anything which is specifically pro- or anti-Christian.

One could say that Soviet historiography about Orthodox Church in Czar Russia was anti-Christian, and I think it ultimately is, so I will call it anti-Christian in that sense, but there are Christians, including Russian Orthodox, who actually agree with it, while there are atheist anticommunists who disagree with it.

Are constructed languages (Na'vi, etc) really languages? Why or why not? (quora)

1) HGL's F.B. writings : On Constructed Languages · 2) Assorted retorts from yahoo boards and elsewhere : ... on Con-Langs · 3) HGL's F.B. writings : Noster Franzeis - üne Lange konstreute per mei! · 4) Φιλολoγικά/Philologica : Are constructed languages (Na'vi, etc) really languages? Why or why not? (quora)

Q

Are constructed languages (Na'vi, etc) really languages? Why or why not?

Comment on Q

Are made up languages considered languages at all? What are examples of some fairly developed ones?

Hans-Georg Lundahl

I speak two langs, Latin and Germanic. In a few dialects.

Written just now

By whom?

Some would not consider Sindarin or Dothraki as languages because they have no native speakers.

Neither has Latin, but it certainly is a language.*

“Are made up languages considered languages at all?”

Depends a bit on what you mean by “made up”.

Supposing, as is probable, Book of Mormon was a human rather than a diabolic fraud, Nephitic would be a made up language in so far as Joseph Smith only pretended to have been translating it from Nephitic, but never had any such original.

OR, he could have prepared a few neat phrases in Nephitic, just in case.

OR, a devil could have really constructed a text in conlang Nephitic and really helped Joseph Smith to make an accurate translation.

(I don’t think Joseph Smith would have had the time to write a full original in Nephitic himself or even a full translation to it : he seems not to have been a talented linguist).

In the first case Nephitic is a fictitious language, in the latter two, to various degrees, a constructed one.

Fictitious languages are NOT languages, constructed ones are.

* I am here sharpening the criteria for native language : some - one I know - learned Latin as first language, but in those cases parents or one parent had learned it as second language. Native language would be more like learning a first language from parents who also learned it as a first language. By now probably someone has Quenya with Neo-Quenya as a bilingual "first language" too. Less probably, as an exclusive one.

Other answers:

Ranjodh Singh Arora

student, fond of languages

Written Sep 4

I must say, according to some linguists, conlangs are not considered languages unless they have multiple native speakers. Klingon or Dothraki are therefore not considered languages. But Esperanto and Ido are.

Alexandre Coutu

B.A. in Linguistics

Written Oct 4, 2013

Upvoted by André Müller

Yes.

The most famous example of a constructed language is Esperanto, which has a fairly large community of speakers.

The basic definition of language is, in my own words, a system of meaningful units (ie. words carry meaning) that are organized according to a series of rules (ie. grammar); the manipulation of these units within the framework of these rules allows the user to modulate that meaning. This definition is certainly large enough to encompass all man-made languages, oral or signed, and even computer languages.

I suppose, from a layman’s point of view, you could say that if you are looking at a list of words that were given meaning, and a list of minimal rules that imposes limits of how these words are organized, you are looking at a system that can be learned and that two people could use to communicate meaning to each other. That, fundamentally, is what a language is.

George Corley

PhD student in Linguistics, University of Wisconsin at Madison

Written Oct 18, 2013

Upvoted by André Müller and Logan R. Kearsley

Constructed languages, or conlangs, are generally full languages with developed grammar and a lexicon. To what degree a conlang is "complete" varies, but for myself and many in the community there is a certain point where you do consider it a conlang. Now, most conlangs are never spoken, never alive, so to speak, but even many of those are well-crafted and fully usable languages.

Some well known examples of well-developed conlangs include:

Quenya and Sindarin (by J.R.R Tolkien) those familiar "Elvish" languages in The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. Tolkien worked on his Elven languages for his entire life, resulting in many different versions of fully functioning languages, and a large lexicon (I have heard that approximately 3,000 Quenya words have been found).

Esperanto (by L.L. Zamenhof), mentioned above. The original pamphlet was more of a sketch of a language, but the community that grew around it developed it further into a fully usable language that even has a number of native speakers.

Klingon (by Marc Okrand), contracted for the Star Trek franchise. Klingon has some odd vocabulary holes, but it has proven complete enough to produce translations of the Bible and Hamlet.

Dothraki, Valyrian, Irathient, Castithan (by David J. Peterson) all of these were contracted for television (the first two for Game of Thrones, the others for Defiance), and David takes his craft very seriously. He also has developed some sketches (what he calls "language pallettes") for a couple other Defiance languages, and has a number of languages he has developed on his own.

And, of course, there are many, many more that are less well-known. I usually don't self-pimp, but if you want to take a listen to the Conlangery Podcast, we have featured many constructed languages on the show -- and even that only scratches the surface.

One Isaiah, Not Two, Not Three

Q

Was the Book of Isaiah (Bible) written by one person?
https://www.quora.com/Was-the-Book-of-Isaiah-Bible-written-by-one-person

Own answer

There are two answers.

Hebrew (both Jewish and Christian, but not Samaritan) tradition says, yes, all of Isaiah was written by the prophet known by that name.

The other answer is, "no, differences of content and style indicate there were really two authors".

Exit common sense and enter a discussion on what parts of Isaiah are Isaiah and what parts are Deutero-Isaiah.

Robert Edward Lewis,

Relatively knowledgable about theology and Church history

Written Fri · Upvoted by Will Fox

Even the usually conservative/traditional Roman Catholic church has agreed with modern scholarship that there are several different persons responsible for the content of the book of Isaiah.

http://www.usccb.org/bible/isaiah/0

“The complete Book of Isaiah is an anthology of poems composed chiefly by the great prophet, but also by disciples, some of whom came many years after Isaiah. In 1–39 most of the oracles come from Isaiah and reflect the situation in eighth-century Judah. Sections such as the Apocalypse of Isaiah (24–27), the oracles against Babylon (13–14), and probably the poems of 34–35 were written by followers deeply influenced by the prophet, in some cases reusing earlier Isaianic material; cf., e.g., 27:2–8 with 5:1–7.

Chapters 40–55 (Second Isaiah, or Deutero-Isaiah) are generally attributed to an anonymous poet who prophesied toward the end of the Babylonian exile. From this section come the great oracles known as the Servant Songs, which are reflected in the New Testament understanding of the passion and glorification of Christ. Chapters 56–66 (Third Isaiah, or Trito-Isaiah) contain oracles from the postexilic period and were composed by writers imbued with the spirit of Isaiah who continued his work.”

Hans-Georg Lundahl

You are linking to a page by United States Conference of Catholic Bishops.

They are NOT conservative.

Will Fox

Do you think it's at all possible that his disciples changed some of his writings minorly?

Robert Edward Lewis

The person believed to be 1 Isaiah lived about 400 years before his work was merged with other writings into what is currently known as the Book of Isaiah. Tradition and sayings and writing were handed down over centuries. Probably some things were changed. But the stuff commonly attributed to 2nd and 3rd Isaiah is very different from the first part.

It is like attributing to Abraham Lincoln an essay on why America should send a man to the moon. Is it possible that Abraham would have been interested in the moon? Yes. Would he have written about space exploration, years before the airplane was invented and a century before space flight became a real possibility? No.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

"But the stuff commonly attributed to 2nd and 3rd Isaiah is very different from the first part."

Very possible.

"It is like attributing to Abraham Lincoln an essay on why America should send a man to the moon."

Not really.

"Is it possible that Abraham would have been interested in the moon? Yes."

Not a real parallel, since ....

"Would he have written about space exploration, years before the airplane was invented and a century before space flight became a real possibility? No."

The difference is, Isaiah was a prophet, Abraham Lincoln was not.

Can St John, on Patmos, have written about air planes or helicopters near two millennia before they were invented (for the former perhaps reinvented)? Well, it seems locusts with faces like men are a fairly visual description of choppers.

Can he have written about ASCII binary numeric values of letters, near two millennia before computers were invented? Well, ASCII fits Domitian very much better than either Greek or (as far as I knonw) Hebrew gematria.

DOMITIANE = 68+79+77 ...

Since Isaiah was a prophet, all of your argument boils down to prophecy not being a realistic option, to all prophecies being ex eventu.

Robert Edward Lewis

you totally misunderstand the role of a prophet in historic Judah/Israel. They are not future tellers, they are people who dream possibilities. No one knows the details of the future, not even God. But people with gifts and intuition can point to such things. Martin Luther King was a prophet. But did he talk abut iPhones and Tesla cars???… no. Neither did Isaiah 1 talk about the destruction of the Temple and its restoration, of exile and deliverance. That prophet talked about things that were happening in his world and the consequences of injustice.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

"They are not future tellers, they are people who dream possibilities."

For exactly one scenario, you are nearly right : if God foretells a conditional punishment and the prophet gives the culprits a chance of repentance. Even so, should they clearly not repent and should they not be punished in foretold way either, we would be dealing with a false prophet.

The Torah does say that prophets are foretelling things, since it gives an inerrant fulfilment of what the prophet foretells as one criterium for telling a true prophet from a false one.

"No one knows the details of the future, not even God."

False. God is not in time, therefore God knows the "future" (what is such or once was such to us) as we know the present which is before us here and now.

"Martin Luther King was a prophet. But did he talk abut iPhones and Tesla cars???… no."

Martin Luther King was not a prophet.

He was an intellectual, he famously had a dream, but he was not a prophet.

"Neither did Isaiah 1 talk about the destruction of the Temple and its restoration, of exile and deliverance."

There was one Isaiah. Your reason for posing a II and a III possibly too, is denial of what prophecy means.

"That prophet talked about things that were happening in his world and the consequences of injustice."

He also talked about things that were GOING to happen, like Cyrus, and of future consequences of prolonged injustice.

Part of Catholic Response

The story of this controversy centres almost wholly round the pontificate of Pius X, in which its acute phases occurred, but its origins stretch far back into the nineteenth century. The rapid progress made by the natural sciences in that epoch,- together with a more critical study of ancient documents, had set in train many new speculations. There were those who proclaimed that the freshly acquired knowledge, both historical and scientific, had undermined the foundations of Christianity, if not of all religion ; others affirmed that the new knowledge was either not knowledge at all, or, if it was real knowledge, was reconcilable with orthodox religion. A third party asserted that, while the essentials of Christianity were untouched, modifications of Christian dogma had become imperative. This was a relatively easy position for a Protestant to take up, since the Protestant denominations disclaimed doctrinal infallibility. No Catholic could seriously maintain it. For a man who held that one Catholic dogma was untenable was as much outside the Church as another who said that all must be rejected.

Source

Meeting the Higher Criticism By HUMPHREY J. T. JOHNSON
The Tablet of 29th May 1954, Page 11
http://archive.thetablet.co.uk/issue/29th-may-1954/11/8568

[While Johnson accurately tells us why Catholics rejected Modernism, he doesn't quite stick to it.]

Citing Pontifical Bible Commission 1908 with Explanations

Regarding prophecy, it is one hallmark of modernist biblical interpretation that no prophecy is acknowledged to be truly supernatural in character: if Daniel predicts something that did in fact happen in the future, the only "rational" explanation is that Daniel must have been written after the fact to give the appearance of prophecy. This anti-supernaturalism is usually taken for granted and not explicitly stated. In Reply I, the PBC condemns the following proposition:

"That the predicitions read in the Book of Isaiah-and throughout the Scriptures-are not predictions properly so called, but either narrations put together after the event, or, if anything has to be acknowledged as foretold before the event, that the prophet foretold it not in accordance with a supernatural revelation of God who foreknows future events, but by conjectures formed...and shrewdly by natural sharpness of mind..."

Reply II upholds the eschatological and Messianic interpretation of the Old Testament prophecies against an over-exuberant preterism (the belief that prophecies were fulfilled not long after they were made and were always for the prophet's own time only and have no future fufilment). The following proposition in condemned:

"Isaiah and the other prophets did not put forth predicitions except about events that were to happen in the immediate future or after no long space of time..."

The remaining three replies all deal with the argument that Isaiah had multiple authors. This is a very common assumption nowadays, one even made by otherwise conservative and orthodox persons (although some still cast doubt on the multiple-authorship theory, as does Fr. Kenneth Baker, S.J., in his book Inside the Bible, where the multiple-authorship theory is mentioned but not endorsed). The main argument for the multiple authorship of Isaiah comes from the fact that chapters 40-66 seem to speak to post-Exilic Jews. Taking the presupposition that Isaiah could not have known or written about events two centuries in the future, it is presumed that another author wrote chapters 40-66. As evidence for this, modernists will point out that had Isaiah actually prophesied about these events so far in advance, his contemporaries would not have known what he was talking about!

Reply III condemns the idea that a prophet must be understood by his contemporaries. Reply IV condemns the idea that a philological or textual critique of Isaiah turns up any evidence of mutliple authorship. Reply V deals with the possibility that many of these arguments taken altogether could cast doubt on the single-authorship and lead us to believe that the book was attributed "not to Isaiah alone, but to two or even several authors." Like the previous assertions, this one is condemned as well. While the idea of multiple authorship itself is not condemned, the Replies condemnt the notion that there is any textual evidence of multiple-authorship. Thus, the PBC is saying, "If you believe in mutiple-authorship, know that there is no good reason to do so."

Source

Unam Sanctam Catholicam : Revisiting the Pontifical Biblical Commission (part 1)
http://unamsanctamcatholicam.blogspot.fr/2008/05/revisiting-pontifical-biblical.html

[Blog owner is known as Boniface X, a Papal claimant, though not the one I support. As per 23.I.2017]

Old and Original Languages (from Quora)

Φιλολoγικά/Philologica : 1) Old and Original Languages (from Quora) · Creation vs. Evolution : 2) Origin of Language (from Quora, Debating with Barry Hampe)

How did people first figure out what words in foreign languages mean?

I wonder how people first learned the meaning of words in a different language, especially for those with abstract or complicated meanings.

Own answer:

In history, most regions have been in contact for so long that one way of learning a foreign language is most often available, which is asking a previous bilingual.

Now, you are asking about situations in which language acquisition needs to start all over.

This is not quite just a historical question, it is also about situations which occur today. A missionary or an ethnologist finds a new people in Amazonas or New Guinea. They have to start all over.

Now, the thing is missionaries and ethnologists are usually good linguists, so they know how to arrange for systematic study.

Presumably the first time it happened was just after Babel, and they weren’t very good linguists back then.

So, presumably they did it like ethnologists or missionaries do - Jan Miś gave an example for concrete words - and sometimes fail.

I recall trying that method when starting to learn English.

I already knew that “blomma” was “flower”. I wanted to know how to say stem or stalk and pointed to one, and the boys I was with thought I pointed to the flower and told me “flower”.

Who was the earliest human whose name we know?

Asking this just out of curiosity.

xkcd Airplane Message says that Iry Hor was the earliest human whose name we know. But Wiki entry for Iry-Hor says that he is the earliest ruler of Egypt known by name. Is there any other person from maybe outside Egypt or non-ruler that we know to be the earliest person whose name we know?

Own answer:

If Adam was the earliest man of all, and we know his name, it was Adam.

If not, how can any early man’s name in any other ancient culture than the Hebrew be guaranteed to be not “mythical”?

How did the earliest humans communicate without a language system?

Own answer:

As far as the Bible tells us, there never ever was any such situation.

Adam was created with full linguistic not just potential but also competence in the Adamic language which arguably was Hebrew.

As far as evolutionism goes, there would be different guesses.

I don’t think any of them is convincing.

[other answer]

Michael DeBusk

Armchair linguist, and not an expensive fancy armchair either

Written Nov 22

No one knows, but we can assume by watching our fellow apes. They vocalize, use gestures and postures, and have very expressive faces, just as we do.

Ape Communication

Hans-Georg Lundahl

That guess is one of the major issues which seriously alienated me from Evolutionism.

The problem is : how do you develop anything like a human language from such a situation?

How were languages made by humans?

Own answer:

Do you mean "language" or "languageS"?

If you mean language as such, Bible says humans didn't invent it, God gave it. Evolutionists keep guessing otherwise, but can't get together a concrete how.

If you mean languageS, one very common process is being sloppy about details in the language you learned from your parents. Or even doing a variation on purpose because it sounds cool. Some of these changes catch on so well they become only option for future generations. When many of these have piled up, you have a new language. At least in speech. When it comes to writing, the diversity of spoken language can continue to be bridged by a common written one, until for some reason there is a break.

A less common one is to be confronted with having very many different languages, and trying to bridge. I personally think the earliest attempt at Indo-European would have been an attempt at a bridging language. Perhaps it only got as far as vocabulary items and case endings and personal endings on verbs (shared with Fenno-Ugric, mostly) catching on, while they otherwise kept their languages as previously. One late example which hasn't caught on is of course Esperanto.

If you mean languages invented just for fun, take a look at how Tolkien did it. Fauskanger on his site has gathered some of the info available from various hints of that author. And Tolkien need not have been the first conlanger.

What were the earliest human languages like, and how do we know?

Own answer:

There are two views on this one.

The Catholic view is that the first human language was probably Hebrew and certainly a language with full range of expression, given by God to Adam, except that Adam got to name the animals.

How we know? From the Bible.

The Evolutionist view is the first human languages were more limited in expression, intermediate in range between the human languages we know and the voice signals made by animals.

How they know?

From the comic book Rahan showing a situation in which personal pronouns were avoided? From the Jungle language in Tarzan being shared both between "great apes" and "men of Opar"? No, these are fiction.

From assessing the brain capacity and concluding from there that such and such a hominid could not yet have spoken a fully human language? No, since it is not clear that Australopithecus Africanus ever spoke any language, nor that Homo Erectus could not have spoken languages as we know, from studying their brains - or rather skull cavities where the brains once were. And from the genome of Neanderthals which has been sequenced, we know they were genetically as capable as we of having a normal language.

So, only from assuming that early humans evolved from non-human ancestors, that is how.

No human population alive today speaks a language which could reasonably by a linguist be characterised as belonging to subhuman and pre-human hominids. Unlike what certain colonials and non-linguists thought that the linguists would find.

[other answer]

Baggio Wong,

studied at West Island School

Written 7h ago

Tim Doner gives an interesting talk about language origins, and if memory serves, talks about reconstructing (potentially) how old languages sound. It’s worth a listen if you have time.

Tim Doner - Family Matters: A Look at the Indo-European Languages
Polyglot Conference
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FAPQEx3tgDQ

Essentially, again, this is from memory, there’s no way of knowing how old languages sound.

But we can guess.

By comparing similar words in related languages, it’s possible to deduce how certain syllables are constructed and pronounced.

But I’m by no means knowledgeable - the video presents the topic in a really interesting way.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

You have a problem.

If the Bible is true, Proto-Indo-European can’t have been spoken in 4000 BC (a modern Creationist would consider that finds dated to 4000 BC are misdated due to a lower carbon 14 content back then). Unless PIE were the language given by God to Adam, but theologically, Hebrew is lots likelier.

If on the other hand Evolution is true, you haven’t answered the question, as there is no chance Proto-Indo-European can have been spoken by the earliest humans about 100 000 years or 200 000 years earlier than Proto-Indo-European in 4000 BC.

Baggio Wong

Hans-Georg Lundahl Ah, that seems like very specialized knowledge on the topic. I didn’t know. Thanks for the addendum. And, no, I don’t have an answer the the question, I don’t really know myself, so I can’t definitively answer per se, I’m just pointing to a video I watched a long time that might be interesting. :)

Hans-Georg Lundahl

Thank you very much, if it is the video I think it is, I liked it too.

It is just that it is about a language group which started out much more recently than the earliest humans.

I am just watching another one, on a related topic.