Why is St. Erasmus St. Elmo in Italian?

New blog on the kid: Why Did Tolkien Love Trees? · Φιλολoγικά/Philologica: Why is St. Erasmus St. Elmo in Italian?

First, I'm going out on a limb on citing a name from memory.

Heremod seems to have been on some point pronounced Herismod. I may be wrong, and I couldn't find it. Or even simpler, Erasmo was at some point pronounced Eramo, close enough to Heremod without an -s- inside. Because Italian tended to lose -s after vowel. Late Latin on a colloquial level had two cases, and for masculines of the second declinsion, the nominative singular and accusative plural both ended in -os (variously spelled -os or -us), while the accusative singular was -o and the nominative plural -i. Italian kept the two forms without an s, so, Erasmos could have been pronounces Eramo at some point.

Here is where Heremod comes in. It sometimes shortens to Hermod (in Norse myth the herald of the gods, probably after Hermes), and that sounds well within the reach of Ermo, one of the Italian versions of Erasmus.

And the other one? Helmut has an L were Hermod has an R, and so Helmut would be pronounced Elmo, precisely as Hermod would have been pronounced Ermo.

Since Helmut first was a given name, but since the 1500's also exists as a surname, we can take it Helmut is Medieval. Old enough, perhaps, to explain Elmo.

And, at least in the combination "fuoco di Sant'Elmo" the phrase is noted from the 1560's so presumably after the earlist mentions of Helmut./HGL

Le suédois n'est pas une langue slave

Elle est une langue germanique, plus précisément germanique du nord.

Si du Nord en Sud (omettant les colonies) on énumère les langues germaniques qui sont aujourd'hui langue officielle d'un pays souverain (ou de plus qu'un) en entier, ce sont :

• langues germaniques du nord
  
  
  • icelandais
  • norvégien nouveau
  • norvégien du livre
  • suédois
  • danois
  
  
  
• langues germaniques de l'ouest
  
  
  • anglais
  • néerlandais
  • allemand.

Prenons les phrases "À Yahweh est la terre et ce qu’elle renferme," / "Au Seigneur est la terre et ce qu'elle renferme" (Psaume 23/24 verset 1) et "à terre et à mer" ... et ensuite en Polonais, une langue slave.

• langues germaniques du nord
  
  
  • icelandais
    Drottni heyrir jörðin og allt sem á henni er
    á landi og sjó
  • norvégien nouveau
    Jordi høyrer Herren til - og alt det som fyller henne,
    ?
  • norvégien du livre
    Jorden og det som fyller den, hører Herren til,
    på land og sjø
  • suédois
    Jorden och allt som uppfyller den tillhör Herren,
    till lands och hafs
  • danois
    Jorden med alt, hvad den rummer, ... tilhører Herren,
    på land og til søs
  
  
  
• langues germaniques de l'ouest
  
  
  • anglais
    The earth is the Lord's and the fulness thereof:
    on land and sea
  • néerlandais
    De aarde is des Heeren, mitsgaders haar volheid,
    te land en ter zee
  • allemand.
    Dem HERRN gehört die Erde und was sie erfüllt,
    zu Land und Meer

Polonais
Do Pana należy ziemia i to, co ją napełnia,
na lądzie i na morzu

Je pense que c'est assez évident que les langues germaniques tiennent ensemble. Y compris donc mon suédois. Et non pas avec le polonais ou les autres langues slaves. J'étais surpris que celles-ci aussi distinguaient deux mots pour "terre" ... si le mot en polonais est emprunté de l'allemand, le mot en russe veut dire "sur le sec" ...

Donc, contrairement à "terre" utilisé pour les deux conceptes, ce n'est pas juste le germanique, mais également le slave, au moins moderne, qui utilise deux mots différents.

Le français et l'hébreu en utilisent un seul.

Pour un Hébreu des temps anciens et pour un Français, l'Apocalypse 7:1 ne va pas impliquer platisme.

Après cela, je vis quatre anges qui étaient debout aux quatre coins de la terre ;

Il va simplement comprendre ce que les langues germaniques appellent "land" et que ça diffère du globe dont la superficie comporte aussi la mer.

Mais un Russe et un Américain auraient alors attendu un autre mot que "earth" ou "zemlia" et la traduction donne justement "earth" et "zemlia" ou en polonais "zemia"

After these things, I saw four angels standing on the four corners of the earth, holding the four winds of the earth,
Potem ujrzałem czterech aniołów stojących na czterech narożnikach ziemi
След това видях четири ангела, които стояха на четирите ъгъла на земята и държаха четирите земни ветрове,

La solution est bien entendu, parfois la traduction est très mot par mot. Ici, elle imite le choix de mots en hébreu, où pour "land" ou "sukhoy" on a le mot "eretz" comme pour "earth" et "zemlia" ... et le français est comme le hébreu, "terre" ...

Mais "germaniques du nord" et "de l'ouest" ... c'est pas un couple égal, ça ... ? Non, les langues germaniques de l'est sont le burgondien, autrefois parlé à Worms et à Dijon (aux temps d'Attila et de Sainte Clothilde), le vandal, parlé en Tunisie avant les Arabes, et surtout le gothique, parlé en Italie et en Espagne par des aristocrates comme Théodéric le Grand ou par Rodéric.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Paris
Sainte Jeanne-Françoise Frémiot de Chantal*
21.VIII.2026

Sanctae Joannae Franciscae Fremiot de Chantal, Ordinis Sanctimonialium Visitationis sanctae Mariae Institutricis, cujus natalis dies Idibus Decembris memoratur.

"What is the sole linguistic source you base your language on?"

I frankly don't know what the question means.

On Quora, someone posed it, and I was tagged, but probably not the only one.

Joseph Foster considered the question strange, as he grew up with two different dialects of English and had a teacher who grew up from early childhood in English and French.

Rolf Willers stated "it would have to be the mother tongue" ... and in a sense, that is correct. In a sense that only by learning to speak in the right slot of years (with one or more mother tongues) does one get access to learning more languages. It doesn't mean the mother tongue contains all the words you ever learn to use or things like that, it means that whatever language learning you do later is based on having learned that first. Note, you can forget your first language if you never practise it, but only if you are using another one. It also doesn't mean everyone has only one mother tongue.

But suggesting only one mother tongue is everyone's fare or reminding of the fact that no one learns a second language without having a mother tongue first seems an odd question to pose on Quora. In fact, that wasn't my initial interpretation of the question.

So, here is what I thought. Someone thinks, what I write about language must be wrong, so, thinks my linguistic source is outdated or has sectarian bias, and I don't have any other or better one, and in a offhand manner, like I would answer without thinking, or he were hoping so, asks what that is. He hopes to identify it, identify its fault and the point me to better sources. More modern. Less sectarian.

Here is my reply to that. I have studied linguistics in one way or another since I was a child. My early readings in this area involve:

• an essay or two in Junior Woodchuckers' Handbook (Disney concern), probably not written by the usual comic book staff, though illustrated with Disney style illustrations;
• an essay by Tolkien on English and Welsh, which among other things tell us that Rotomagus, while it became Rouen in French, would have become Rhoddfa in Welsh;
• a book about linguistics which featured examples in Germanic and Finno-Ugrian to examplify language family differences and different language typology (it taught me the difference between Isolating, Agglutinative, Flective, Polysynthetic), no longer on the Malmö library's catalogue*;
• a book about Medieval languages of Europe that suggested the development of definite article in both Romance and Germanic (absent from Latin and Gothic!) was a Sprachbund phenomenon, dependent on influence from Greek Hebrew, Arabic (it also said a thing or two about the process of how English and French and I think German too were standardised), no longer on the Malmö Library's catalogue;
• Languages of the British Isles past and present — I fortunately recall the title, so don't need the Malmö library catalogue to identify it, and I find it is from 1975;
• Der kleine Stowasser, which was a Latin lexicon my mother used before her Latin exam prior to entry into Med school in Vienna. It has lots of the words given with etymological equivalents in Germanic or Greek. Though, to be fair, Menge-Güthling has more of those. Also true of the Greek version of Menge Güthling. It says in a undertitle "mit besonderer Berücksichtigung der Etymologie";
• Die Fähre, a school book of German literary history, involving some language history, bought in Berlin during a visit — it could be from a series of school books by Dr. W. Urbanek, but I don't think it was Bd. 10. = Oberstufe. Weiter Horizont; it began with Our Father in Greek, Latin, Gothic, then Old High German, Middle High German and early Modern German from Luther's Bible, it ended with Opitz and Simplicissimus and had good portions from Niebelungenlied and I also think Gûdrûn, both Middle High German and Modern German translation;
• a similar book for Swedish, I think it was "Svensk litteraturhistoria" ...
• observation of typological differences between Germanic languages, German having four cases, Swedish, Danish, to some extent English, two, Dutch like Romance consistently replaces Genitive with "van" ... English has "of" with common nouns, Genitive with proper names.

By "early" I mean, before I started learning Latin in school, in 11th grade.

Thanks to both Stowasser, Woodchuckers' Handbook, and item three, I was familiar with the theory of Indo-European languages coming from a common prior language. My earliest vision of an alternative was when dismissing my Greek professor's reference to Trubetskoy, which he took up in the interest of Pyrrhonism (yes, his favourite Greek school of philosophy was Pyrrhon), and only much later did I connect back to that when someone said "your timeline from the Bible doesn't line up with Proto-Indo-European being spoken 3000 BC" ... while I don't think glottochronology is an exact science, I think the argument holds. I looked up Trubetskoy and found he was the founder of Balkan linguistics, plus I recalled the Sprachbund arguments in item four on my list.

So, my knowledge of language studies is not based on just one source of linguistic scholarship.

But back to the answer of Rolf Willers. Someone may have meant another kind of snyde remark against me. Swedish is not French, not even English. As none of these two is my native language he may imagine "I'll never be fluent" ... that's wrong. Now, in the last two weeks, I've twice made embarrassing gender mistakes in French in contexts where Swedish wouldn't necessarily gender the nouns. I have also admitted to my Swedish perception of the phoneme [e] overlapping to some degree with the French perception of the phoneme [i] (Swedish has the series [i — e — ε — æ — a] in the space where French has the series [i — e — ε — a], so French has more space of variation allotted to [i] than Swedish has — item three taught me about vowel triangles or vowel diagrams). I also regularly confuse in words I have not fully learned yet whether the syllable has an e or an é in spelling, since to my ear "böcker" with -ər and with -εr sound the same, it's the same word, just regional variation. Yes, the very finest points about French phonetics are filtered from my experience of Swedish.

However, I do not propose to become a conférencier in French. As to my capacity of writing in French, that's the kind of thing I can check before publishing, and often do. When a "bésoin de debut" (instead of "besoin de début") slips by, I actually authorise the correction of it.

An even worse kind of snyde remark would be if someone thought I had some mental trouble about my language capacity in Swedish, because I write "vi ha elfva timmar qvar" instead of "vi har elva timmar kvar" ... the use of plural verbs was standard Swedish up to 1950, and is very unlike the proposal of corresponding to English "thou art" from Shakespear, one needs to be really uneducated to make that connection, it's far closer to "nous arrivâmes en moins des onze heures qui nous restaient" instead of "nous sommes arrivés etc" ... and "elfva" and "qvar" is like using a "colour labelled axe" in English spelling rather than a "color labeled ax" in American spelling. Both the US and Sweden had reforms in 1906. So, no, nothing like a language incapacitating mental symptom in my most basic, i e native language, just a use of my actual capacity of Swedish to make a polemic point in a consistent, but low key way. The point being I hate modernity and not least modern administrative tyranny, whether directed against language (Frans G. Bengtsson was against the spelling reform) or against family (see Sweden Doesn't Have Communism for Everyone, Just Selective Communism Where it Hurts).

No, my Swedish is fine, just not to everyone's taste, and so are my later learned languages English and French. Well, French is languishing somewhat from lack of practise. When a whole neighbourhood agrees to overwhelm me with lots of "bonjour" and "comment allez-vous" and nearly nothing else, that's not conversational practise. But not to the degree that anyone has to take into account I could have "meant something else" since French is not my first language. If someone says "Fascist" in French means "Nazi or at least very close", sorry, that's not a feature of French, that's a feature of a political climate I try to change.**

Another possibility is, someone has had "the mother tongue is the sole linguistic source one bases language learning on" in the homework and wanted to check if the homework actually made sense. And it doesn't.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Paris
St. Turibius of Mogrovejo
23.III.2026

Limae, in Peruvia, sancti Turibii Episcopi, cujus virtute fides et disciplina ecclesiastica per Americam diffusae sunt.

PS. There is a question which some classify as "linguistics" and I don't, where I also had an early source. For evolutionary linguistics, the kind of thing that Jean Aitchison is trying in The Seeds of Speech: Language Origin and Evolution (Canto), I did have a loaned and later given book on anthropology which pretended the first phoneme and word was the sound "φφφ" as per blowing on a fire, it was a pretty racist one, but the thing is, later works (I've seen samples) seem to retreat from even that question. However, I'd not classify that as linguistics, but as one of the more problematic problems in the Theory of Evolution. The problem should be apparent from my essay doublet (from two quora questions) All Human Languages are Human, None are "Primitive"./HGL

* It also involved the concept of phonetic change. I thought "fagus" meant "book", which is actually "liber", since "book" in Swedish is "bok" but that also means "beechtree" which is the real meaning of "fagus" .... ** It has two different meanings, applicable either to Italian Fascism only or to all of the Fascisms many of which were even less like National Socialism than Italian Fascism was. I use it in the latter sense.

What's Verbicide?

Sharing:

The Spiritual Perils of Verbicide
Jared Selim | Feb 05, 2026
https://substack.com/home/post/p-185556609

How Murdered Words Lose Meaning—and How Logos Revives Them

Did Sth Like Quenya Exist?

Φιλολoγικά/Philologica: Laketown, but not Esgaroth · Did Sth Like Quenya Exist? · Creation vs. Evolution: What Can Tolkien's Vision Tell Us About Old Earth Compromise?

We know that one of Tolkien's ideas behind Quenya was looking for non-Indo-European words in Indo-European languages.

Ranka (and its Slavic counterpart Ruk) is unique to Balto-Slavic. Not Germanic, not Celtic, not Italic, not Greek, and I just checked with google translate it's not there in Armenian, Iranian, Indian (I checked Farsi and Kurdish for Persian, Bengali and Punjabi for Indian) either. So, he concluded it had to be there in the pre-Indo-European language, so he put it into Quenya.

Álft is unique to Old Norse. Not Greek, not Celtic, not Farsi (Kurdish borrows the English), not Polish, not Lithuanian, not Armenian, not Sanskrit. So, it had to be pre-Indo-European, and he put it in Sindarin, without the final T, and created a cognate, alqua to put into Quenya.

Avis in Latin, maybe with éan in Irish, as a word for bird is unique to Italo-Celtic. In Sindarin it's aew, in Quenya aiwë.

The idea is of course that behind many different Indo-European languages, there was a common pre-Indo-European substrate in NW Europe.

According to a theory in linguistics that substrate did exist, and it is related to Basque and it came with the people from the Steppe.

How quirky would that be to Tolkien to have to identify Noldor with the Wainriders? (The latter are obviously based on Yamnaya people).

Here are some videos about this theory:

Did the Corded Ware speak Basque? An alternative view on the spread of Indo European pt.1
Yamokante | 9 March 2025
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3J18e8jEMQU

They hailed from the East. An alternative view on the spread of Indo European pt.2
Yamokante | 10 March 2025
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sI9Vn1S8MtY

Who gave us our languages? An alternative view on the spread of Indo European pt.3
Yamokante | 14 March 2025
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ku6VJ_AsTXM

Merry Christmas to all Tolkien fans out there!

Hans Georg Lundahl
Paris
Christmas Day
25.XII.2025

"Do You Speak Jewish?"

By an US American to a couple speaking Portuguese.

Pretty obviously, the person asking wasn't referring to Yiddish, which can be described as Ashkenaz Jewish Medieval German.

She was pretty certainly referring to Djudezmo, which can be described as Sephardic Jewish Medieval Spanish.

One thing which it shares with Portuguese rather than Spanish is, no diphthongs. Perhaps not "non at all" but not the ones in PUEDO and TIEMPO, those are "podo" and "tempo" in Djudezmo.

Again, DJ is closer to Portuguese and French J, than to Spanish "J is actually ACH-Laut".

SH is still distinguished and so that's closer to Portuguese than to Spanish "X is also actually ACH-Laut, but we spell it J now" (¿verdad, Méjico?).

DZ is Z, Ç is S. More Latin American than European Spanish but distinguishing Z from S is more Portuguese than Latin American Spanish.

Also B and D and "hard" G are closer to English or Italian letters than to Spanish ones. Again, not unlike Portuguese.

And it's definitely NOT like Latin American Spanish where CALLE is sometimes KASHE, nope, it's KALYE.

So, if someone confuses Djudezmo and Portuguese, it's probably not a nincompoop, ¿de akodro?

And calling Djudezmo "Jewish" is literally just translating.

So, no, they weren't speaking Sephardic Jewish, they were speaking Portuguese, but that's a kind of mix-up that happens./HGL

(I happen to be more than a Euro short of the kaviko in this cyber, I'm off).

People forget what things mean, specifically words and phrases

And while it would be good form to lightheartedly go through a number of fun but insignificant examples, that's what Chesterton would have done, I'm too tired to think of them and will get to the point.

I happen to like Liz Wheeler, who's interviewing Jimmy Akin (a likeable person with some very good takes in theology leading to his conversion and some very bad one in the case of the nature of inerrancy). So, I look her up. 35, has a husband, has two children, started podcasting in 2020.

AND:

In January 2023, following football player Damar Hamlin's in-game collapse, Wheeler promoted a conspiracy theory that the COVID-19 vaccine was responsible for a "surge" in athlete deaths and injuries.

Can you spot what's wrong, what phrase is being misused?

Conspiracy theory. A conspiracy theory means a result (usually considered unpleasant or dangerous or both by the conspiracy theorist) that is in mainstream media (including public schools as much as big newspapers) attributed to well informed decisions, chance interaction, small players, is in reality the result of some big players conspiring. If Arizona Cardinals lost a match, and someone Catholic, football fanatic and living in Phoenix said "Rockefeller has Calvinist roots, so he conspired to bribe the umpire to let the team with Catholic symbolism lose" that would be a conspiracy theory. If I replied that the match was in 2013 and a symbol of the college of cardinals losing it and so an actual judgement by God, that would not be a conspiracy theory. It may be as ridiculous as a conspiracy theory. But it is not a conspiracy theory. Because it doesn't involve an actual conspiracy about the Arizona Cardinals.

So, "Mussolini caused the death of Matteotti" is a conspiracy theory. "King Victor Emmanuel III caused the death of Matteotti" is a conspiracy theory. The latter is the one favoured by Matteotti's son, by the way, and no, Matteotti's son, like his father, is a socialist, not a Fascist. But why is it a conspiracy theory? Well, because X who "caused the death" did so by hiring some less in the limelight person to do the dirty job for him. Amerigo Dumini is no doubt less in the limelight than Il Duce. He's also less in the limelight than King Victor Emmanuel III. Il Duce could have a motive insofar as Matteotti had denounced elections. King Victor Emmanuel III could have a motive insofar as Matteotti wanted transparency on a petrol deal. When Amerigo Dumini's judges in, I think 1947, had more reasons to smear Mussolini than to smear the King who died that year sentenced him (for the second time) for the murder of Matteotti, they stated that the order was given him by Mussolini.

I would like to know what was written with notaries in Texas, or if Amerigo Dumini was bluffing, back after his release.

Freed in 1927, Amerigo Dumini left for Italian Somaliland, having been awarded a large state pension (5,000 lire). Apparently, he was still viewed as troublesome, since he was detained and interned on the Tremiti Islands. Meanwhile, he warned General Emilio De Bono that he had filed a manuscript detailing Matteotti's murder with notaries in Texas. This claim led to his release and an increase in pension to as much as 50,000 lire. He left for Italian Libya, where his pension was further increased by 2,500 lire (together with a single payment of 125,000 lire).

Well, this at least would involve either of the conspiracy theories being true, since the paying of the pension would imply that someone very important in Italy (Mussolini and Victor Emmanuel III, as Prime Minister and as King, both fit that bill) wanted the papers in Texas not to be disclosed. I wonder if they ever were, and if the judgement in 1947 was based on them, or on any statement by Dumini.

But either of these things, "Mussolini caused the death of Matteotti" and "King Victor Emmanuel III caused the death of Matteotti", is a conspiracy theory, not just because it goes beyond the obvious cause, Dumini. BUT. Because it also does so by means of a supposed criminal conspiracy.

Now, what about the statement "the COVID-19 vaccine was responsible for a "surge" in athlete deaths and injuries"? Is that a conspiracy theory? No. The COVID-19 vaccine is not supposed to be a person. Is not supposed to enter a criminal conspiracy. It is therefore very literally not a conspiracy theory. It is a medical theory. And, when it comes to personal caution, I think it's the kind of medical theory each and every person has the right to entertain and to advice others on. It's not an advice for a specific treatment, it's not medical advice that only medical practitioners can give. But right or wrong, legal or illegal, it is definitely not a conspiracy theory. People should start to remember what words mean.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Paris
Easter Octave Friday
25.IV.2025

It Seems I'm NOT Alone in Contesting the Academic Consensus About Indo-European (Link)

Ancient DNA Era: Origins and spread of Indo-European languages: an alternative view
8th December 2024, by Alberto
https://adnaera.com/2024/12/08/origins-and-spread-of-indo-european-languages-an-alternative-view/

During the Neolithic period, communities of people from Anatolia started to settle in Europe, advancing slowly until they occupied the majority of the European territory. They had a distinct genetic profile when compared to the WHG that lived in Europe before their arrival. This applies both to the autosomes (basically their whole genome) as well as their uniparental markers (the Y Chromosome for the paternal ones and the Mitochondrial DNA for the maternal ones). The most prevalent paternal lineages were the ones under the G2a branch. WHG, on the other hand, had most of their paternal lineages under the I2a branch. Minor paternal lineages in both populations didn’t overlap either, at least initially. However, slowly along the 4000 years between ~7000 BC and ~3000 BC, the farming communities admixed occasionally with the hunter-gatherers, which resulted in acquiring genome-wide signatures of WHG (very low in the Balkans, but increasing towards central, northern and western Europe, to around 25%) as well as uniparental markers. Interestingly, the WHG paternal lineage I2a once it entered the farmer’s gene pool, it rose in frequency to the point that by the end of the Neolithic it had become the most common one among farmers, relegating their original G2a to a second place. This pattern usually points to some sort of selection, though in this case the reason is unclear (and for the purposes of this post, irrelevant anyway).

"7000 BC" = 2442 BC, "3000 BC" = 1769 BC?*

2456 BC

Shem died

2442 BC

57.683 pmC, dated as 6990 BC

1779 BC

85.963 pmC, dated as 3029 BC

1759 BC

86.359 pmC, dated as 2971 BC

(1779 + 1759) / 2 = 1769 BC
(85.963 + 86.359) / 2 = 86.161 pmC

5730 * log(0.86161) / log(0.5) + 1769 = 3000

Yes!

To give a summary of the idea, Alberto argues that Iberian and Basque are the same and that this is the language that the Yamnaya migrants brought.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Paris
St. Joseph
19.III.2025

In Judaea natalis sancti Joseph, Sponsi beatissimae Virginis Mariae, Confessoris; quem Pius Nonus, Pontifex Maximus, votis et precibus annuens totius catholici Orbis, universalis Ecclesiae Patronum declaravit.

* Newer Tables: Preliminaries · Flood to Joseph in Egypt · Joseph in Egypt to Fall of Troy.

Signor Cerquiglini, sans les Anglais, le français aurait été un latin fautif

Ce sont, entre 597 et vers 800, les Anglais qui le mieux cultivent le latin en tant que langue étrangère.

Entretemps, les sujets des rois francs cultivent le latin en tant que langue maternelle, et ils le changent, et le plus français des régistres aurait été le moins correct et le moins prestigieux.

Quand pour la liturgie, Alcuin impose à Tours le latin des Anglais comme prononciation, il libère le latin des Tourangeaux à se développer sans référence à une langue écrite 1000 ans plus vieille, et cette autre langue latine, illico renommé "lingua romana rustica" est ce qui devient la base du français.

Ce n'est pas juste le latin médiéval (proprement dit) ou latin ecclésiastique qui prend son origine en Angleterre, mais il semble que la séquence de Ste Eulalie aurait été écrit dans un des dialectes qui plus tard croisèrent la Manche avec Guillaume de la Falaise ou qui en étaient proches. Après ça uniquement, et après un texte du Chanson de Roland qui se trouve à Oxford, l'Angleterre nous donne aussi l'anglais. Vous savez, l'anglais moderne qui est un peu plus français et un peu moins néerlandais .../HGL

Gaslighting Does Not Mean Simply Shifting the Blame

A certain James Bogle Esq. seems to have used the word "gaslighting" in the sense of "shifting the blame" to me here:

Correspondence of Hans Georg Lundahl: While the Debate May be Over, It is Yet to be Reviewed
https://correspondentia-ioannis-georgii.blogspot.com/2023/02/while-debate-may-be-over-it-is-yet-to.html

Michael Lofton used the word "gaslighting" in the sense of "shifting the blame" about Russians in relations to Ukraine here:

Did Ukraine Just Ban Orthodox Christianity?
Reason & Theology | 22.VIII.2024
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WO7v3ifOPiA

It's a sad day when the word "gaslighting" is being so abused after about a decade ago being unknown, I had to answer the question whether that was even a word.

Yes, it is a word, and it does not mean "shifting the blame" it means shifting a very particular type of blamedness as to a very particular type of situation.

When the abusive husband in the film Gas Light wants his wife to conclude she is insane, the blame of insanity is not one belonging properly to him, and the blame belonging to him, that of very devious manipulation, is not one he wants to shift to his wife. He only is shifting the quality of being the person to blame, but he is not shifting a particular blame between the persons, he is exchanging one type of blaim for a very different one.

He wants his wife to conclude she is insane, he wants her to consult, be locked up, and use the incapacities that go with her (supposed) insanity to take care of her belongings so he can steal from her.

Gaslighting doesn't mean telling someone to take the blame that's really one's own, it means giving someone clues for concluding he or she is mad, and if any extension should be made, it's giving someone else such clues when the person concerned refuses to be fooled. I would suggest, psychiatry thrives on Dunning Kruger and Prejudice in its own personnel, on Stockholm syndrome in the patients, but also on gaslighting in third parties. If people abusing the term succeed in making it just a shorthand for "shifting the blame" it will involve my charge against psychiatry becoming incomprehensible./HGL

I'm Not the First to Ask

Assorted retorts from yahoo boards and elsewhere: Tolk Lang QQ · Tolkienophobia · As Tolk Lang QQ Keep Dropping In · Φιλολoγικά/Philologica: I'm Not the First to Ask · New blog on the kid: Since I'm Being Pestered by Tolkienophobes ...

AI actually had an answer. This means that others have answered before I asked, and before I intend to give my own answer.

Why are so many asking whether Tolkien really created his languages?
https://poe.com/chat/3gv3kdllz7j4j7xsc4o

There are a few key reasons why people often question whether J.R.R. Tolkien truly created the languages featured in his writings:

1. Linguistic complexity: The languages Tolkien invented, such as Elvish languages like Quenya and Sindarin, are remarkably complex and sophisticated, with detailed grammatical structures, vocabularies, and writing systems. This level of linguistic complexity is impressive and leads some to doubt that a single person could have created them.
2. Resemblance to real-world languages: While Tolkien's languages are unique, they do share some similarities with natural human languages, both in terms of grammar and sound. This has led some to speculate that Tolkien may have drawn inspiration from or adapted existing languages, rather than constructing them entirely from scratch.
3. Tolkien's background: Tolkien was a philologist and professor of linguistics, and his deep knowledge and passion for languages likely contributed to the richness of his invented tongues. However, some question whether even his expertise could account for the full depth and breadth of the languages he created.
4. Lack of complete documentation: Tolkien never fully documented or published the entirety of his linguistic work, leaving some gaps and uncertainties that fuel speculation about their origins.

However, the overwhelming scholarly consensus is that Tolkien did indeed create these languages himself, drawing upon his extensive linguistic knowledge and creative talents. While he may have been influenced by or incorporated elements of real-world languages, the depth and coherence of his invented tongues are a testament to his linguistic genius and imagination.

So, what do I make of it.

1. and 3. cancel out. If Tolkien was a philologist, he was amply equipped to imitate what in real languages is a teamwork over 20—40 generations since the language was a different one. As well as features we have not spotted the origin of. A very simple case: Tolkien knew Latin, so he knew a language could have different cases. When he knew that, would he really need a team to work out the cases for Quenya? He knew French had lost cases since Latin and Welsh had lost cases since Old Brythonic, what's so mysterious about a man using that knowledge to assume Sindarin had lost cases?

"Yeah, but keeping it in the head, all of this at the same time!"

Yes, he was interested in languages. I'm not presuming you could do it. You shouldn't presume I could keep all the soccer rules in the head while watching a game of soccer (that's why I rarely do so, I think I did so exactly twice in my life, twice as often as going to horse races). I'm more impressed by the fact that Tolkien could probably have understood a rugby match and a soccer match perfectly, which probably contributes more than a little to his battle scenes!

But as watching soccer is a more common hobby than learning languages to read old literature, I am too well aware that I would make myself ridiculous with conspiracy theories of Tolkien basing all battle scenes on real soccer games or underground live role playing battles.

Obviously, the AI was not exactly able to discern whether reasons given on the internet were very intelligent.

2. is admitted, but any natural language also is a mixture of traits and vocabulary shared with different other ones.

4. is irrelevant. Suppose Tolkien had been member of a secret society, which had spoken Quenya for generations, that would explain why we have gaps in the information, but it would not explain why Tolkien was able to tinker so much with Quenya. If it had been the case, Quenya would already have been fixed, and Tolkien couldn't have tinkered with it. Here is an example from Fauskanger, between 1930's Qenya and Lord of the Rings style Quenya:

On one point only does the Qenya Lexicon provide extensive information about a grammatical feature: the formation of the past tense of verbs. In well over 300 cases the past tense is listed alongside the more basic form of the verb. We find all the types we are familiar with from later Quenya, such as past tenses formed with the ending -ne (e.g. sesta- "compare", pa.t. sestane), with nasal infixion (e.g. kap- "jump", pa.t. kampe) or by lengthening the stem-vowel and adding -e (e.g. mel- "to love", pa.t. méle; see pp. 82, 45, 60). But there is also a great number of highly exotic formations, such as the ending -ya turning into past tense -sine or -tine (e.g. mauya- "to cry", pa.t. mausine; panya- "arrange", pa.t. pantine, pp. 60, 72), or even past tenses involving internal-vowel shifts (like milk- "have, keep, possess", pa.t. malke, or tump- "build", pa.t. tampe - pp. 62, 93). The "Qenya" past tenses should be subjected to a thorough study. True, some of the information provided clearly applies to "Qenya" only, presupposing its own peculiar phonological history; for instance, vowel-shifts in the past tense occur where we have stems involving syllabic consonants - the forms milk- > malke and tump- > tampe come from stems MLKL and TMPM. Such stems are no longer possible in Tolkien's later vision of Primitive Elvish, so in later Quenya, shifts like milk- > pa.t. malke would not be possible either (there is nothing to parallel this in the Etymologies). Yet in some cases the Qenya Lexicon may provide clues to mysteries in Tolkien's later Elvish. For instance, Gilraen's Sindarin linnod in LotR Appendix A has onen for "I gave".

The Qenya Lexicon Reviewed
https://ardalambion.net/qlreview.htm

The "scholarly consensus" in this case means those who have studied Tolkien Linguistics. As amateurs or at university. It may refer to three people, Helge Fauskanger, probably best standardiser of Neo-Quenya, David Salo, dito for Sindarin, and Carl F. Hostetter, director of the Yahoo group Elflang list.

The coherence of Tolkien's languages is also a testament to two other factors.

• Having no predecessor, he did not have to dodge excellent solutions for fear of copyright strikes.
• Not being homeless, he did not get his notebooks stolen or lost.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Paris
St. Mary Magdalene
22.VII.2024

Kurdish and Turkish are not similar

As Kurdish is closely related to Persian, neither is Turkish and Persian simular. But google translate has Persian only in the Arabic script, or alphabet as we said before discovering on the internet that Arabic actually has an abjad instead ... so, to get something I can (very approximately) pronounce, I took Kurdish instead of Persian.

Select a sentence in Kurdish and in Turkish, and see how similar they are!
Hevokek bi kurdî û tirkî hilbijêrin, bibînin ka çiqas dişibin hev!		Kürtçe ve Türkçe bir cümle seçin ve ne kadar benzer olduklarını görün!
Can we do it one more time?
Ma em dikarin careke din bikin?		Bir kez daha yapabilir miyiz?
But if you speak of windows, they become a bit more similar?
Lê heke hûn qala pencereyan bikin, ew hinekî dişibin hev?		Ama pencerelerden bahsederseniz, biraz daha benzer hale gelirler, öyle değil mi?
Of course, that could be an effect of loan words ...
Bê guman, ew dikare bandorek peyvên deyn be ...		Elbette bu ödünç alınan kelimelerin bir etkisi olabilir ...
You mean, apart from loan words, they are very different?
Yanî ji xeynî peyvên deynî, ew pir cuda ne?		Ödünç alınan kelimeler dışında çok farklılar mı yani?

Now, let's do it for Armenian, like Kurdish Indo-European, but not the same branch. While Armenian has its own alphabet, google translate offers a transscription along with it.

Select a sentence in Kurdish and in Turkish, and see how similar they are!
Ընտրեք նախադասություն քրդերեն և թուրքերեն և տեսեք, թե որքան նման են դրանք:		Yntrek’ nakhadasut’yun k’rderen yev t’urk’eren yev tesek’, t’e vork’an nman yen drank’:
Can we do it one more time?
Կարո՞ղ ենք դա անել ևս մեկ անգամ:		Karo?gh yenk’ da anel yevs mek angam:
But if you speak of windows, they become a bit more similar?
Բայց եթե խոսում եք պատուհանների մասին, ապա դրանք մի փոքր ավելի նման են:		Bayts’ yet’e khosum yek’ patuhanneri masin, apa drank’ mi p’vok’r aveli nman yen:
Of course, that could be an effect of loan words ...
Իհարկե, դա կարող է լինել փոխառության խոսքերի հետևանք ...		Iharke, da karogh e linel p’vokharrut’yan khosk’eri hetevank’ ...
You mean, apart from loan words, they are very different?
Այսինքն փոխառության բառերից բացի շա՞տ են տարբերվում։		Aysink’n p’vokharrut’yan barrerits’ bats’i sha?t yen tarbervum.

Well, neither is Finnish and Swedish closely related! Or German and Hungarian!

Neighbouring languages are not always similar at all, even when they have many words in common due to loans one way or both ways. And even when the culture is similar like between Swedish and Finnish or German and Hungarian, or obviously Kurdish and Turkish cultures.

If you are neither from the regions involved, nor knowledgeable about languages, you might tend to miss this.

Swedes and Finns, by the way, have cultural, but not linguistic, similarities to the Ojibwe, in ways that peoples well South of the Baltic have not. Hence, in Minnesota, you have Findians. Look it up, true story and not a bad one!

Hans Georg Lundahl
Paris
IX LD after Pentecost
21.VII.2024

Language Emergence — How Does it Work?

I do not mean how it worked at Babel. That was a miracle. The wedding at Cana is not a manual of how wine is commonly made, because Jesus was not making wine the common way, but the miraculous way. Same goes for the emergence of new languages at Babel. A linguist who is an atheist will argue that never happened, because that's not how new languages emerge. Precisely like a winegrower and winemaker who's an atheist could pretend Cana is a myth, invented by people who have no idea how wine is made. A kind of pious equivalent to the city bumpkin who thinks milk is pressed from some fruit like a juice ...

I also do not mean how it worked when the first man had the first language. That was an equally miraculous and equally quick speeding up of language acquisition.

I mean how it works when something like "French emerged after the Roman Empire split up" happens. Or Latin emerged in the Roman Kingdom or the Republic.

Basically every child alive is learning the language that his parents spoke. For basically every child, this is noticeably different, though intercomprehensible, with the language his dead grea-great-grandparents spoke, if grammophone or written records allow comparison. For basically every child, it would no longer be fully intercomprehensible with the spoken language 400 years earlier. It could still be intercomprehensible on a written level, like when older Swedish "thola" is "tåla" in modern Swedish, which has lost the thorn sound and changed the spelling accordingly in 1700. Probably at that distance, the rhythm and how words are ending and beginning would be the worst problem after a time machine journey. It would very clearly be NOT intercomprehensible 800 years back. Even written forms would be hard to pick out what was happening good deal of the time.

This is known as "language evolution" or "language change" or "language change" and no one disputes this process exists. Not anyone I know. Some people claim their own language (like Greek) is miraculously exempt from this, or that meticulous transmission of what one has learned will halt the process, so, for some reason Homer spoke sth like "mini aïdhe thya" and felt obliged to write this as "μῆνιν ἄειδε θεὰ" (the ee sound written as eta, iota, epsilon and iota, and if you count yod, even as epsilon in hiatus) so that it is a preposterous misunderstanding of Greek to suppose he pronounced it more like "menin aeide thea" — but even those guys will usually admit it happens in other languages.

This is part of the process of language emergence, but only part of it. If a specific population in either Tuscany or Hungaria had started out 2000 years ago or more, even 3000 years ago, speaking Etruscan, never writing it down, and had come today to speak something like Hungarian, also never writing it down, this language evolution would not have led to the emergence of a new language. It would be new to the time machine, but not to anyone involved, since no one would have had the older language to compare it to.

Never mind if Alinei was right that Etruscan was Old Hungarian, I happen to think he was.

When writing exists, this is different. One way of a language emerging is obviously it's being written down.

Two scenarios are possible, to begin with.

A) Writing in the language is fairly sporadic, works of canonic importance are mainly another language, so, the spelling keeps up with the changes in pronunciation, just as much as grammar and word choice of the writing are pretty faithfully rendered by the written texts. This was the case with lots of West European languages in the later centuries of the Middle Ages, the canonic language, so to speak was Latin. Meanwhile, German, French, joined a bit later by English, could change, at least as fast as chanceries found convenient. You might want to be able to read a legal text from 100 years ago, or you might want not to be able to do so ... in fact, the documents from 1300 are a bit different from those in 1200.
B) You write a language with a history. Classical and religious canonic works are written or translated to it. This means, correct usage might get widened, but not get forgotten just because speech changes. This was the case with Latin in 500 — 650 AD. "Gregory wrote in Late Latin, which frequently departed from classical usage in both syntax and spelling, although with relatively few changes in inflection." Frequent departures from Classical usage doesn't mean establishment of a definite new usage.

In the first case, you can say that a new language has emerged when the one able to read a recent text is not generally able to read an old one. In the second case, you can wonder whether a new language can be claimed to have emerged when the departures from older usage become so frequent that it's obvious the speakers are not quite speaking the old language any more.

Or you can say, the new language actually emerges when the newer speech gets a written usage of its own.

This may come after some quirks, either after a pause with little or no writing (like English and Romanian emerge after Anglo-Saxon and Latin had already been dead as written languages for some time, and both emerge after having a period been the lower class language looking up to a foreign one, French and Bulgarian). Or. Especially if we go to scenario B. By the very specific process I have called language divorce. How French, Spanish, Italian emerged from Latin, when an ambition arose to keep Latin much purer than of recent, at least in some contexts. After about 100 years or less, the educated speaker of the people's language is no longer identic to the speaker of Latin, and instead of tweaking Latin to the differences in popular oral usage, has a new grammar surrounding it. That's the period between Alcuin's arrival in Tours in 800 and the subsequent reboot of Latin into a foreign and fully Classical language, apparent by 813, and the song of Saint Eulalia, and it is also the period between the Council of Burgos (1080, I think) and the Cantar del Mio Cid.

There are linguists in Germany educated to deny this as a valid mode for language emergence. They are used to the model of Old High German, Middle High German, Late Middle High German, Early Modern German, fully Modern German, where scenario A is the norm. They are right that what I called the emergence of French didn't alter anyone's French speech directly. They admit that the fact was likely to have long term effects. I insist, both because of the long term effects, and because of the difference in reading experience, that such a process actually merits to be called the emergence of French. Also, the more gradual emergence you find in between Old High German and Early Modern German only exists because Latin was this period the more official language, leaving German writing something you were free to tinker with.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Paris
Ember Saturday of Pentecost
25.V.2024

Latein und Romanisch

Antworten nach Sorte: Mitterer Deutsch / Croatisch UND Latein / Französisch · Φιλολoγικά/Philologica: Latein und Romanisch

Zunächst, ich habe diese Theorie nicht erfunden, sondern gelesen, in einem Buch aus der 30-er bis 50-er (denke ich, warscheinlich 40-er) Jahren, welches im Klassischen Institut der Universität Lund im Keller sich befand.

Zur Illustration. Später Text, warscheinlich schon romanisch gesprochen, mit einer etwa 200 Jahre jüngere Aussprache:

Historiarum Francorum libri X
Liber II 5. De Aravatio episcopo et Chunis.
https://la.wikisource.org/wiki/Historiarum_Francorum_libri_X/Liber_II#5._De_Aravatio_episcopo_et_Chunis.

Ich nehme an, 1) der Lautstand der Aussprache war zur Zeit des hl. Gregor nicht nur Proto-Romanisch, sondern wenigstens Gallo-Romanisch, und 200 Jahre später, in Tours, Langue d'oïl. 2) Im geschriebenem Latein kamen Compromissen vor, um einige lateinische Formen zu ermöglichen, aber war sonst mit der völkischen Aussprache identisch, dagegen war die Diktion und Syntax verschieden, wie auch bis vor kurzem zwischen Dhimotiki und Katharevousa, oder zwischen Ukrainisch und Kirchslavisch mit ukrainischer Aussprache.

Und, 3) diese Identität der Aussprache wird geändert, absichtlich, vom hl. Alcuin von Tours. Das "local appeal" der Aussprache wird dabei dem "international appeal" geopfert. Die lokale Sprache wird plötzlich dem Latein gegenüber eine fremde Mundart, ein Patois, die sogenannte "lingua romana rustica" des Synods von 813. Die neue Aussprache, die Alcuin als Fremdsprache erlernt hatte, ist die die wir als Mittellatein kennen, wesentlich ein Latein Italiens in England um 600 umgepflanzt, und dann als Fremdsprache vereinfacht, d. h. der Schrift noch angenähert. Daher auch die Endung -um die wie deutsch "um" lautet, statt ein -u~ im portugisischen Sinne auszumachen.

Ich gebe unter der Schrift zunächst die als schriftgemäß empfundene Aussprache, so wie ich den Sachverhalt verstehe, wie sie vor Alcuins Ankunft war, dann eine volkstümliche, wobei ich denke das zwischen den beiden, so wie auch heute zwischen Dhimotiki und Katharevousa, Zwischen-Stufen existierten. Diese Brücken der beiden Sprachebenen verschwinden dann wie auch die Identität der Aussprache, nach Alcuin. Enjoy (oder auch nicht, stehe aus, dann)!/HGL

Igitur rumor erat, Chunos in Galliis velle prorumpere.
[i:ð@r rüm@r ert, hüns e~ galy@s vel proröm~pr@]
[rüm@r ert or, els hüns vulei@n röm~pr@ a l@s galy@s.]

Erat autem tunc temporis apud Tungrus oppidum
[ert oð ton~k tem~pr@s av@ð tön~gr@s oppið]
[ert or don~k ten~s a la citeð tön~gr@s]

Aravatius eximiae sanctitatis episcopus,
[araveis@s, eksiny@ sain~teð@s evesk@v@s]
[araveis, evesk@ grande sain~teð]

qui vigiliis ac ieiuniis vacans,
[ki vely@s a djewn@s vakan~s]
[ki vakan~t e~ vely@s e djewn@s]

crebro lacrimarum imbre perfusus,
[krevr@ l@rmar em~br@ perfüs@s]
[perfüs@s pluy@ espes larm@s]

Domini misericordiam praecabatur,
[donn@ miserkord@ preyav@r]
[preyav@ miserkord@ don]

ne umquam gentem hanc incredulam sibique semper indignam in Galliis venire permitterit.
[nei ön~k@ djen~t@ an~k en~krëül@ s@vik@ e~diny@ e~ galy@s venir permetr@]
[ke n@ ön~k@ tçest@ djen~t@ e~fiel e e~diny@ s@ permet@ venir a galy@s]

Sed sentiens per spiritum,
[seð sensie~s p@r esperið]
[meis senten~t p@r esperið]

pro dilictis populi sibi hoc non fuisse concessum,
[pru d@lit@s pövl@ s@ ok no füs kontçes]
[k@ pru d@lit@s pövl@ tçest no füð kontçes]

consilium habuit expetendi urbem Romanam,
[kon~sely@ aot espeðen@ ürp ruman@]
[aot kon~sely@ espeðir la citeð ruman@]

scilicet ut, adiunctam sibi apostolicae virtutis patrocinia,
[stsilist üt adjon~t@ s@vi apostri@ vertüd@s persiny@]
[a saveir k@ s@ adjon~t@ la proteksy@ vertüð apostr@]

quae humiliter ad Domini misericordiam flagitabat, mereretur facilius obtinere.
[ke: öm~bl@t@r a donn@ miserkord@ fleyèv@, meriðr@ fatsily@s ot@ner]
[ke öm~bl@men~t fleyèv@ miserkord@ don, meris@ plüs fatsilmen~t la ot@nir]

Accedens ergo ad beati apostoli tumolum,
[aksiðes erk a beèð apostr@ töm~bl@]
[don~k @ksiðen~t a beèð töm~b@ apostr@]

depraecabatur auxilium bonitatis eius,
[dipreyav@ð@r oksely@ bon~tèð@s eys]
[dipreyèv@ð ayuð@ se@ bon~tèð]

in multa abstinentia, maximae inaedia se consumens,
[e~ mult@ ostinents@, maksim ineðy@ se ko~sumes]
[e~ mult@ ostinents@, se ko~sumen~t grand@ fèm]

ita ut bidui triduique sine ullo cibo putuque maneret,
[ið@ üð biðw@ triðwik@ se~ ul@ tsiw@ puðuk@ m@ner@]
[manyèr@ a m@ner se~ alkü~ nütremen~t e puð dows e treys djurn@s]

nec esset intervallum aliquod, in quo ab oratione cessaret.
[ney ess e~terval alk@, e~ k@ av oratsyo~ tsessar]
[e no~ seye alk@ e~terval, e~ k@ tsessast orar]

Cumque ibidem per multorum dierum spatia in tali adflictione moraretur,
[kön~k@ evið per multor djèr spatsy@ e~ tal afliksyo~ mur@reð@r]
[kom la per spatsy@ mults djurn@s mureð e~ tal afliksyo~]

fertur hoc a beato apostolo accepisse responsum:
[fert@r ok a beèð apostr@ aktsevis respon~s@]
[fert@r ke prist tsest@ respon~s@ per beèð apostr@]

'Quid me, vir sanctissime, inquietas?
[k@ mei, ber sein~tiss@m, en~kyèt@s]
[ber mult sein~t, k@ mei en~kyèt@s]

Ecce! enim apud Domini deliberationem prursus sanccitum est,
[ets! en av@ð Domn@ delivratsyo~ prurs@s sen~tsið est]
[ets! Est detsideð per delivratsyo~ Domn]

Chunos in Gallias advenire easque maxima tempestate debere depopulari.
[hü:ns e~ galy@s avenir yask@ masim@ ten~steð deveir depövlèr]
[k@ avyeny@n li hü:n e~ galy@s et k@ tsel@ deveir estr@ depövlèð@ e~ gran~d@ tem~pest@]

Nunc igitur sume consilium,
[nön~k i:ð@r süm konsely@]
[tön~k pren konsely@]

accelera velociter,
[akselèr@ b@lotstr@]
[akselèr@ rapið@]

ordena domum tuam,
[urdèn@ dom tü@]
[urdon@ tü@ meisyo~]

sepulturam conpone,
[seveltür@ kom~po~]
[kom~poz@ tü@ sevültür@]

require lentiamina munda!
[r@kyèr len~syamn@ mön~d@]
[r@kyèr len~sy@s propr@s]

Ecce! enim migraberis a corpore,
[ets! en migrèvr@s a korpr@]
[ets! tü migrèr èv@s de korps]

nec videbunt oculi tui mala,
[ney veðeyv@n oly@ tü@ mal@]
[e non veðer èv@n tü@ oly@ lu mal]

quae facturi sunt Chuni in Galliis,
[ke feytür son hü:n e~ galy@s]
[k@ feyr@ èv@n li hü:n e~ galy@s]

sicut locutus est dominus Deus noster'.
[si: luküts est domn@s djews nostr@]
[en~si: k@ don~s nostr@ djews dist]

Hoc a sancto apostolo pontifex responso suscepto,
[ok a sein~t apostr@ pon~tifis repon~s@ süstseft]
[el pontif avyen~t rets@vüð tsest@ repon~s@ del sein~t apostr@]

iter accelerat Galliasque velociter repetit,
[eð@r akselèr@ galyask@ b@lotstr@ repest]
[akselèr@ vei@ e rapið@ retchertch@ galy@s]

veniensque ad urbem Tungrorum,
[venye~sk@ að ürp tön~gror]
[e venien~t a tsiteð tön~gr@s]

quae erant necessaria sepulturae secum citius levat,
[ke ert netsessèr@ seveltür@ sey tsitsy@s lèv@]
[k@ ert netsessèr@ a seveltür@ lèv@ ko~ sey rapið@]

valedicensque clericis ac reliquis civibus urbis,
[valditse~sk@ klerts@s a relk@s tsiv@ ürv@s]
[dist val als klerks eð als altr@s tsiteðin~d]

denuntiat cum fletu et lamentatione,
[denön~ts@ ko fleð e l@mentatsyo~]
[enön~ts@ kom~ plours e l@mentatsyo~]

quia non visuri essent ultra faciem illius.
[key@ no vezür ess@n öltr@ fatsy@ ley@s]
[k@ no veðer èv@n öltr@ sü@ fats]

At ille cum heiulato magno et lacrimis prosequentes supplecabant humili praece, dicentes:
[að il ko eylèð many e larm@s prusewen~t@s supleyèv@n öm~bl@ prey, ditsents]
[meis il ko many l@mentatsyo~ a larm@s supleyèv@n öm~bl@ preyèr@, ditsents]

'Ne derelinquas nos, pater sanctae, ne obliviscaris nostri, pastor bonae!'
[nei derelink@s nu:s, pèð@r sein~t, ne uvliskèr@s nostr@, pastr@ bo~]
[no leish@ nu:s, pèð@r sein~t, no uvli@ nu:s, pastr@ bo~]

Sed cum eum fletibus revocare non possent,
[seð ko~ yo fleð@v@s revokar no~ poss@n]
[meis kan~t lu no poss@n revokar ko~ plours]

accepta benedictione cum osculis, redierunt.
[aktset@ ben~ditsyo~ ko~ oskl@s, reyèr@n]
[aktsetèr@n la ben~ditsyo~ ko~ beis@s e reyèr@n]

Hic vero ad Treiectinsem urbem accedens,
[i: ver a treyeðe~s ürp aktseðe~s]
[meis il aktseð a la tsiteð trey@]

modica pulsatus febre,
[moð@y@ pusseð@s fyèvr@]
[pusseð@ fyèvr@ p@tit@]

recessit a corpore,
[retsest a korpr@]
[retsest de korps]

ablutusque a fidelibus,
[avluðusk@ a fiðyèl@v@s]
[laveð@s per fiðyèl@s]

iuxta ipsum agerem publicum est sepultus.
[yust@ iss eir@ püvlik@ est sevülð@s]
[yust@ meðesm@ tchamp püvlik@ est sev@lið@s]

Cuius beatum corpus qualiter post multorum temporum spatia sit translatum, in libro Miraculorum scripsimus.
[kuy@s beyeð korps kèl@ð@r pos multor tempr@ spatsy@ seð traslèð, e~ livr@ mireilor eskrism@s]
[de kel el beyeð korps kom@ pos mults ten~s spatsy@ sei@ traslèð, eskrism@s e~ lu livr@ mireil@s]

Indo-European Branches for I and II p. Plural, Pronouns

Assorted retorts from yahoo boards and elsewhere: Proto-IE or Sprachbund? Dialogue with Josef G. Mitterer · Φιλολoγικά/Philologica: Indo-European Branches for I and II p. Plural, Pronouns · back to Assorted retorts from yahoo boards and elsewhere: An Anti-Christian Bumped in On My Dialogue with Mitterer, Starting with a Red Flag · Continuing with Mitterer · More Mitterer · Mitterer isn't tired, nor am I

I suggested to Josef G. Mitterer that a hypothetic Sprachbund involving Swedish, English and Italian would:

• eliminate all forms in V- (I Eng/Sw, II Ital)
• eliminate all forms in N- (I Ital, II Sw)
• repurpose the remaining forms for I plural, all of them object forms, so that the Italian object form became subject form.

It is a conundrum in Indo-European linguistics why for I p. plural and II p. plural we find so diverse forms, and especially why Germanic languages seem to have W- / V- forms for I p. plural, while Romance and Slavic have them for II p. plural. It is obviously less of a conundrum why Swedish on top of that has an N form for II p. plural, since it's derived from the normal Germanic Y- / J- form. I = ye = ihr. Viljen I > vilje Ni > vilja (pl) / vill (sg polite) Ni.

Josef G. Mitterer observed that no Sprachbund is known to have been harmonising pronouns the way I suggested in my hypothetic example. So, let's look at the real case of the "branches" of Indo-European. I am now going to group them from South-East to North-West, starting with Romance / Slavic. Then Albanian and Greek. Then Lithuanian. Then Germanic apart from Swedish, then Swedish. For Greek, I am going with a very old form. Homeric or Doric, from memory. The endings -es can also be -eis.

Obviously, we can leave Irish out of it. Sinn, sibh, siad seems to be a series which is very independent of the rest. Perhaps it has a connection with Romance / Slavic after the initial si-, but the initial si- sets the system so much apart from the rest, that confusion with the other pronouns is not possible. Welsh seems partly connected to Romance, ni chi nhw.

	I pl subj	I pl obj	II pl subj	II pl obj
Lat	nos	nos	vos	vos
Pol	my	nas	wy	was
Greek	ammes	ammes	ummes	ummes
Alb	ne	na	ju	ju
Lith	mes	mus	jūs	jus
Engl	we	us	ye	you
Swed	vi	oss	ni	er

So, Germanic, the only language group that has W- / V- in I p. pl. is originally separated from Latin by sth like Welsh or Greek or Albanian, and from Slavic by sth like Lithuanian.

Every early neighbourhood of more than one language group counted as "branch" of Indo-European avoids direct conflict. I take it as given the Germanic peoples were 2000 years ago separated from Italic peoples by Celts, Ligurians, Rhaetians and Etruscans. Even much later, Germanic peoples are still prior to AD 1000 often separated from Slavs by Baltic or Finnic peoples.

Indo-Europeanists who believe in the PIE thesis obviously have their (sometimes rather roundabout) theories of how "we" and "uns" and "nos" come from the same PIE etymon. And how vos and you did so. But it is easier to assume that we deal with only partially harmonised Sprachbünder, each case of two neighbouring groups avoiding to have "pronouns in conflict" like we find between Swedish and French.

If we take a look at the possessives of Swedish "vi" and Latin "vos" one could imagine a risk of conflict in neighbouring areas between "vester" and "vår" but ... English and High German, from very early stages, avoid the conflict by dropping the V- before an initial U-.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Nanterre
Pancake Tuesday
13.II.2024

PS, 29.IV.2024, to make my point clearer. If two populations close to each other had spoken, for one English, for the other the Dongzu language of China (They live mostly in eastern Guizhou, western Hunan and northern Guangxi.), the words for 2 and 9 would probably have been taken from a third language. For 2 "two" in English and 9 "duf" in Dong sound the same, as I just discovered. 3:01 into this video:

CHINA: 56 ETHNIC GROUPS
ILoveLanguages! | 29 April 2024
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LmlHdExrcaY

Can a PIE Spread with Anatolian Farmers be Defended?

Assorted retorts from yahoo boards and elsewhere: Three Questions on PIE and Yamnaya (with one debate continued under Continued Debate with "Germanic Syntax") · Creation vs. Evolution: Is There a Correct Use of Stone Age, Bronze Age, Iron Age? · Early human remains found to carry R1b · Would Proto-Indo-European Diverge Into Hittite, Mycenaean Greek, Indo-Aryan in The Biblical Time-Frame? · Φιλολoγικά / Philologica: Can a PIE Spread with Anatolian Farmers be Defended?

The Horse, the Wheel, and Language, by David W. Anthony, states: no.

Here are the details. Or some of them.

Figure 4.8. If Proto-Indo-European spread across Europe with the first farmers about 6500—5500 BC, it must have remained almost unchanged until about 3500 BCE, when the wheeled vehicle vocabulary appeared. This diagram illustrates a division into just three dialects in three thousand years. After Renfrew 2001.

The Horse, the Wheel, and Language
by David W. Anthony, Diagram p. 79
https://archive.org/details/horsewheelandlanguage/page/79/mode/2up

Renfrew, 2001. The Anatolian origins of Proto-Indo-European and the autochthony of the Hitties. In Greater Anatolia and the Indo-Hittite Language Family, ed. Robert Drews, pp. 36—63. Journal of Indo-European Studies Monograph 38. Washington D.C.: Institute for the Study of Man.

... The language of the original migrants to Greece cannot have remained a single language for three thousand years after its speakers were dispersed over many millions of square kilometers and several climate zones. Ethnographic or historic examples of such a large, stable language territory among tribal farmers simply do not exist.

That the speakers of Proto-Indo-European had wagons and a wagon vocabulary cannot be brought into agreement with a dispersal date as early as 6500 BCE. The wagon vocabulary is incompatible with the first-farming/language-dispersal hypothesis. Proto-Indo-European cannot have been spoken in Neolithic Greece and still have existed three thousand years later when wagons were invented. Proto-Indo-European therefore did not spread with the farming economy. Its first dispersal occurrred much later, after 4000 BCE, in a European landscape that was already densely occupied by people who probably spoke hundreds of languages.

Quote p. 81
https://archive.org/details/horsewheelandlanguage/page/81/mode/2up

Now, it should be obvious to anyone, I cannot share this criticism. Since, for me as a Creationist, 3500 BC = 1935 BC, the date of Genesis 14 (Asasonthamar mentioned as under attack, it is En-Gedi, and its Amorrhaeans seem to have evacuated temple treasures on reed mats carbon dated to 3500 BC. 6500 BC was not much further back, in fact something like 420 years earlier. Sorry, 409.

2355 B. Chr.

59.6678 pmC, so dated as 6605 B. Chr.

2332 B. Chr.

60.9109 pmC, so dated as 6432 B. Chr.

(2355 + 2332) / 2 = 2343.5 ~ 2344 BC

(59.6678 + 60.9109) / 2 = 60.28935 pmC

60.28935 pmC -> 4200 extra years

4200 + 2344 = 6544

1935 B. Chr.

82.73 pmC, so dated as 3485 B. Chr.

82.73 pmC -> 1550 extra years

1550 + 1935 = 3485

6544-3485 = 3059 years?

2344-1935 = 409 years!

So, the question for me is more like, could 2344 BC be sufficiently early in relation to known texts?

Well, the arrival of Mycenaeans "in 1650" are actually as recent as in somewhere around 1521 BC. Just before the Exodus.

2344-1521 = 823 years.

My own problem with Renfrew is therefore the opposite. 822 years is fairly little to get from PIE to Mycenaean actual Greek. That the wagon was only invented (post-Flood, it could have been a reinvention) about halfway through is no problem. Loans would have been able to go through "retroactive sound laws" by knowledge of cognates.

The main profit of Renfrew is, his theory places Indo-European, at least as in Europe and its origins on the Anatolian plateau, more into the area of where Gomer would have lived.

However, it is more like the time it could have taken to get from a Pre-Greek* non-IE language to give and take to neighbouring pre-IE languages, until they all were somewhat IE. Like both Pre-Greek and Greek would essentially be the language of Javan.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Paris
Ste Margarite-Marie Alacoque
17.X.2023

Paredii, in dioscesi Augustodunensi, sanctae Margaritae-Mariae Alacoque, quae, Ordinem Visitationis beatae Mariae Virginis professa, eximiis in devotione erga sacratissimum Cor Jesu propaganda et publico ejusdem cultu provehendo meritis excelluit; atque in sanctarum Virginum album a Benedicto Papa Decimo quinto relata fuit.

*Usual sense, not the specific in David W. Anthony as a stage of Indo-European, but the normal one in which thalassa and Korinthos are Pre-Greek words as in non-IE words. Words in Greece previous to arrival of IE Greek language. Except of course, unlike that hypothesis, this Pre-Greek would be one of the sources of IE commonalities, and therefore contain some IE words, some IE endings before the mix.

PS, if a cohesion of languages over a large area over a long time is impossible, how do you explain very far reaching trade routes of the Palaeolithic, or that the 32 Palaeolithic signs found by Genevieve von Petzinger occur over and over again from Indonesia to Altamira? That would be tens of thousands of years and even longer distances. With my time scale, this could plausibly have been the first writing system for some kind of Hebrew. You don't have any myriads of years, and the people live to 930, and are so able to conserve their language better./HGL

L'histoire du français naissant avec une leçon de socio-linguistique

Non, je ne vais pas faire un abrégé de l'histoire du français en entier, avec les lois phonétiques qui en séparent la prononciation du latin classique (genre, unu~ -> unu -> un -> ün -> ü~ -> œ~). Je vais me concentrer su un moment clef, quand le français se sépare du latin. Pour la prononciation que je présume être à ce point "ün" - comme dans l'Occitan actuel - il y a un moment quand ceci s'écrit "unum" et un autre quand ceci s'écrit "un" ... je vais me concentrer sur ce moment. Et comment j'en suis conscient.

En 1992, je me trouvais à la faculté ou l'institut des lettres classiques à Lund. Malgré des résultats bons, quand je fais les examens, et une certaine lenteur de les faire, c'est la fin de mes études du grec et donc aussi du latin. J'allais me rendre à Sainte Madeleine du Barroux pour un noviciat, qui n'aura jamais lieu (dans cette forme*), pour le faire j'étais obligé de quitter l'appartement que j'avais, pour ce faire, j'étais obligé de disposer de mes choses, ce qui m'obligea de me rendre à ma grand-mère que j'avais quittée en 1990. Ce qui, en son tour, elle était mourante, remettait toute velléité d'un noviciat au futur. La Suède n'a pas l'habitude de la religion catholique dans toutes ses dimensions, y compris les vocations, et ma possible telle en faisait les frais.

Je restais inscrit à la fac, ma grand-mère étant pauvre, elle m'obligeait de continuer de prendre l'emprunt d'études (qu'elle considérais comme une allocation**) et pour ce faire, je restais inscrit. Je ne faisais pas absolument rien, je me rendais à un cours de 5 points que je loupais l'examen, et je dépensais du temps à l'institut des lettres classiques, pour lire ou socialiser avec d'autres que ma seule grand-mère. Et dans ce bâtiment, il y avait un sous-sol avec des livres qu'on ne rangeait pas dans les rayons de la bibliothèque. Un de ces livres contenait une thèse. Et je regrette, je ne sais plus si la thèse était en suédois, français ou anglais, ni comment s'appellait l'auteur.

Pour l'essentiel, elle dit, qu'il y a eu quatre états de choses et donc trois changements.

1. une orthographe (unum), une prononciation (ün)
   • Alcuin de York vient à Tours pour enseigner la bonne prononciation du latin (la prononciation anglaise).
2. une orthographe (unum), deux prononciations (ün / unum***)
   • Les Serments de Strasbourg obligent à noter la prononciation français du latin en phonétique.
3. deux orthographes (unum / un), deux prononciations (ün / unum) (la prononciation unum va toujours avec l'orthographe unum, et l'orthographe un va toujours avec la prononciation ün, mais celle-ci s'écrit un et unum, et unum se prononce unum et ün.
   • pour simplifier la combinaison d'orthographe latine et prononciation romane cesse
4. deux langues, chaqu'une ayant une ortographe et une prononciation LAT unum / unum : FR un / ün.

Le terminus a quo du processus est un état semblable au grec dans les temps modernes, une orthographe classique avec une prononciation moderne déjà traditionnelle depuis des siècles. On pourrait ajouter l'anglais, vue que "knight" s'écrit comme la prononciation du 14e S. "kniχt" et "kniçt"° et se prononce "naït' ". Le terminus ad quem est un état qui a tranché entre deux langues. Le processus explique (avec des faits historiques à l'appui) pourquoi la diglossie ne s'est pas simplement prolongée comme en Grèce jusqu'à 1970. Car, la prononciation d'une lettre étant conventionnelle, rien n'empêche cette convention de s'adapter aux changements de prononciation, ou de langue parlée, et donc de garder la vieille orthographe, comme on le faisait encore aux temps de St. Grégoire de Tours.

Quelle autre explication donne-t-on parfois pour la divergence entre latin et français comme deux langues ? Un homme sur quora, qui s'appelle sur quora "Civitas Dei Contra Paganos" vient°° de me répondre :

If you think that two registries can go from mutually understandable to unintelligible in 100 years only, you have no common sense,

Là, il vient de prétendre que ce qui se passe est que deux sociolectes commencent comme intelligibles et, les deux, changent graduellement jusqu'à devenir inintelligibles entre eux, comme le français et l'espagnol viennent de deux dialectes du latin qui, ayant changé en plusieurs siècles, sont devenus inintelligibles entre eux. Ce qui est totalement un processus différent.

En plus, il imagine que ce serait le régistre du bas peuple de l'époque qui serait devenu le français. Et là, même si j'ai raté le cours de 5 points, je retiens un peu de sociologie des langues.

Non, ce n'est pas le bas peuple qui remplace et re-remplace l'élite et dicte leur langue comme le nouveau correct, la plupart du temps, hormis la peste, les gens du bas peuple qui deviennent élite passent par une adaptation à cette élite. Noter, dans ce contexte, écrivain n'est pas forcément "élite" dans ce sens, ça peut par exemple être une contre-élite. Y compris sur le plan linguistique.

Et certes, parfois des prononciations du bas peuple deviennent celles de l'élite. Quand AE cesse d'être AÏ des temps de Cicéron et devient Ê des temps de Plin ou Tacite, c'est parce que c'était déjà Ê dans le bas peuple aux temps de Cicéron. Par contre, c'est aussi parce que Ê est une simplification qui est bienvenue même pour l'élite, par rapport à AÏ. Et ça peut être bienvenu parce que le Grec aussi simplifiait AÏ en Ê, même si leur orthographe était AI / αι - mais je ne suis pas sûr laquelle des langues simplifie d'abord la diphthongue. Peut-être en même temps - car pas mal de l'élite étaient bilingues.

Par contre, pour initier un changement dans la langue (sur un son - dans une position ou en chaque position - sur un choix de mots, sur un syntagme, sur le remplacement du futur "amavit" (pardon, "amabit")°°° avec le futur "amare habeo" ou sur l'invention du syntagme "amare habebam"~) il vaut mieux être une personne en position de prestige. Il y a prestige ouvert et prestige couvert ou oblique, celui de l'élite et celui d'une forme de contre-élite, mais sans aucune prestige, la personne ne va pas être imité.

À long terme, ce sera le plus souvent le prestige ouvert, l'élite tout court, qui emporte. Car le prestige oblique est plus local et éphémère. Donc, comme l'a bien dit Luke Ranieri, que ce soit bien le latin informel de l'élite, ou des classes moyennes~~ et non le latin formel, c'est bien leur latin, et non pas celui du très bas peuple, qui emporte dans les langues romanes, et plus encore en espagnol qu'en français (mesa vient de mensa, le mot correct pour table à manger, table vient de tabula, le mot pour par exemple une tablette de cire comme carnet d'écriture).

Quand la région de Lille devient francophone, c'est d'abord la bourgeoisie de Lille même, ensuite peu à peu le peuple et les alentours qui adoptent le français avant d'abandonner le flamand. Et ce même pour chaque changement. Et les changements autour de 800 - 900 que je viens de décrire un peu en détaille ne sont pas une exception. Tours adopte la prononciation anglaise du latin dans la Messe, pas dans les combats de coqs. Donc, clergé, pas paysans. Tours adopte cette prononciation sur l'ordre de Charlemagne, aussi assez élitaire. Et la raison d'être est que la prononciation du latin en Gaule était devenu incompréhensible à prêtres venus d'ailleurs. Un saint prêtre d'Italie qui vient en France vient de se demander si le prêtre avait baptisé pour la deuxième personne "et du Fils" ou "et de la Fille" ... parce que le texte de la liturgie des sacraments était écrit en Latin assez classique, et "filii" et "filiae" se prononceraient déjà de la même manière, -ae étant toujours et partout -e, et -i étant -e en Gaule.

Pourquoi donc d'Angleterre ? En Italie, on avait un latin vivant, un peu plus proche du latin classique, qui aurait aussi pu servir de modèle. C'est dans les années 1000 - 1100 qu'Italie et Espagne vont refaire la route parcouru par la France entre 800 et 900. Le latin de ces pays était donc plus pur, mais pas absolument identique à la lettre. En Angleterre par contre, on avait importé un latin d'Italie 597 - 609, le temps que St. Augustin "de Cantorbéry" est le premier archevêque de cette ville.~~~ Et puisque les indigènes là-bas ne sont pas des latins, le latin en Angleterre se transmet dès lors comme une langue apprise, langue étrangère, deuxième langue. Une chose qu'on peut maltraiter un peu mais change moins que la propre langue. Une chose qu'on maltraite parfois en simplifiant. Remplacer la prononciation -u~ avec une pronounciation -u-m est de ces simplifications, le vieil anglais n'ayant pas des voyelles nasales. Le latin de l'Angleterre est donc très pur, un peu plus que celui de l'Italie, et en plus simple. Vaut mieux remplacer, pour l'écrit "masculum", par exemple en Marc 10:6, la prononciation mas-cu-lu-m que la prononciation mas-ki-o, quand on avait eu l'habitude de le prononcer mas-le.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Paris
Veille de St. Jacques Apôtre
24.VII.2023

* Je considère qu'un temps en 1996 - 1998 servait de noviciat sauvage, avec le résultat : pas de vocation. J'ai eu depuis la confirmation de Sainte Madeleine : pas d'obligation de devenir moine. Ou même d'essayer.

** La réalité : 1/4 allocation. 3/4 emprunt, une dette qui sera normalement effacée mon 55e anniversaire.

*** Dans le latin classique, "unum" se prononçait en trois sons, le dernier étant un ou nasal, écrit -um. Dans le latin d'Alcuin, la désinence -um est de deux sons, un ou suivi d'un m.

° Dans l'allemand, ch - qui correspond à l'anglais gh - se prononce avec une palatale après une voyelle antérieure, et avec une vélaire après une voyelle postérieure, sauf en Suisse, et dans le néerlandais, c'est une vélaire dans les deux cas. On ne peut pas remonter le temps pour écouter comment Chaucer le prononçait.

°° Ce post :

Assorted retorts from yahoo boards and elsewhere: Sabellian and some more, but first Vulgar Latin
http://assortedretorts.blogspot.com/2023/07/sabellian-and-some-more-but-first.html

°°° Premier siècle de notre ère, vers la fin, hormis la position initiale, V et B se prononcent les deux "v" plutôt comme avant "w" et "b" ce qui donne que le futur "amabit" se confond avec le prétérit parfait "amavit" (dans la position initiale, c'est "v" et "b")

~"Amare habeo" deviendra "j'aimerai" et "amare habebam" deviendra "j'aimerais" - le conditionnel est inventé à côté du futur.

~~Mais Rome, avait-elle des classes moyennes ?

~~~ Paris n'avait qu'un évêque jusque dans les temps de Louis XIV, entre un oncle en neveu de la famille Gondi.

Second Long Comment, Second Longer Post

In Response to a Long Comment, a Longer Post · Second Long Comment, Second Longer Post

I am not answering all, because some things, I don't disagree with, some things I already answered, I get the feeling, and some things, I don't know. My main contention is only that Romanides (whom I have read, or perhaps it was the summary by Metallinos), is inaccurate in stating the earliest Roman Patricians spoke Greek.

"All Roman histories were in Greek by earlier Greek historians first. Latin written histories came WAY later."

Well, because Latin literature, even to the Patricians, was not a known concept before they met the Greeks and before they had had a taste of Greek literature.

If the Patricians had known Greek all along, why didn't they give Rome a Greek literature?

"Archaic Greek (Mycenean) is found all over Italy as far north as Rome."

Found? Epigraphically? I missed out on that one!

"The 12 Tables are written in Latin for the plebs. The Patricians knew their laws by heart, since childhood, and spoke perfect Greek since childhood, in their homes, etc. Julius Caesar spoke mostly Greek, says Seutonius!"

Suetonius. Twelve Tables are earlier.

449 BC - 100 BC = 349 years before Caesar was born.

"Latis is also believed to be an Aeolism, and this was believed to be a fact by the people who lived 2000 years ago. I think they knew more about their own history and culture than today's so called language experts and linguists."

Greeks were not usually great linguists. Compared to Persian, Latin actually sounds more Greek, like it has -os (which became -us only later) in the masculine main declinsion, where even Old Persian may have dropped the -s and changed the -o- to -a- ... and of all the Greek dialects that the Greeks had available, the Aeolian was closest.

Feminine main declinsion has α not η and this rules out Attic and Ionian. Leaves either Doric or Aeolic. While Persian has "kê" for "who" the Latin "quis" (and some close by languages even pis) is closer to Greek ... again, what dialect? Attic and I think Doric too has "τις" but Aeolic has "πις"

"But the 12 Tables are based on earlier, much older, Greek laws, written in Greek, in Athens and other city states, the Eraoi Deltoi, as Romanides quotes this from Dionysius and Livy both confirming this."

I look up Livy, you are right that at least Athens was involved.

Livy 3:31

[8] the patricians, who would propose measures advantageous to both parties, [p. 197]and such as might tend to the equalization of liberty.” This proposal the patricians did not reject. They said that “no one should propose laws, except some of the patricians.” When they agreed with respect to the laws, and differed only with respect to the proposer; ambassadors were sent to Athens, Spurius Posthumius Albus, Aulus Manlius Publius Sulpicius Camerinus; and they were ordered to copy out the celebrated laws of Solon, and to become acquainted with the institutions, customs, and laws of the other states of Greece.

Livy 3:32

[6] The ambassadors had now returned with the Athenian laws; the tribunes pressed the more urgently, that a commencement should at length be made of compiling the laws.

Livy 3:33

[5] Next to these were considered the three ambassadors who had gone to Athens; at the same time that the honour might serve as a recompence for so distant an embassy; at the same time they considered that persons acquainted with the foreign laws would be of use in digesting the new code of regulations.

But to get laws from there, ambassadors would have needed to speak Attic, not Mycenaean.

"The true spirit of Rome and all of its legacy is bilingualism in Greek AND Latin (modern forms of course)."

This is true, but I am afraid that this is not so from day 1.

Rome has two faces, like Janus. It is both "the fourth beast of horrible aspect" (Antiochus IV Epiphanes was a vassal of the Republic) and (probably) "ο κατεχων" (possibly even) "το κατεχον".

The latter starts with Julius Caesar, a more normal monarch than the decemviri ("ten horns" in the Apocalypse).

That Greek is used in the Latin liturgy (not saying Bergoglio has a business celebrating it, he could be invalidly ordained even as priest), is normal. Christ was born in the bilingual Roman Empire of the Caesars, not in the Republic of the Ten Men. Or of Scipio Africanus and Asiaticus (who made Antiochus' father a Roman vassal).

Hans Georg Lundahl
Paris (Nanterre, actually)
Monday after Trinity
5.VI.2023

Unclarity of the French Language - Or of His Memory?

Assorted retorts from yahoo boards and elsewhere: "Martyn Iles presents Living in Babylon" · Φιλολoγικά/Philologica: Unclarity of the French Language - Or of His Memory?

Sometimes French is unclear.

Not all of the time, but at more than one occasion, where English isn't.

Here is Ezechiel 26:7, in English:

For thus saith the Lord God: Behold I will bring against Tyre Nabuchodonosor king of Babylon, the king of kings, from the north, with horses, and chariots, and horsemen, and companies, and much people.

Now look at this French one:

Car ainsi parle le Seigneur, l'Eternel: Voici, j'amène du septentrion contre Tyr Nebucadnetsar, roi de Babylone, le roi des rois, avec des chevaux, des chars, des cavaliers, et une grande multitude de peuples.

Now imagine a truncated memory of this:

j'amène du septentrion contre Tyr Nebucadnetsar, roi de Babylone

Or even:

j'amène du septentrion contre Tyr le roi Nebucadnetsar, de Babylone

Do you analyse it as God bringing against Tyre from the North someone who is "le roi Nebucadnetsar, de Babylone"?

Or is "le roi Nebucadnetsar" being brought "du septentrion contre Tyr ... de Babylone"?

In English, this confusion is impossible. The second would have been "from Babylon" and the former is, what we also have in the text, "of Babylon" ....

Edward Camps used this, confusing "of" with "from" (makes me wonder if he's French or has been living in France for very long) to prove that "from Babylon" is designated as "from the North" even if Babylon is actually East of Tyre, and somewhat further South. Tyre is 33°16'15" N, and Babylon is 32°32'33" N. However, the city never says that God brings Nebuchadnezzar on this occasion "from Babylon" the only direction given is "from the North" and Babylon is in the genitive of relationship : Nebuchadnezzar is king of Babylon, and Babylon is city and Empire of Nebuchadnezzar.

Edward Camps clearly admitted that when Nebuchadnezzar arrived, he actually approached Tyre precisely from the North. So, "from the North" means "from the North" - and this is relevant for another city with the same name, Nimrod's very pre-Classical Babel. Why? Because it says "they removed from the East" - and I believe "from the East" means precisely "from the East" ... This is what Edward Camps pretended to disprove by citing Ezechiel.

Most places suggested for the landing place, anything West of Nagorno-Karabakh, given this is historically Armenia (whatever the claims of recent Armenian and Turkish population), and that has never been suggested, as far as I know, going to Classical Babylon would be going TO the East, not FROM it. But even from the Westernmost place actually suggested, Mt Judi, just East of the Tigris, going to Göbekli Tepe is going FROM the East, and that is what Genesis 11 actually has.

38°55′21″E for Göbekli Tepe
42°20′39″E for Mount Judi

To Göbekli Tepe from Mount Judi actually is, precisely, from the East.

Now, the actual text in Louis Segond (I took a Protestant text, because I think Edward Camps is a Protestant), it is sufficiently long to get clearly around this unclarity.

Nebucadnetsar, roi de Babylone, le roi des rois, appears as a block, and "de Babylone" inside it, so it must be part of how Nebuchadnezzar is described, an attribute, and can't be part of how the direction is described, can't be an extra spatial adverbial of direction. But the whole verse is also further away from everyday French. This hints, in order to make French clear, making descriptions long and not totally idiomatic for everyday use, is an asset. That's possibly one complaint some have about my French. But I try to be clear, and I spend quite a lot of time reading more colloquial texts, like comic books, JW tracts (I avoid Watchtower, but sometimes enjoy Awake!), free newspapers like "20 minutes" or earlier also "CNEWS Matin" ... so my French doesn't, in my pursuit of clarity, stray too far from what French people understand without reading it twice.

Spanish also has "de" both for spatial adverb of direction meaning origin of a removal, and for prepositional periphrase of the genitive case. But Italian has "da" for "from" and "di" for "of" ... and here is the Italian text:

Perché così dice il Signore Dio: Io mando da settentrione contro Tiro Nabucodònosor, re di Babilonia, il re dei re, con cavalli, carri e cavalieri e una folla, un popolo immenso.

Got it? It's "re di Babilonia," whereas the only direction is "da settentrione" .../HGL

Aymara and Quechua are Not Same Family

Are they?

Some linguists have claimed that Aymara is related to its more widely spoken neighbor, Quechua. That claim, however, is disputed. Although there are indeed similarities, like the nearly identical phonologies, the majority position among linguists today is that the similarities are better explained as areal features rising from prolonged cohabitation, rather than natural genealogical changes that would stem from a common protolanguage.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aymara_language

		Quechua		Aymara
1		huk		maya
2		iskay		paya
3		kimsa		kimsa
4		tawa		pusi
5		pisqa		phisca
6		suqta		suxta
7		qanchis		paqalqu
8		pusaq		kimsaqalqu
9		isqun		llatunka
10		chunka		tunka

Source : QUECHUA & AYMARA LANGUAGES
ILoveLanguages! | 7 Nov. 2022
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6pfiYsXXOmo