Category Archives: Language Families

by | November 17, 2017 · 11:25 PM

The Case for Splitting off Multiple English Dialects as Separate Languages

Here (on Italian dialects – actually many of which are separate languages).

One can make an excellent case that AAVE (Ebonics), Bayou/Cajun English, Deep South English, Appalachian English, New York English, Newfoundland English, and of course Jamaican creole and Scots are separate languages. Even Scottish English and Geordie probably qualify.

A recent study found only 54% intelligibility for Standard English speakers of Geordie. The speakers were L2 English learners in the Czech Republic, but they scored 100% on the “home” test, which was a test of a US television English. Another study found 42% intelligibility of Scots for native speakers of US English. Having heard Hard Scots spoken by the Scottish underclass, I would say my intelligibility of it was ~5-10% at best or possibly even less. It was almost as bad as listening to something like Greek, and one got the feeling listening to it that you were actually listening to some foreign tongue like, say, Greek.

At any rate, 42% and 54% very well qualify both Scots and Geordie as separate languages. Scots is already split, and it sure would be nice to split Geordie, but to say people would get mad is an understatement.

Scots and Jamaican creole are already split off. There is a lie going around the intellectual circles that it is still controversial in Linguistics whether Scots and Jamaican Creole are separate languages. In fact it is not controversial at all.

I have been listening to English my whole life as an American, and I still cannot understand Bayou speech, hard Southern English, Newfoundland English or the hard forms of Appalachian English or New York English. There are some very weird forms of English spoken on the US Atlantic coastal islands that cannot be understood by anyone not from there, or at least not by me. Gulla English in South Carolina is already split as a creole.

Generally the criterion we use is mutual intelligibility. Also if you can’t pick it up pretty quickly, it’s a separate language.

A speaker of hard New York English came to my mother’s school a while back, and no one could understand him. They still could not understand him after three months of listening to him – this is how you know you are dealing with a separate language. He finally learned how to speak California English, and then he was understood.

I have been listening to hard British English my whole life, and I still cannot understand them. I even had a British girlfriend for 1.5 years, and I still could not understand her on the phone. She went to my parents house for dinner, stayed a couple of hours, and my brother said he didn’t understand a word she said.

You can make an excellent case that the harder forms of British English (or Australian English for that matter) are not the same language as US English. The problem is that if you tried to split them off, everyone would go insane (including a lot of very foolish linguists), and there would be a wild uproar.

Generally we use 90% as the split between language and dialect. Less that that, separate language. More than that, dialect. We use this criterion to split languages from dialects everywhere, yet if we tried to do it for English, the resulting firestorm would be so ferocious that it would not be worth it, but it would be perfectly valid scientifically. Even the very well-validated split of Scots has driven the English-speaking world half-nuts.

I actually have a post in my drafts where I split English into ~10-15 different languages, but I have been terrified to post it. My post splitting German into 137 different languages did not go over well with the Net linguists (who are mostly loudmouths, fools, cranks, and idiots), although a major Germanist, a professor at a big university in Europe wrote me when I was only at 90 languages and said, “I think you are right!” Still, if I try to split English, I may ignite one Hell of a damned firestorm, and I’m just too chicken.

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by | November 17, 2017 · 11:17 PM

Fake Controversies, Fake Settled Questions, and Ideological Authoritarianism in Modern Linguistics, with an Emphasis on Mutual Intelligibility and the Dialect/Language Question

There is a lie going around that the dialect/language question is controversial in Linguistics. It really isn’t. Most linguists have a pretty good idea of where to draw the line. If you don’t believe me, study the internals of the Summer Institute of Linguistics change request forms for languages. The field is a lot more uniform on this question than the cranks think. Hardly anyone thinks Valencian is a separate language. Romagnolo and Emilian were split with zero controversy. All it took was a few authoritative statements by the experts in these varieties to settle the question. There were 5-10 experts writing in on Valencian and they were all in agreement. In other words, the language dialect question is what is known as a fake controversy.

Really the only controversy about this question comes from nationalists and language activists.

Sadly, many linguists are nationalists, and their work has been poisoned by their ideology for a long time now. Some of the worst ones of all are in Europe. Linguistics in the Balkans and Poland has been badly damaged by nationalist linguists for a long time, with no sign of things getting better. Similar nonsense is going on in of all places ultra-PC Denmark and Sweden. Bornholmian and Southeast Jutnish should have been split from Danish long ago. In fact, Jutnish was split, but Danish nationalist linguists pathetically had it removed. The many langues d’oil have never been listed and probably never will be. No doubt this is due to the state of Linguistics in ultra-nationalistic France. There are easily 10-15+ langues d’oil that could be split off.

Greek linguist nationalists have raised their ugly heads over splits in Macro-Greek.

Bulgarian Linguistics is all nationalist and has been lost in retardation forever now. No, Macedonian is not a Bulgarian dialect.

There have been some ugly and ridiculous fights in the Baltics especially with Estonian and Latvian, neither of which is a single language. I doubt that Estonian and Latvian linguists are comporting themselves well here given the fanatical nationalism that overwhelms both lands.

There are easily 350-400 language inside of Sinitic or Chinese according to the estimate of the ultimate Sinologist Jerry Norman. The real figure is clearly closer to 1,000-2,000 separate languages. Chinese nationalism is mandatory for anyone doing Sinitic linguistics. No one wants to bring down the wrath of the Chinese government by pulling the curtain on their big lie that Chinese is one language. I am amazed that SIL even split Chinese into 14 languages without getting deluged with death threats.

Arabic is clearly more than one language, and SIL now has it split into 35 languages.  This is one odd case where they may have erred by splitting too much. That’s probably too many, but no one can even do any work in this area, since Arabists and especially Arabic speakers keep insisting, often violently, that Arabic is a single language. Never mind that they routinely can’t understand each other. We have Syrians and Yemenis at my local store and no, the Syrian Arabic speakers cannot understand hard Yemeni Arabic, sorry. Some of the Yemeni Arabic  speakers have even whispered conspiratorially in my ear when the others were not around that speakers of different Yemeni Arabic varieties often cannot even understand each other and that’s not even split by SIL. I have a feeling that the Arabic situation is more like Chinese than not.

A Swedish nationalist wiped out several well documented separate languages inside of Macro-Swedish simply by making a few dishonest change request forms. SIL pathetically fell for it.

Occitan language activists wiped out the very well-supported split of Occitan into six separate languages based on ideology. They are trying to resurrect Occitan, and they think this will only work if there is one Occitan language with many dialects under it. Splitting it up into six or more languages dooms the tongue. So this was a political argument masquerading as a linguistic one. SIL fell for it again. Pathetic.

No one has talked much about these matters in the field, but a man named Harold Hammerstrom has written some excellent notes about them. He also takes the language/dialect question very seriously and has proposed more scientific ways of doing the splitting.

SIL was recently granted the ability to give out new ISO codes for languages, and since then, SIL has become quite conservative, lumping varieties everywhere in sight. This is because lumping is always the easy way out, as conservatives love lumping in everything from Classification to Historical Linguistics, and the field has been taken over by radical conservatives for some time now. Splitters are kooks, clowns and laughing stocks. One gets the impression that SIL is terrified to split off new tongues for fear of bad PR.

As noted above, the language/dialect question is not as controversial in the field as Net linguist cranks would have you believe. SIL simply decides whatever they decide, and all the linguists just shrug their shoulders and go back to Optimality Theory, threatening to kill each other over Indo-European reconstructions, scribbling barely readable SJW sociolinguistic blather, or whatever it is they are crunching their brains about.

SIL grants an ISO code or refuses to grant one, and that’s that. No ISO code, no language. The main problem is that they refuse to split many valid languages mostly out of PC fear of causing a furor. Most of the opposition to splitting off new languages comes from linguistic hacks and cranks who exist for the most part on the Internet.

Most real linguists don’t seem to care very much. I know this because I talk to real linguists all the time. When it comes to the dialect/language split, most of them find it mildly intriguing, but hardly anyone is set off. You tell them that some dialect has now been split off as a separate language or two languages merged into one, and they just perk up their ears and say, “Oh, that’s interesting.” Sometimes they shrug their shoulders and say, “They (SIL) are saying this is a separate language now,” as if they really don’t care one way or another.

Linguists definitely get hot under the collar about some things, but not about the dialect/language question which is regarded more as a quizzical oddity. Most linguists furthermore care nothing at all about the mutual intelligibility debate, which at any rate was resolved long ago by SIL way back in the 1950’s. See the influential book by Cassad written way back then for the final word on the science of mutual intelligibility. Some enterprising linguists are finally starting to take mutual intelligibility seriously, but even they are being much too wishy-washy and unsciency about it. A lot of very silly statements  are made like “there is no good, hard scientific way to measure mutual intelligibility, so all figures are guesswork.”

There’s no need for these theoretical shields or hyper-hedging because no one cares. No one in the field other than a few nutcases and kooks  on the Internet even gives two damns about this question in the first place. The mutual intelligibility question is actually much less controversial in the field that the linguist kook loudmouths on the Net would have you believe.

We have more important things to fight about, like Everett’s resurrecting of the hated Sapir-Worf Hypothesis, Chomsky’s Universal Grammar (defended pathetically by the Old Guard and under attack by the Everett crowd who everyone hates), not to mention Altaic, Joseph Greenberg’s poor, regularly pummeled ghost, and mass comparison in general.

The field is full of many a silly and pretty lie. One for instance is that Linguistics rejected the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis long ago, and now it is regarded as a laughing stock. Actually that’s not true. Really a bunch of bullies got together and announced very arrogantly that Sapir-Whorf was crap, and then it become written in stone the way a lot of nonsense our field believes does.

If you back over the papers that “proved” this matter, it turns out that they never proved one anything thing. They just said that they proved Sapir-Whorf was nonsense, and everyone fell for it or just got in line like they were supposed to.

Not to mention that Linguistics is like an 8th Grade playground. Let’s put it this way. If you advocate for Sapir-Whorf in academia, I pray for your soul. You also damn well better have tenure. I don’t know how anyone advocates for Altaic these days. I would never advocate for Altaic or even any remotely controversial historical linguistics hypothesis without tenure. The field is out for blood, and they burn heretics at the stake all the time. We’ve probably incinerated more wrong thinkers than the Inquisition by now.

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by | October 27, 2017 · 12:25 AM

Did Liebnitz Discover Indo-European?

The language or dialect of the ancient Goths is very different from present-day Germanic, although it draws from the same source. Ancient Gaulish was even more different, to judge from its closest relative, which is Welsh, Cornish and Breton. But Irish is still more different and displays the traces of a very antique British, Gaulish and Germanic tongue.

However these languages all come from one source and can be considered to be alterations of one and the same language, which could be called Celtic. In the Antiquity, Germanic and Gaulish people were called Celts, and if one tries to understand the origins of Celtic, Latin and Greek, which have many roots in common with Germanic or Celtic languages, one may hypothesize that this is due to the common origin of all these peoples descended from the Scyths, who came from the Black Sea, crossed the Danube and the Vistula Rivers, of whom one part went to Greece, and the other formed Germanic and Gaulish people. This is a consequence of the hypothesis that Europeans came from Asia.” [original in French]

– Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz, Nouveaux Essais sur l’entendement Humain, 1764.

Change a few things here and there, and you have Sir William Jones famous speech in Calcutta in 1876, 112 years after this was written.

More than anything else, I suppose this just goes to show us that most great theories have one or often more intellectual precursors.

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by | August 30, 2017 · 9:43 PM

Excellent Proof of the Aryan Invasion Theory

From here.

Aryan invasion

Around 1500 BC, the Indus civilization came, after 2,000 years of prosperity, to a comparatively abrupt end. Conclusive evidence shows that the reason for this decline, in fact the sole reason for it, was an invasion by highly barbaric Aryans. They invaded, destroying the Indus cities and exterminating the native peoples.

1. Archaeological Evidence

1.1 Thick Ash Layers

Thick ash layers occur in the upper strata of many Indus cities. At Nal the last phase of the Zhob-ware was burnt down so much that the mound is known as the Sohr Damb, or the Red Mound, from the reddening of fire. At Dabar Kot the upper 6 feet show 4 thick ash layers that indicate repeated destruction by conflagration and the layers were is associated with the last settlements of Harappa [Piggott 215].

At the Rana Ghundai Mound everywhere overlying the foundation level of the RG IIIc phase there are pockets of ash. Above the RG IIIc phase the pottery is a markedly different from the preceding type, the RG IV phase pottery being painted with coarse bands. RG IV was again destroyed by fire, and the RG V phase is marked by another change in pottery. The RG V pottery is unpainted and contains patterns in relief [Piggott p. 214].

1.2 Fractured Skulls

At Mohenjo-daro, Harappa and Chanhu-daro, skeletons/fragments of skeletons indicate violent massacres in the final stages of the cities’ histories. Huddled skeletons of persons murdered in the streets indicate that the mass deaths were not due to poisonings etc. but were violent [Piggott p. 145].

1.3 Aryan Weaponry

Copper ax-adzes are intrusive at Harappan sites (Harappa, Shahi-tump and Chanhu-daro) but are similar to those found at North Persian sites (Hissar III, Shah Tepe, Turang Tepe) and Akkadian sites. At Assur Sialk B cemetery, the specimens are probably from as late as the 9th century BC) [Piggott p.228].

Swords 1.5 foot long and strengthened at the mid-rib are non-Harappan and are found only in the later strata of the cities. These swords at Mohenjo-daro have a tang and rivet to hold the handle exactly as found in Palestine, where such implements are associated with the Hyksos 1800-1500 BC [Piggott p. 229].

Copper harpoons found in the Indus Valley are similar to those found in Europe and elsewhere in Asia [Piggott p. 237].

1.4 Flooding by Aryan Destruction of Indus Dams

Signs of flooding were discovered in the Indus cities, mainly in the form of silt deposits. It was considered that this flooding could explain the fall of the Indus cities and this was considered the most viable alternative to Aryan Invasion. It was subsequently discovered, however, that flooding had been pinpointed as an alternative explanation to the Aryan Invasion Theory several decades before the actual discovery of the flooding. It is now accepted that the flooding was caused by the Aryans’ destruction of the Indus dam and irrigation system and was merely another aspect of the genocide.

+ He smote Vrtra who encompassed the waters [RgV VI.20.2].

+ He smote Vrtra who enclosed the waters, like a tree with the bolt [RgV II.14.2].

+ He is referred to as `conquering the waters’ (apsujit), which is his prime attribute.

+ Indra let loose the streams after slaying Vrtra [RgV IV.19.8].

+ He cleaves the mountain, making the streams flow [RgV I.57.6; X.89.7], even with the sound of his bolt [RgV VI.27; VI.57.6; II.14.2; IV.19.8; VI.20.2; VI.27.1; X.89.7. ST 368].

In Sanskrit, `vrtra’ is an `obstacle’, and denotes a barrage or blockage [ISISH 70-71]. It is thus a word for `dam’. Dams now called Gebr-band are found on many watercourses of the western parts of the Indus region. Aryans shattered the dam system of the Indus, leading to silt deposits in Mohenjo-daro [S & T 369].

+ When he [Indra] laid open the great mountain, he let loose the torrents and slew the Danava, he set free the pent up springs, the udder of the mountain. [RgV V.32.1-2].

+ He slew the Danava, shattered the great mountain, broke open the well, set free the pent up waters. [RgV I.57.6; V.33.1].

+ He releases the streams which are like imprisoned cows [RgV I.61.10].

+ He won the cows and soma and made the 7 rivers flow. [RgV I.32.12; II.12.12].

+ He releases the imprisoned waters [RgV I.57.6; I.103.2].

+ He dug out channels for the streams with his bolt [RgV II.15.3], let the flood of waters flow into the sea. [RgV II.19.3].

+ He caused the waters pent up by Vrtra to flow [RgV III.26.6; IV.17.1; McDonnell; S & T 368-9 quoting McDonnell].

Another verse explicitly mentions him as a destroyer of dams: rinag rodhamsi krtrimani = “he removed artificial barriers” [RgV 2.15.8].

Now, rodhas = “dam” elsewhere in the Rig Veda and in later Sanskrit [S & T 369]. The above evidence taken directly from the Rig Veda and not from any secondary source is sufficient to implicate the Aryans as the destroyers of the dam systems of the ancient Indus.

1.5 Aryan Settlements

Aryan settlements occur atop the destroyed cities towards the end of the civilization. They are primitive brick structures made of material taken from the ruins of the preceding towns.

1.3 Aryan Weaponry

Aryan weaponry, including the horse and chariot, occur towards the end of the Indus cities’ history.

2. Anthropological

2.1 Northern Dravidians

Several Dravidian tribes still inhabit isolated parts of northern India. The Brahui inhabit parts of Baluchistan and still speak a Dravidian language. The Bhils inhabit parts of southern Rajasthan. The black Gonds inhabit parts of central India about the Vindhyans.

2.2 The Black Sudroids ; Dravidians

The Aryans and Dravidians today still retain by and large their original features. The Aryans have fair-pale skin, leptorrhine (thin) noses and straight hair. The Dravidians have broad noses, curly-wavy hair and dark-black skin. [Winters;* Risley].

2.3 White Indo-Aryan Caucasoids

The Indo-Aryans belong to the Caucasoid or white race and are very similar to Latins. The Indo-Aryan languages belong to the Indo-European family of languages. Racially the Indo-Aryans possess white to fair skin, thin noses and lips and straight hair.

3. Literary

3.1 Sanskrit Literature

References to an Aryan invasion abound in Sanskrit literature.

The ancient singer praises the god who “destroyed the Dasyans and protected the Aryan color” [Rg.V. III.34.9; Ann. 114] and “the thunderer who bestowed on his white friends the fields, bestowed the sun, bestowed the waters” [Rg.V. I.100.18; Ann. 114].

There are numerous references to “the black skin” Krishnam Vacham [Rg.V. IX.41.1, Sama Veda I.491, II.242; Ann. 114] which is mentioned with abhorrence. Again “stormy gods who rush on like furious bulls and scatter the black skin” [Rg.V. IX.73.5]. The singers mention “the black skin, the hated of Indra”, being swept out of heaven [RgV. IX.73.5]: “Indra protected in battle the Aryan worshiper, he subdued the lawless for Manu, he conquered the black skin” [Rg.V. I.130.8; Ann.114].

The sacrificer poured out thanks to his god for “scattering the slave bands of black descent”, and for stamping out ” the vile Dasyan color” [Rg.V. II.20.7, II.12.4; Ann. 115]. See Dasam varnam adharam [Rg.V. II.12.4; Muir part I, p.43, II, p.284, 323 etc.; Ann. 114 ff].

Rakshas are aboriginals

  • Ravana = Rakshasendra [Ann. 111].
  • Rakshas = Ceylon aborigines according to Chinese travelers and Singhalese chronicles – Rakko or Yakko in the vernacular [An. 111].

Destruction of Cities

The Aryan gods are proudly presented by the Vedic “sages” as the destroyers of cities. Of these Indra, later considered an incarnation of the God Vishnu, is the prime culprit. Indra is called Puroha or Purandhara, `sacker of cities’ [S & T 366]. Indra overthrew 100 Puras made of stone (asmanmayi) for his worshiper Divodasa [RgV 4.30.20], evidently belonging to Sambara who is a Dasa (non-Aryan/demon) of the mountain [RgV 6.26.5] [Chanda; S & T p.364]

No regard was shown to the life of non-Aryans.

An Aryan poet says:

Ye mighty ones [Asvins]: what do you do there; why do you stay there among the people who are held in high esteem through not offering sacrifices; ignore them, destroy the life of the Panis [RgV I.83.3; S & T 365].

Indra’s Destruction of Harappa: The Vedic Harappa Hymn

The famous Harappa hymn of the Rig Veda describes with praise Indra’s destruction of Harappa:

“In aid of Abhyavartin Cayamana, Indra destroyed the seed of Virasakha. At Hariyupiyah he smote the vanguard of the Vrcivans, and the rear fled frighted” [Rg.V. XXVII.5].

This Hariyupiyah is likely to be the Harappa of the Indus Valley.

3.2 Dravidian Literature

The date of 1500 BC corresponds to the end of a sangam period when invasions by barbarians occurred.

4. Sociological

4.1 Caste System

The caste system is another`fossil’ of the Aryan Conquest, with the lower and exterior castes representing the aboriginal inhabitants that managed to survive the Aryan slaughter. Exactly the same occurred in other parts of the world where one race has subjugated others, e.g.. Latin America (Iberians conquered Aboriginals ), USA (Anglo-Saxons ruling over Hispanics and Afro-Americans), etc. These include the Adivasis (aboriginal tribals), the Dalits ( semi-settled aboriginals ), and the Sudras (the lowest caste). However, some of the Sudras were imported under Muslim rule from Southern India.

The caste system consists of several different “varnas” (Sans. “colors”), three of which are Aryan. The lowest caste, the Shudra, consists of aboriginals, as well as the exterior untouchable castes.

4.2 Sati and Child Marriage

The Aryans introduced tremendous restrictions on the life of women, including sati and child marriage. According to Aryan “Hindu” (i.e.. Vaishnavite) scriptures, a man must marry a maiden one-third his age.

4.3 Cow-Worship

Cow-worship is another feature introduced by the Aryans. This probably arose because the Aryans were nomads and hence required the cow.

5. Theological

5.1 Shiva and Shakti

Siva is the god of the Dravidians. Vishnu is the god of the Aryans. The star-calendar used by the Aryan-Vaishnavites today was adopted from the Semito-Dravidian Indus Valley civilization, since it is not referred to in the Rig Veda or Avesta. It was compiled when the Indus Valley was at its peak, before the Aryans came to India [Parpola].

The Indus people practiced astronomy because the streets are oriented towards the cardinal directions, presupposing the use of the sun-stick. A seal from Mohenjo-daro depicts an Indus deity with a star on either side of his head in the fashion of the Near East. Inanna-Ishtar, the goddess of love and war, for example, was associated with the planet Venus [Parpola]. This may have led to the cult of worshiping the planets, the astral religion of India.

5.2 Fire Altars

Fire altars occur late towards the Indus cities’ histories. They are primitive in nature, constructed from material from the destroyed Indus cities.

6. Global Aryan Invasions

Aryans invaded several parts of the world, putting an end to various brilliant civilizations. Babylonia was destroyed by Kassites, Hittites and Mittani, Egypt was devastated by the Hyksos, and Minoan culture by the Dorians.

7. Rival Theories

Several other explanations have been put forth to explain the demise of the Indus Civilization besides the Aryan invasion.

These are:

Environmental catastrophes – these include:

  • Comet impact
  • Flooding

Internal Decline – These claim that slavery or some other revolt destroyed the Indus Civilization.

All of these have severe problems, however.

Comet Impact. The problems with this theory are:

  • No crater/craters have been found with an age matching 1500 BC, nor of the requisite size. The size is narrowly constrained, for if the impact was too large, catastrophe would have been global, while if it were too small, the effect would have been negligible.
  • No iridium anomaly, the characteristic of all impacts from the mammoth K/T Chiczulub Crater [Alvarez] to the Sudbury Intrusive, has been found in the Indus valley of the required age.
  • No shocked glasses or tektites with the requisite shock deformation features have been found anywhere near the Indus Valley.

Thus, although a comet explanation for the extinction has been found in Comet Enke, this is a far-fetched theory to say the least. The destruction of several civilizations simultaneously requires a global catastrophe. But some civilizations, e.g.. in Central and South America, and China, survived the 1500 BC discontinuity. Asteroidal impacts tend to leave larger craters and more iridium, so the arguments against this theory apply more forcefully.

Flooding. Undisputed evidence of flooding has been found in the form of silt deposits and a barrage system erected as a defensive measure. Flooding thus remained a serious candidate until it was pointed out that several Vedic scholars noted that the Aryans had destroyed the irrigation and dam system of the Indus. Thus flooding is a natural consequence of Aryan invasion and not an independent mechanism.

Internal Decline

  1. To suppose that after two millennia of stability some internal revolt was the cause behind the downfall is stretching the imagination.
  2. No evidence has been found for this, and when indisputable evidence of violence perpetrated with new weapons exists, this theory disregards excellent evidence.

Other Opponents

Although the following may seem rather harsh, it is necessary to expose the real designs of some of the opponents of one of the most well-established theories of all time.

The opponents of the concept of Aryan invasion fall into two categories:

  1. Aryan Hindu Fanatics
  2. Neo-Nazis

These mostly have ulterior motives. The former oppose any vilification of their “gods” who are implicated in the worst massacres and atrocities recorded in history. They wish to see the Vedas, in actuality the songs of primitive cow-herders, as the repository of all science. The latter do not want to accept that their ancestors perpetrated such crimes. One religious fanatic who opposed the notion of Aryan Invasion during its infancy was Narendra Nath Datta, later known as Vivekananda. All he could do was to vilify honest scholars:

“And what your European pandits say about the Aryan’s sweeping from some foreign land, snatching away the lands of the aboriginals and settling India by exterminating them, is all pure nonsense, foolish talk. Strange, that our Indian scholars too say amen to them, and all these monstrous lies are taught to our boys. This is very bad indeed. In what Veda, in what Sukta, so you find that the Aryans came to India from a foreign country? Where do you get the idea that they slaughtered the wild aborigines? What do you gain by talking such nonsense?” [`Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda’, 1963, p.534-535] [Panda 70].

Another fundamentalist who opposed the notion of Aryan Invasions is Srivastava, who apparently conducted all of his research solely to prove the innocence of the Aryan gods:

Indra, therefore stands completely exonerated.

– Srivastava 441

Later, lacking any scientific evidence whatsoever, he degenerates into vilifying Wheeler himself:

“.. we see him as a brigadier in the British army during WW II, we feel he could not interpret the dubious evidence of Mohenjo-daro and Harappa in any other manner.”

– Srivas 442

A. K. Pateria writes:

“Both Dayananda and Aurobindo refuted in clear terms the historical doctrines of Aryan invasion and struggle of Aryans with Dravidian, which was originated by the Westerners and has even been popularized among a large section of the Indian Historians.” [A.K. Pateria, `Modern Commentators of the Veda’, p.63; Panda 70]

Who this Dayananda was must be fully exposed.

In terms of barbarism, the Aryans were so barbaric that they did not even have a word for brick in Sanskrit [S & T 372; Woolley].

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by | July 16, 2017 · 2:06 AM

A Look at the Tsou Language

Method and Conclusion. See here.

Results. A ratings system was designed in terms of how difficult it would be for an English-language speaker to learn the language. In the case of English, English was judged according to how hard it would be for a non-English speaker to learn the language. Speaking, reading and writing were all considered.

Ratings: Languages are rated 1-6, easiest to hardest. 1 = easiest, 2 = moderately easy to average, 3 = average to moderately difficult, 4 = very difficult, 5 = extremely difficult, 6 = most difficult of all. Ratings are impressionistic.

Time needed. Time needed for an English language speaker to learn the language “reasonably well”: Level 1 languages = 3 months-1 year. Level 2 languages = 6 months-1 year. Level 3 languages = 1-2 years. Level 4 languages = 2 years. Level 5 languages = 3-4 years, but some may take longer. Level 6 languages = more than 4 years.

This post will look at the Tsou language in terms of how difficult it would be for an English speaker to learn it.

Austro-Tai

Austronesian

Formosan

Tsouic

Tsou is a Taiwanese aborigine language spoken by about 2,000 people in Taiwan.

Tsou is also ergative like most Formosan languages. Tsou is the only language in the world that has no prepositions nor anything that looks like a preposition. Instead it uses nouns and verbs in the place of prepositions. Tsou allows more potential consonant clusters than most other languages.

About 1/2 of all possible CC clusters are allowed. Tsou has an inclusive/exclusive distinction in the 1st person plural and a very strange visible and non-visible distinction in the 3rd person singular and plural. Both adjectives and adverbs can turn into verbs, as they are marked for voice in the same way that verbs are. Verbs are extensively marked for voice.

Nouns are marked for a variety of odd cases, often referring to perception (visible/invisible) and person and place deixis

'e         "visible and near speaker"
si/ta      "visible and near hearer"
ta         "visible but away from speaker"
'o/to      "invisible and far away or newly introduced to discourse"
na/no ~ ne "non-identifiable and non-referential"*

*often when scanning a class of elements

Tsou gets a 5 rating, extremely hard to learn.

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Filed under Applied, Asia, Asians, Austro-Tai, Austronesian, Language Families, Language Learning, Linguistics, Race/Ethnicity, Regional, SE Asia, SE Asians, Taiwan, Taiwanese Aborigines

by | July 16, 2017 · 1:59 AM

A Look at the Valman Language

Method and Conclusion. See here.

Results. A ratings system was designed in terms of how difficult it would be for an English-language speaker to learn the language. In the case of English, English was judged according to how hard it would be for a non-English speaker to learn the language. Speaking, reading and writing were all considered.

Ratings: Languages are rated 1-6, easiest to hardest. 1 = easiest, 2 = moderately easy to average, 3 = average to moderately difficult, 4 = very difficult, 5 = extremely difficult, 6 = most difficult of all. Ratings are impressionistic.

Time needed. Time needed for an English language speaker to learn the language “reasonably well”: Level 1 languages = 3 months-1 year. Level 2 languages = 6 months-1 year. Level 3 languages = 1-2 years. Level 4 languages = 2 years. Level 5 languages = 3-4 years, but some may take longer. Level 6 languages = more than 4 years.

This post will look at the Valman language in terms of how difficult it would be for an English speaker to learn it.

Torricelli

Wapei

Valman

Valman, spoken in Papua New Guinea, is a bizarre case where the word “and” that connects two nouns is actually a verb, of all things, and is marked with the first noun as subject and the second noun as object.

“’John’ (subject) and ‘Mary’ (object) went to the store.”

“John” is marked as subject for some reason and “Mary” is marked as object for some reason, and the “and” word shows subject agreement with “John” and object agreement with “Mary”.

Valman gets a 6 rating, hardest of all.

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Filed under Applied, Language Families, Language Learning, Linguistics, Pacific, Papua New Guinea, Regional

by | July 16, 2017 · 1:54 AM

A Look at the Chukchi Language

Method and Conclusion. See here.

Results. A ratings system was designed in terms of how difficult it would be for an English-language speaker to learn the language. In the case of English, English was judged according to how hard it would be for a non-English speaker to learn the language. Speaking, reading and writing were all considered.

Ratings: Languages are rated 1-6, easiest to hardest. 1 = easiest, 2 = moderately easy to average, 3 = average to moderately difficult, 4 = very difficult, 5 = extremely difficult, 6 = most difficult of all. Ratings are impressionistic.

Time needed. Time needed for an English language speaker to learn the language “reasonably well”: Level 1 languages = 3 months-1 year. Level 2 languages = 6 months-1 year. Level 3 languages = 1-2 years. Level 4 languages = 2 years. Level 5 languages = 3-4 years, but some may take longer. Level 6 languages = more than 4 years.

This post will look at the Chukchi language in terms of how difficult it would be for an English speaker to learn it.

Chukotko-Kamchatkan

Northern

Chukot

Chukchi is a polysynthetic, agglutinating and incorporating language and is often listed as one of the hardest languages on Earth to learn.

Təmeyŋəlevtpəγtərkən.

“I have a fierce headache.”

There are five morphemes in that word, and there are three lexical morphemes (nouns or adjectives) incorporated in that word: meyŋ “great”, levt “head”, and pəγt “ache”.

Chukchi gets a 6 rating, hardest of all.

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Filed under Applied, Chukchi, Chukotko-Kamchatkan, Language Families, Language Learning, Linguistics, Paleosiberian

by | July 16, 2017 · 1:52 AM

A Look at the Inuktitut and Kalaallisut Eskimo Languages

Method and Conclusion. See here.

Results. A ratings system was designed in terms of how difficult it would be for an English-language speaker to learn the language. In the case of English, English was judged according to how hard it would be for a non-English speaker to learn the language. Speaking, reading and writing were all considered.

Ratings: Languages are rated 1-6, easiest to hardest. 1 = easiest, 2 = moderately easy to average, 3 = average to moderately difficult, 4 = very difficult, 5 = extremely difficult, 6 = most difficult of all. Ratings are impressionistic.

Time needed. Time needed for an English language speaker to learn the language “reasonably well”: Level 1 languages = 3 months-1 year. Level 2 languages = 6 months-1 year. Level 3 languages = 1-2 years. Level 4 languages = 2 years. Level 5 languages = 3-4 years, but some may take longer. Level 6 languages = more than 4 years.

This post will look at the Kalaallisut and Inuktitut languages in terms of how difficult they would be for an English speaker to learn them.

Eskimo-Aleut

Eskimo

Inuit-Inupiaq

Inuktitut is extremely hard to learn. Inuktitut is polysynthetic-agglutinative, and roots can take many suffixes, in some cases up to 700. Verbs have 63 forms of the present indicative, and conjugation involves 252 different inflections. Inuktitut has the complicated polypersonal agreement system. In a typical long Inuktitut text, 92% of words will occur only once. This is quite different from English and many other languages where certain words occur very frequently or at least frequently. Certain fully-inflected verbs can be analyzed both as verbs and as nouns.

Words can be very long.

Inuktituusuungutsialaarungnanngittuaraaluuvunga.

“I truly don’t know how to speak Inuktitut very well.”

You may need to analyze up to 10 different bits of information in order to figure out a single word. However, the affixation is all via suffixes (there are no prefixes or infixes), and the suffixation is extremely regular.

Inuktitut is also rated one by linguists one of the hardest languages on Earth to pronounce. Inuktitut may be as hard to learn as Navajo.

Inuktitut is rated 6, hardest of all.

Kalaallisut (Western Greenlandic) is very closely related to Inuktitut.

Look at this sentence:

Aliikusersuillammassuaanerartassagaluarpaalli…

“However, they will say that he is a great entertainer, but…”

That word is composed of 12 separate morphemes. A single word can conceptualize what could be an entire sentence in a non-polysynthetic language.

Kalaallisut is rated 6, hardest of all.

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Filed under Applied, Eskimo-Aleut, Inuktitut, Language Families, Language Learning, Linguistics, North America, Regional

by | July 16, 2017 · 1:40 AM

A Look at the Buyang Language

Method and Conclusion. See here.

Results. A ratings system was designed in terms of how difficult it would be for an English-language speaker to learn the language. In the case of English, English was judged according to how hard it would be for a non-English speaker to learn the language. Speaking, reading and writing were all considered.

Ratings: Languages are rated 1-6, easiest to hardest. 1 = easiest, 2 = moderately easy to average, 3 = average to moderately difficult, 4 = very difficult, 5 = extremely difficult, 6 = most difficult of all. Ratings are impressionistic.

Time needed. Time needed for an English language speaker to learn the language “reasonably well”: Level 1 languages = 3 months-1 year. Level 2 languages = 6 months-1 year. Level 3 languages = 1-2 years. Level 4 languages = 2 years. Level 5 languages = 3-4 years, but some may take longer. Level 6 languages = more than 4 years.

This post will look at the Buyang language in terms of how difficult it would be for an English speaker to learn it.

Kam-Sui

Kra

Paha

According to a Fudan University study, Buyang in the third most phonologically complex language in the world. Buyang is a cluster of four related languages spoken by 1,900 people in Yunnan Province, China. Buyang has a completely wild consonant inventory.

It has a full set of both voiced and voiceless plain and aspirated stops, including voiceless uvulars. The contrast between aspirated and plain voiced stops is peculiar. The stop series also has distinctions between palatalized and rounded stops. It has a labialized voiceless palatal fricative and a voiceless dental aspirated lateral, both unusual sounds. It has four different voiceless aspirated nasals. It has voiceless y and w, both more odd sounds. It also has plain and labialized palatal glides.

That is one wild phonology.

Buyang gets a 5 rating, extremely hard to learn.

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Filed under Applied, Asia, China, Language Families, Language Learning, Linguistics, Regional

by | June 28, 2017 · 3:36 PM

Possible Origin of the Black Plague

Here.

The standard view is that twelve ships from Florence docked at Messina in 1347, bringing the Plague to Europe. It would later kill 1/3 of all Europeans and an incredible 20% of all humans. It would be as if 1.6 billion people died in only seven years or as if 66 million Americans died over a seven year period. Can you imagine? In my city alone, 12,000 people would be dead. Of every five people you knew at the start of the period, one would be dead after seven years. Can you imagine? That would not have left one person unscathed.

A new view though is that the Plague, which had already been active in Asia for a while, came to Europe via a biological warfare attack by Genghis Khan’s raiders on the city of Caffa in the Crimea. The Caffans were probably Turkic speakers at this time, but it is hard to say what Turkic lect they may have spoken. Perhaps a dead language called Cuman.

Khan’s raiders besieged the city and a number of people died of the Black Plague in the conflict. Khan’s men suspected a thing or two about biological warfare, so they loaded up the bodies that had died of the plague and catapulted them over the walls of the city into the population. Can you  imagine the horror of looking out your window and see a dead, bubonic plague ridden corpse fly by in the air at rapid speed to splatter nearby. Good Lord. In due time, this biological warfare killed a lot of the people in  the city.

Khan knew nothing of the  germ theory of disease, but experience with the plague showed that those who came in contact with victims tended to sicken and die. No one knew what was causing it. One European physician posited that plague victims radiated some sort of death vapors or essence out of their very eyes. Without medical science, people had to fall back on spiritual theories.

But people caught on quickly that being around plague victims could quickly make you a victim yourself. Physicians refused to treat plague patients and patients were often abandoned wherever they sickened. Family members even fled from their own sickened members, leaving them to die in the home while countless people fled to the countryside. But even there they were not safe. Even farm animals, cows, pigs, goats and sheep, caught the plague. So many sheep died that there was an acute wool shortage all over Europe for years afterwards. There was no solace or respite anywhere. The epidemic ended almost as fast as it began in 1354, but Europe was ruined. Entire cities had been abandoned as thousands of residents fled to the false safety of the countryside.

Many people escaped from Khan”s raid on Caffa, and survivors fled all over the Mediterranean. This people soon sickened and died. It was possibly from some of this group, fled to Florence, that the ill-fated death ships docked in Messina on that warm October night. The disease was in Southern France the next year and Germany soon after that. Not long afterwards, it hit Paris. And despite the primitive conditions of the day, it was not long in  Paris before London was also hit. People did have ships in those days you know.

Despite the enticing new theory, the medical journal concludes that the entrance of the Plague to Europe was multifactorial and the infection of the Caffa population did not play an important role in the European pandemic.

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Filed under Altaic, Animals, Asia, Britain, Death, Domestic, Europe, European, France, Germany, Health, History, Illness, Italy, Language Families, Linguistics, Middle Ages, Public Health, Regional, Turkic, War