Mother of all Indo-European languages was born in Turkey

AFP ^ | 11/26/2003 | N/A

[Virginia-American]

I was happy to bust my wallet to get Prof. Greenberg's two volumes on his own Eurasiatic theory. I recommend them to you.

I bought vol I, put in an advance order when II came out. It's very sad he died then.

Another interesting book is Sprung from Some Common Source: Investigations into the Prehistory of Languages

[BobS]

How many dirty words lasted all these years? LOL!

[Virginia-American]

How many dirty words lasted all these years? LOL!

Bengtson and ruhlen have complied a list of 27 etymologies that are found world-wide. One of them is "dirty":

21. *PUTI—'vulva' —— English slang poontang < French putaine 'whore' < Vulgar Latin putta 'girl' < Proto-Indo-European *puto 'cunnus' > Sanskrit putau 'buttocks', Nepali puti 'vulva' Old Icelandic fuð 'cunnus', Middle High German vut 'vulva';

Malinke butu 'vulva';

Songhai buti 'vulva';

Proto-Afro-Asiatic *pwt 'hole, anus, vulva', Hebrew pot 'vulva' ("secret parts" in the King James Version, Isaiah 3:17), Somali futo 'anus', Oromo fudji 'vulva';

Tamil puNTai 'vulva', poccu 'vulva, anus';

Malayalam pûru 'buttocks, vulva';

Kannada pucci 'vulva'; Telugu pûDa 'anus'; Tulu pûTi 'vulva';

Middle Mongolian hütü-gün 'vulva';

Old Japanese photo 'vulva' (mod. hoto);

Proto-Eskimo-Aleut *putu 'hole';

Proto-Caucasian *put‘i '(female) genitals'; Svan put‘u 'hole';

Basque poto-rro 'pubis, vulva';

Australian Aboriginal Luridya puda 'vulva';

Maori puta, Tagalog puki 'vulva';

Delaware saputti 'anus'; Mohegan sebud 'vagina'; Chinook puch 'penis'; Quechua upiti 'anus', Aymara phuthu 'hole'

Source

[Virginia-American]

When I was googling the preceding post, I came across Babel and the Ancient Single Language of the Human Race
Copyright 1999 by G. R. Morton

I believe this is the same Glenn Morton as Morton's demon.

His conclusion:

So, I would say, that there very well may be linguistic evidence of a common root for these words throughout the world's language. This is consistent with the Biblical assertion that humanity once spoke a common language. That being said, the thing wrong with young-earth views of this is that they place Babel far too late in history.

I wonder if the Exodus story is really the story of the emergence of the human race from Africa. Think about it.

Our ancestors left Africa during an ice age. The sea level, including the Red Sea, was much lower. Maybe it could be waded across, or you could go from sandbar to sandbar across.

Now the ancestors of everyone except the Semites moved away, but they stayed put, on both sides of the Red Sea. When the ice age ended, they were still telling the story of crossing it, but now it was impossible.

So they, ahem, modified, the story by throwing in Pharoah, and the plagues, and the miraculous parting, etc.

[VadeRetro]

Morton seems to be talking about the theories of Greenberg, Ruhlen, et. al. that all human languages are basically descendants of an Ur-speak, common descent rather than separate creation invention, IOW.

There's some evidence for it. Ruhlen's book The Origin of Language makes the case decently, but also admits that the evidence is pretty much all in--the world's modern and historic languages have been poked into the computer, the computer has crunched--and the picture is still ambiguous. Thus, we are unlikely to ever know for sure. Some information simply does not exist anymore.

Exodus as an echo of something tens of thousands of years before? Pass the bong! I like the idea that the pillar of fire and the darkness are from the explosion of Thera, which also figures to have caused the Atlantis legend.

[blam]

"Our ancestors left Africa during an ice age. The sea level, including the Red Sea, was much lower. Maybe it could be waded across, or you could go from sandbar to sandbar across. "

During the Ice Age, the world's oceans were reduced in depth by 300-500 feet. The Persian Gulf was completely dry, the Red Sea was blocked off and I believe it dried up or almost dried up. I believe the 1628BC explosion of Santorini breached the 'dam' at the Red Sea and washed away the Egyptians pursuing the Jews on their Exodus.

[VadeRetro]

When the ice age ended, they were still telling the story of crossing it, but now it was impossible.

The only reason it's tough walking from Egypt to Israel now is there's a canal, and a serious political border.

[VadeRetro]

I believe the 1628BC explosion of Santorini breached the 'dam' at the Red Sea and washed away the Egyptians pursuing the Jews on their Exodus.

You say "tomato," I say "tomahto." You say "Santorini," I say "Thera."

[Virginia-American]

Morton seems to be talking about the theories of Greenberg, Ruhlen,

For sure, the data he quotes is from Ruhlen's book.

Greenberg was, IMO, one of the greatest scientists of the last century.

but also admits that the evidence is pretty much all in--the world's modern and historic languages have been poked into the computer, the computer has crunched--and the picture is still ambiguous.

Ruhlen also says that the 27 etymologies he presents are the tip of the iceberg. I am personally optimistic that enough will be done to demonstrate monogenesis, but I don't expect to reconstruct the pronouns and declensions and so forth of "Proto-World". Maybe the phonology.

Actually, it's kinda like tracing multicellular life back to unicellulars - because lateral gene transfer is common among single-cells, there's really no tree when you go back that far. It's quite possible that there never was a single ur-speak, just a lot languages and dialects and multilingualism. But like life, there would be a single tree after that.

Part of the reason I'm optimistic is the bottleneck in human population something like 70K years ago. If they've already found cognates between Khoisan and Australian, and the Aboriginals have been there at least 40K years, how long ago was a language that contained the ancestors of the cognates spoken? Seems like we're more than 1/2 way there.

[VadeRetro]

For sure, the data he quotes is from Ruhlen's book.

I guess I could have clicked on the link and looked.

I was pretty impressed with Ruhlen's book, but one of the criticisms of his method troubled me. It is charged that his samples across language families stretch the semantics, using here a word for "mouth" and there a word for "talk" and elsewhere a word for "tongue," etc. The lack of rigor in his method allows him to paint a misleadingly convincing picture.

However, I do suspect that language was invented only once. It's as least as easy as thinking that it happened independently in some N locations.

[Alamo-Girl]

Thanks for sharing your musings!

[Virginia-American]

Sorry, I should have replied sooner, got distracted

I was pretty impressed with Ruhlen's book, but one of the criticisms of his method troubled me. It is charged that his samples across language families stretch the semantics, using here a word for "mouth" and there a word for "talk" and elsewhere a word for "tongue," etc. The lack of rigor in his method allows him to paint a misleadingly convincing picture.

The same sort of semantic spread is seen within Indo-European, for example:

In post 103, there are clear IE cognate words that mean "vulgar term for female private parts (or the moisture therein)" in English, and "whore" in French or Spanish.

Or consider
via (Latin) = "road",
je vais, tu vas,.. (French) + "I go", You go"...
and English "wagon"
These are all cognates

Another example
agricola (Latin) = "farmer"
acre (English) (unit of measuring farmland)

And how about decem (Latin)= "ten"
Index (Latin) = "forefinger"
digit (Latin) = "finger" all of these have similar sounds (G and c are always hard in Latin), and are cognate to English "toe"

And one final one, which Ruhlen et al posit is universal: Gynos (Greek) = "woman" (as in gynecology)
cognate to English "queen" and probably cognate to English "c*nt"

[VadeRetro]

Interesting points but they do seem to be reaching on some of the stuff in 103. "Chinook puch 'penis'?" Anything with a "u" in it below the waist seems to be counting, here.

Impressive, IOW, but is it rigorous?

[Virginia-American]

Anything with a "u" in it below the waist seems to be counting, here.

A "p" sound, a "u" sound, and a "t" sound ("ch" is attested as a changed "t" sound; think of how "t" changes to "sh" in going from president to presidential), in that order, referring to female genitalia.

Yeah, it seems a stretch, to go from female genitalia to male. I don't know of any well-attested examples of that actually happening, but I wouldn't be *too* surprised. In 103, everything except this one seems reasonable to me.

Is it rigorous? No. It's a best guess.

[carpio]

BTTT