languages

"Celtic, coming from the Yamna culture, last stage of the linguistic unity, has ancient links with Eastern Indo-European, from which came Greek, Phrygian, Indo-Iranian and Slavic, and in particular with South-Carpathian languages as Thracian, Illyrian, Slavic languages of the Balkans, Ukrainian and North-Caucasian languages dating as long ago as the Vth millennium BC."

"Balto-Slavic contains very few words borrowed from substratum languages that are not present in other branches of Indo-European."

"The study of the lexicon of the Northern European languages, especially Germanic and Baltic, reveals that a large number of terms relevant to the ecology of the habitat of the early populations of the area and to their socioeconomic activities have no plausible Indo-European etymology. (…) it is possible to ascribe to the pre-Indo-European substrate in the Baltic area a number of names of plants, animals, objects and activities characteristic of the Neolithic cultures."

"The movement of lexical borrowing was unilaterally directed from the Indo-European south to the Uralic north."

"Indo-European is a branch of Indo-Uralic which was radically transformed under the influence of a North Caucasian substratum when its speakers moved from the area north of the Caspian Sea to the area north of the Black Sea."

"It is easy to see that in each case where there exists a clearly recognizable difference between Indo-Aryan and Iranian, the terms and names of the Akkadian and Hittite documentation (as far as they are safely identifiable) side with Indo-Aryan."

"The Hittites were a people with yellow skins and ‘mongoloid’ features whose receding foreheads, oblique eyes, and protruding upper jaws, are represented as faithfully on their own monuments as they are on those of Egypt, so that we cannot accuse the Egyptian artists of caricaturing their enemies... We have seen that the Hittites were a northern race. Their primitive home probably lay on the northern side of the Taurus. What they were like we can learn both from their own sculptures and from the Egyptian monuments, which agree most remarkably in the delineation of their features. The extraordinary resemblance between the Hittite faces drawn by the Egyptian artists and those depicted by themselves in their bas-reliefs and their hieroglyphs, is a convincing proof of the faithfulness of the Egyptian representations, as well as of the identity of the Hittites of the Egyptian inscriptions with the Hittites of Carchemish and Kappadokia. It must be confessed that they were not a handsome people. They were short and thick of limb, and the front part of their faces was pushed forward in a curious and somewhat repulsive way. The forehead retreated, the cheek-bones were high, the nostrils were large, the upper lip protrusive. They had, in fact, according to the craniologists, the characteristics of a Mongoloid race. Like the Mongols, moreover, their skins were yellow and their eyes and hair were black. They arranged the hair in the form of a 'pig-tail,' which characterizes them on their own and the Egyptian monuments quite as much as their snow-shoes with upturned toes. In Syria they doubtless mixed with the Semitic race, and the further south they advanced the more likely they were to become absorbed into the native population."

"The location of the Anatolian branch of IE (Hittite and its sisters) is a problem, or at least a puzzle, for IE homeland studies. The Anatolian languages are attested very early in Asia Minor, removed from Europe and far from the steppe; Gamkrelidze and Ivanov ... offer as a strength the ability of their proposed homelands to account for the location of Hittite with minimal migration. Alternatively or additionally, the location of Tocharian—attested in the early centuries AD well to the east of most IE territory in present-day Xinkiang (Chinese Turkestan)—is a problem or a puzzle... Accounting for the locations of both Hittite and Tocharian is usually presented, at least rhetorically, as a major problem."

"[The Larousse Encyclopedia of Mythology points out that nothing is known about the original Indo-European gods of the Hittites, with the sole exception of one god, Inar, whom the encyclopedia actually describes as] " a God who had come from India with the Indo-European Hittites.""

"The word Khatti, which means Hittite may possibly be connected with Sanskrit Kshatriya and Pali Khattiyo."

"The Hittites as shown both on their own and on Egyptian monuments were clearly Mongoloid in type. They were short and stout, prognathous, and had rather receding foreheads. The cheek-bones were high, the nose was large and straight, forming almost a line with the forehead, and the upper lip protruded. They were yellow in color, with black hair and eyes, and were beardless, while according to the Egyptian paintings they wore their hair in pigtails, although this characteristic does not appear in the Hittite sculptures. They would seem to have come from the northeast of Mesopotamia, and to have worked south into Palestine and west into Asia Minor."

"The Hittite monuments are numerous and are found over a wide extent of territory. In their sculpture Babylonian influence is evident, although the physiognomy and costume of the subjects of representation, as well as several minor details, give Hittite art a distinct individuality. As is the case with Babylonian art, the sculptures are usually accompanied with inscriptions. ... Representations of the Hittites are found also on Egyptian monuments, as at Abu-Simbel and Medinet-Abu. The character of Hittite art is solid, at times even heavy, but excellent in the portrayal of animal forms. The Hittites were also skilled lapidaries and carvers on ivory, as well as clever silversmiths, while their paintings of Egypt give a vivid idea of Hittite tactics in war."

"It has often been remarked - and not without reason - that although the grammar of the Anatolian languages would be recognizably Indo-European, the vocabulary would be less so. This is usually attributed to the deeply penetrating influences exercised by strange surroundings not only while the Anatolians were en route, but also after their arrival in Anatolia."

"While the reading of the inscriptions by Hrozny and other scholars has almost conclusively shown that they spoke an Indo-European language, their physical type is clearly Mongoloid, as is shown by their representations both on their own sculptures and on Egyptian monuments. They had high cheek-bones and retreating foreheads."

"(The Hittite language) cannot be accepted without qualification as Aryan. ... The deviations in the inflection are puzzlingly numerous. ... Again the number of Indo-European words and stems identified in the vocabulary is but small. Finally, the syntax remains essentially un- Aryan... Now if these documents dated from the 14th century AD, few would hesitate to declare that they were written in an Indo-European language and explain the discrepancies as due to the familiar phenomena of decay, assimilation of forms, and foreign borrowing. But the texts... are many centuries older than the oldest written memorials of Sanskrit or Greek. Yet their language diverges from the hypothetical original Aryan tongue far more than Greek or Sanskrit differs from the parent speech or from one another. It is a fact impossible to believe that a truly Indo-European language would look so odd in the 14th century before our era."

"It has often been remarked - and not without reason - that although the grammar of the Anatolian languages would be recognizably Indo-European, the vocabulary would be less so. This is usually attributed to the deeply penetrating influences exercised by strange surroundings not only while the Anatolians were en route, but also after their arrival in Anatolia."

"The Hittites were from the earliest times exposed to the influence of other languages each of which had literary tradition… [They] were profoundly influenced by Mesopotamian culture as mediated through the peripheral Akkadian.. and by the contact with the Assyrian merchant colonies of the 19th and 18th centuries... The major cultural influence, at least in religion and cult came from Hurrian... [resulting in] the Hurrianization of the Hittite pantheon."

"Arguing about 'Proto-Indo-European' can be meaningful and fruitful . . . if we always explain whether we are talking about the one or the other— which, as we well know, we do not do."

"We now find ourselves in possession of two entirely different items, both of which we call Proto-Indo-European: one, a set of reconstructed formulae not representative of any reality; the other, an undiscovered (possibly undiscoverable) language of whose reality we may be certain."

"We must not make the mistake of confusing our methods, and the results flowing from them, with the facts; we must not delude ourselves into believing that our retrogressive method of reconstruction matches, step by step, the real progression of linguistic history."

"It must be stressed, and cannot be said often enough, that whatever date is given for 'PIE,' it is necessarily no more than pure speculation."

"A sheep that had no wool saw horses, one of them pulling a heavy wagon, one carrying a big load, and one carrying a man quickly. The sheep said to the horses: "My heart pains me, seeing a man driving horses." The horses said: "Listen, sheep, our hearts pain us when we see this: a man, the master, makes the wool of the sheep into a warm garment for himself. And the sheep has no wool." Having heard this, the sheep fled into the plain."

"No reputable linguist pretends that Proto-Indo-European reconstructions represent a reality, and the unpronounceability of the asterisked formulae is not a legitimate argument against reconstruction."

"It is an elementary mistake to equate common Indo-European words with Proto-Indo- European words and to base thereon conclusions concerning the Proto-European Urvolk or Urheimat. Yet this is precisely what has often been done. . . . impassioned linguistic palaeontologists have gone even further. From the existence of certain items of vocabulary in all or a majority of the extant Indo-European languages, and blandly ignoring all the pitfalls just noted, they even fabricated conclusions concerning the social organization, the religion, the mores, the race of the Proto-Indo-European."

"It is therefore historically irresponsible for the linguist to speak of 'Proto-Indo-European' in the 4th millennium, and linguistically meaningless for the archaeologist to argue about 'Proto-Indo-Europeans' living somewhere before ca 2500 B.C."

"Every attempt, then, to give absolute dates for 'Proto-Indo-European' (or dates for alleged different stages of'PIE') is either based on the speculative identification of an archaeological culture with the speakers of the 'language of the PIE's' or on what may be called 'intelligent guesses,' deliberations of probability and feelings of appropriateness. ... The first type of proposal is usually contested by fellow archaeologists and doubted by linguists, the second, being purely subjective because objective arguments simply do not exist, is bound to remain noncommittal. As is easily to be seen, many dates of both types have found their way to an often far too skeptical public."

"It now strikes me that the attempt to reconstruct a prototypical (“Proto- Indo-European") form from which all attested variants can ultimately be derived may actually obscure much of what is most fascinating and important in myth. For while this stance acknowledges that the contents of a given myth will vary as it is recounted by different persons over time and across space, such variation is treated as a problem—or better, as the problem—to be undone by scholarly research: research that takes as its task the restoration of some hypothetical “original." Such research aims, in effect, to reverse historic processes and recapture a primordial (and ahistoric) moment of unity, harmony, and univocal perfection. In its very presuppositions, such research—it now seems to me—is itself a species of myth and ritual, based upon a romantic "nostalgia for paradise," to cite Mircea Eliades famous formulation."

"To be sure, neither Jones nor anyone else was wrong to perceive strong and systematic similarities among Sanskrit, Latin, Greek, and the rest. The question is what one makes of these similarities, and one steps onto a slippery slope whenever analysis moves from the descriptive to the historic plane of linguistics. In specific, reconstructing a "protolanguage" is an exercise that invites one to imagine speakers of that protolanguage, a community of such people, then a place for that community, a time in history, distinguishing characteristics, and a set of contrastive relations with other protocommunities where other protolanguages were spoken. For all of this, need it be said, there is no sound evidentiary warrant."

"In summary the Indo-Europeanist’s data and method do not allow the question ‘When was PIE spoken?’ to be answered in any really meaningful or helpful way."

"What has always filled me with wonder is the assurance with which many historical linguists assign a date to their reconstructed proto-language. . . . We are told that proto-Indo- European was spoken about 6,000 years ago. What is know with a fair degree of certainty is the time between proto-Indo-Aryan and the modern Inclo-Aryan languages—something in the order of 3,000 years. But how can anyone tell that the development from proto- Indo-European to proto-Indo-Aryan took another 3,000 years? . . . Languages are known to change at different rates. There is no way of knowing how long it took to go from the presumed homogeneity of proto-Indo-European to the linguistic diversity of proto-Indo- Iranian, proto-Celtic, proto-Germanic, etc. The changes could have been rapid or slow. We simply don't know. . . .Why couldn't proto-lndo-European have been spoken about 10,500 years ago? . . . The received opinion of a date of around 6000 BP for proto-Indo- European . . . is an ingrained one. I have found this a difficult matter to get specialists to even discuss. Yet it does seem to be a house of cards."

"In the case of Indo-European it is certain that there was no such unitary language which can be reached by means of comparison… the Indo-European that we can reach by this means was already deeply split up into a series of varying dialects."

"[W]e know there was a Proto- Indo-European language; we do not know to what extent our reconstructions approximate it."

"Many points of controversy surround the reconstruction of PIE, and indeed surround any reconstruction effort. Some are methodological questions (for example, how do we distinguish archaisms from innovations?); some are philosophical (for example, what kinds of evidence are admissible in reconstruction?); some are simply differences of opinion based on the preconceptions and orientation of the investigator (for example, which is more archaic, Hittite or Sanskrit?)."

"The author concludes that the resemblances that can be plainly seen between the 10 Linear A inscriptions and the corresponding Sanskrit forms, words, and phrases presented and analyzed in this paper are much closer than could possibly be due to pure random chance coincidence alone.... If the resemblance were due to pure random chance coincidence alone, the Linear A words would not correspond with the Sanskrit forms as closely as they clearly do... But in the author’s view, it is clear that the language of the 10 Linear A inscriptions presented and analyzed in this paper must represent some dialect of an Indo-Aryan language."

"It is quite possible to propose a hypothesis that the “Linear A” attested before some particular date in the 17th century BCE (i.e., between 1700 and 1600 BCE) may have had a significantly different linguistic base than the Linear A attested after that date.It would be quite difficult to refute such a hypothesis, since so little of the older Linear A exists, and that which does contains so few words and signs."

"I think that there's something really capacious about Jewish anarchism and its multilingualism, its “Yes, and…”-ness. Think about the importance of multilingualism and contrast that with Zionist single-language ideology: just Hebrew and nothing but Hebrew."

"Hebrew was generally considered the province of men and became associated with the male scholarly elite, in contrast to Yiddish, which became linked with women, common folk, and daily routine."

"Attempting to meet European standards, Jewish writers exerted tremendous efforts to develop and enrich the Jews' internal languages of Hebrew and Yiddish, all the while combating unfavorable ideas about each...Hebrew, for its part, was considered a dead tongue in need of massive revision. Both languages were invigorated by the extensive enterprise of translation and the expansion of Jewish writing to areas like politics, art, and sciences, which, with rare exception, were not previously found within either canon."

"[O]ur Hebrew poets of to-day — for the ancient tongue has never died out — have a freedom of expression and a privilege to develop the language which their forbears would have envied. Yet, throughout all, it is the same noble language of the Bible that speaks and sings, the same simple constructions that please and fascinate."

"A university teaches. What does it teach? It must obviously teach all the languages in which the great literatures which have been preserved were written — Hebrew, Arabic, Sanskrit, Greek, Latin, French, Italian, German, Scandinavian, and English."

"To this day our language has kept its stony, concentrated, concise character, striving for the essential. This makes Hebrew practically untranslatable; a phrase of three words in Hebrew becomes a phrase of eighteen words in French, so you can imagine what it does to poetry...Our history is not only the history of a people, but also the history of a language...Some parts of our tradition are widely known; others are less known because it is so difficult to translate from Hebrew. Whole theories were built upon incorrect translations from Hebrew."

"... Zionism invented Hebrew as an everyday language, because no other language of the Jews committed them to the construction of a territorial state."

"[It is the] iron law of every colonizing movement, a law which knows of no exceptions, a law which existed in all times and under all circumstances. If you wish to colonize a land in which people are already living, you must provide a garrison on your behalf. Or else – or else, give up your colonization, for without an armed force which will render physically impossible any attempts to destroy or prevent this colonization, colonization is impossible, not “difficult”, not “dangerous” but IMPOSSIBLE! … Zionism is a colonizing adventure and therefore it stands or falls by the question of armed force. It is important to build, it is important to speak Hebrew, but, unfortunately, it is even more important to be able to shoot – or else I am through with playing at colonialization."

"the silence of women was, for better or worse, built into the culture of Hebrew as a sacred language. Talmudic study was not for women, nor was the language of liturgy; women's worship was separated from men's; tkhines, special prayers for women, were usually written in Yiddish, the "mother tongue." Thus the sacred linguistic soil from which Hebrew poetry-sacred and secular-sprang for nearly two millennia, was off-limits for most women."

"It is a time to express our (computational) language through math: sentences with variables, paragraphs with equations, and language context with formulas."

"Another reason for not relying too much on the theories of the linguists is that Austronesian linguistics is a very demanding field, comprising the study of hundreds of small languages most of which have no literature, so the number of genuine experts is far smaller than in the case of IE, and even in the latter case linguists are nowhere near a consensus on the homeland question. Linguistic evidence is very soft evidence, and usually the data admit of more than one historical reconstruction, so I don't think there is any compelling evidence against a Sundaland homeland hypothesis. Conversely, archaeological and genetic evidence in favour of the spread of the Austronesian-speaking populations from Sundaland seems to be sufficient."

"It is quite certain that some of these Austronesians must have landed in India, some on their way to Madagascar, some to stay and mix with the natives. Hence the presence of some Austronesian words in Indian languages of all families, most prominently ayi/bayi, "mother" (as in the Marathi girls' names Tarabai, Lakshmi-bai etc.), or words for "bamboo", "fruit", "honey". More spectacularly, linguists like Isidore Dyen have discerned a considerable common vocabulary in the core lexicon of Austronesian and Indo-European, including pronouns, numerals (e.g. Malay dua, "two") and terms for the elements. Oppenheimer doesn't go into this question, but diehard invasionists might use his findings to suggest an Aryan invasion into India not from the northwest, but from the southeast."

"“India was the centre from which the Austric race spread into the lands and islands of the east and Pacific”... “the Austric speech… in its original form (as the ultimate source of both the Austro-Asiatic and Austronesian branches)… could very well have been characterised within India”."

"The language is peculiar to the country, and while written official documents are done in the common character of China and Japan, the spoken language of neither of these people is understood in Korea. The native language of Korea possesses an alphabet and grammar, and is polysyllabic, thus resembling English more than it does Chinese."

"Koreans are wonderfully tolerant of a foreigner with differing views when the discussion is in Korean, and no foreigners of importance are around. They lose their tempers when they see someone exporting information which — however widely discussed in the Korean press — is thought best kept "in country.""