Wednesday, January 03, 2007

History, Blood and Language

"They're bound together by their history, their blood and their language" said the BBC interviewee approvingly.

Another frothing right-wing Brit, condemning himself out of his own mouth ?

No, an upbeat portrait of Romany Gypsies. They're allowed that sort of thing, you see.

11 comments:

Anonymous said...

Who cares if we're "allowed" it. Allowed by whom?

We assert the right - by donating money and voting for the BNP, among some obvious examples.

Anonymous said...

'They're bound together by their history, their blood and their language'

By which they are also divided from us Euros and bound to, most probably, South Asians.

Anonymous said...

Actually, Alex, by language we are all united to our Proto Indo European (PIE) speaking ancestors. The only truly distinct people on the whole Eurasian continent are the Chinese. The rest, Indians, Pakistanis, Persians, Greeks, Gypsies, Khazaks, Syrians, Kurds, Turks, Germanic, Celtic etc etc all speak languages derived from PIE. The ancient Hindu Vedas have more common vocabulary with modern English than does Hindi. You might think Hebrew is distinct, but it mixed with Persian Aramaic and Greek and its letters were adopted by South Asians, joining the rich Babylonian traditions to the Indo-European.

British 'Asians' are running a scam, claiming to be so separate and distinct. They are no more 'Asian' than Turks.

Anonymous said...

** Basque and Tamil are also separate non-PIE languages. Along with rare aboriginal languages such as those spoken in the hills of SE Asia.

Anonymous said...

Bruce,

Turkish is definitely not a Proto Indo European language. It is part of a distinct Turkic Language group with links to Hungarian & Finnish.

James G. said...

For a good hypothesis that flies in the face about what "everybody knows" about the origins of languages and how they are related (particularly English, Romance and Germanic languages) I recommend The History of Britain Revealed.

Some compelling arguments for English actually being the source of European languages. Enough said...Check it out yourself.

Anonymous said...

Yes Serf you're right, I was casting a bit of a wide net off the top of my head, Syriac is also dubious in this category, though if it is mostly Aramaic perhaps not.

Anyway, the linguistic discovery of PIE is a deeply fascinating subject which I urge all to study, particularly those interested in their 'roots'.

Claiming that English is the source of European language is no more far-fetched than Hindus claiming the same for Sanskrit.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P.N._Oak

I once knew a Hungarian who was nuts over the idea that the Magyar were 'the original Aryans', while the Armenians have made a very good scholarly case that they represent that heritage. It's a contested field on many levels.

Anonymous said...

I read the Rg Veda myself and can make a good case that it is written in any early form of 'English', ie Germanic. The amount of shared vocab is uncanny, when you factor in millenia of changes.

I like to try this on my Hindu friends, for whom the definition of 'Hindu' is allegiance to 'the Veda'. 'So you venerate an ancient English book?' I suggest to them.

I don't have as many Hindu friends as I used to. Hmmm.

Anonymous said...

Sanskrit is clearly an artificial language (like Latin, Greek, Hebrew etc) so it cannot be the origin of any other language. In this case Sanskrit is derived from Hindi (or Urdu as some prefer to call it), just as Latin is a shorthand created by Italian-speakers and Classical Greek is the "alphabetical" form of Demotic Greek.

The case for English being the progenitor of the Western European languages is (unlike the case made by other language-zealots) a strictly linguistic one: the vast majority of ALL words in West European vocabularies have a cognate in the English vocabulary. This situation cannot come about unless ALL the Western European languages are derived from English. Unless somebody can come up with an alternate explanation, the case is unarguable.

Anonymous said...

Anonymous, you, sir, are a genius. But you neglected to mention that Neo-Melanesian appears to be a root of many European languages as well.

Anonymous said...

It's true I am a genius but modest too. I think, sir, we both know French -- do you know of any/many words in French that do not have an English cognate? Ditto Latin and German (languages of which I/we have knowledge). That is clinching evidence because English contains many thousands of words with no cognate in either French or German or Latin.

I know nought of neo-Melanesian languages but if they are overwhelmingly made up of words with English cognates then neo-Melanesian must come from English or vice versa. Papuan Pidgin of course DOES come from English.