Newsgroups: sci.archaeology,sci.lang
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From: petrich@netcom.com (Loren Petrich)
Subject: Re: Some Linguistic Idiocy (was Re: Thieving Greeks?)
Message-ID: <petrichD2s662.K3H@netcom.com>
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References: <10b_9501100533@cheswicks.toadnet.org> <3fc6kj$2cs@shore.shore.net> <petrichD2H8oG.51C@netcom.com> <3fgpog$lvm@shore.shore.net>
Date: Sun, 22 Jan 1995 00:18:02 GMT
Lines: 98
Xref: glinda.oz.cs.cmu.edu sci.archaeology:18005 sci.lang:34624

In article <3fgpog$lvm@shore.shore.net>, whittet <whittet@shore.net> wrote:
>In article <petrichD2H8oG.51C@netcom.com>, petrich@netcom.com (Loren Petrich) says:

>>        [WARNING! Don't read further unless you have a sense of humor :-)]

>>        Here is just _one_ example of the sort of inane "etymologies" 
>>that a certain someone in sci.archaeology has been giving us, in his 
>>efforts to demonstrate that much of the Indo-European languages' 
>>vocabulary is derived from Ancient Egyptian:

	Egyptian ir, "eye" > English "iris", "irritate".

>In the above example of the word iris, the English to Egyptian translation
>would look exactly like the original. The cognate and sound of the words
>are the same, the letters are the same. This is the same sort of reasoning
>which led linguists to propose an Indo European language in the first place.

	ROTFL. I checked on the word "iris", and it is from the Greek 
word for rainbow. It got applied to the eye's equivalent of a camera 
diaphragm because of its multicolors. The name of the flower is probably 
from that flower's multicolors also.

>The gestures of the eye such as expressing iritation or anger, the function
>of the eye in overseeing, make the use of the Egyptian Hieroglyphic a very
>reasonable way to communicate these ideas. 

	ROTFL. That makes no semantic sense at all. "Eye" > "overseer" 
does, because watching is what one does with one's eyes. But "overseer" > 
"irritation"???

>It would be logical for it to remain in use until something better came 
>along and to have continued in use in the Hieratic form as Semites 
>began to adopt the Hieroglyphic Egyptian to their uses, and to have been 
>passed on to the Phoenicians as a part of the Phoenika which shows up in 
>Al Mina circa 800 BC as a transitional form of Greek.

	There you go again, confusing language and writing systems. 
Consider this sequence of symbols:

	1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10

Wherever it has been adopted for representing numbers, it has not changed 
the way they are pronounced or written out ("one, two, three, ..."), with 
the exception of opening up the option of listing the digits by name: 104 
can be either "one hundred and four" or "one-zero-four". I mention 
written numerals because they are an excellent example of a logographic 
system of writing.

	[on "mound" and "mountain"...]

>I point out that the Egyptian glyph for ten is a picture of a mound, 
>that its sound is similar because the vowels are implied. 

>I would expect a reasonable person to say either they agree, 
>or are unconvinced and give a reason, or disagree
>and give a reason. 

	They are too far off semantically for this "comparison" to make 
any sense. "Mound" and "mountain" are much closer semantically.

	[Complaning about my "mindless focus on linguistics" deleted...]

	[On how English, Latin, and Greek are derived from Egyptian 
unless documents written in Proto-Indo-European can be found...]

>So far you have provided none, presumably because you claim a language is 
>unrelated to the script in which it was first written. 

>I disagree. Prove me wrong.

	I gave you numerous examples.

>I claim that the Greeks would have borrowed jargon for all of their other
>borrowings in mathematics, science, philosophy, religion, architecture
>etc; which were transmitted to the Greeks via the Semites and Phoenicians
>who lay between them on the trade roots. 

	Possible _in principle_, but _what_ did they borrow? Much of the 
grammar and fundamental vocabulary has a _much_ greater resemblance to 
that of the other Indo-European languages than to the Semitic ones or to 
Egyptian. And if (say) Euclid's _Elements_ can be found in the original 
Greek, it ought to be a simple manner to compare his technical terms to 
various Semitic or Egyptian ones. If everything he knew came from 
Pharaonic Egypt, then he would have used a _lot_ of Egyptian vocabulary 
-- vocabulary which would have been as recognizable as all his vocabulary 
is recognizable in the works of later mathematicians. Instead, words like 
"geometry" and "pentagon" are composed from some rather homely native 
Greek words ("Earth-measurement" and "five-angle"). Unless they are all 
translations (our word "triangle" is Latin in origin and is probably a 
translation), which is unlikely (it usually takes strong linguistic 
nationalism, which does not often occur, to resist borrowing).


-- 
Loren Petrich, the Master Blaster
petrich@netcom.com                   Happiness is a fast Macintosh
lip@s1.gov                           And a fast train

