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From: petrich@netcom.com (Loren Petrich)
Subject: There He Goes Again!!!
Message-ID: <petrichDvyr7v.I35@netcom.com>
Organization: NETCOM On-line Communication Services (408 261-4700 guest)
References: <4uisus$r6b@shore.shore.net>
Date: Sun, 11 Aug 1996 07:52:43 GMT
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Xref: glinda.oz.cs.cmu.edu sci.archaeology:49865 sci.lang:59482

In article <4uisus$r6b@shore.shore.net>,
Steve Whittet <whittet@shore.net> wrote:
>In article <petrichDvwt4y.25K@netcom.com>, petrich@netcom.com says...

	[Mr Whittet:]
>>>The Numbers in Greek   The Numbers in Hebrew           Egyptian
>>>               with    Masculine with  Feminine  with        with
>>>1 Ena          e a     echad     e  a  achat           wa     a
>>>2 dhIo         dhi     shanyim  h  yi  shtayim h  yi   snw
>>>3 trIa                 shlosha         shalosh         hmt
>>>4 tEsera       era     arba'a  ar a'a  arba    a ra    fdw  
>>>5 pEnde                        hamisha         hamesh          diw
>>>6 Eksi         ksi     shisha  hisha   shesh   hesh    srew or sisw
>>>7 eptA [s]epta         shiv'a  shiv'a  sheva   sheva   sfh  s h
>>>8 oktO         o to    shmona  mona    shmone  mone    hmn  hmn
>>>9 enEa         e ea    tish'a, ish'a   tesha   esha    psd  s
>>>10dhEka                eka     assara  ara     esser   e  er   md

>Classical Greek is actually a medieval form. ....

	Hipposko:r. There are *loads* of inscriptions and documents that 
have survived from Classical times, and they show very well what the 
language was like -- not very different from the "medieval" form.

If you really want 
>to look at the evolution of the language you have to accept that 
>very few Mycenean and Phoenician grammers have survived except 
>in the form  of Aramaic or Hebrew and most of what we know as 
>Greek comes to us through the efforts at preservation of the Romans.

	Pure baloney. *NO* grammars of Mycenaean or Phoenician have 
survived -- if they wre composed at all. And Mycenaean is essentially an 
early form of Greek, and Phoenician and Hebrew and Aramaic are closely 
related West Semitic languages.

>> Greek 	Latin,		 Sanskrit,	Russian		Old English
>>1 heis/hen-     unus            eka             odin            a:n
>>2 duo           duo             dva:            dva             twa:
>>3 treis         tres            trayas          tri             thre:o
>>4 tessares (*)  quattuor        catvaras        chetyre         fe:ower
>>5 pente         quinque         panca           pyat'           fi:f
>>6 hex           sex             sas             shest'          si:ex
>>7 hepta         septem          sapta           sem'            seofon
>>8 okto:         octo:           as'ta:          vosem'          eahta
>>9 ennea         novem           nava            devyat'         nigon
>>10 deka         decem           das'a           desyat'         ti:en
>>
>>* Doric tettares, Mycenaean kwetoros

	Minor additions: Latin and Greek for 2 ought to be "duo:", and 
Old Latin for 1 was "oinos".

>>        Mr. Whittet, notice how the IE number names look *much* more
>>similar to each other, though some of them have been deformed by analogy
>>with neighbors, than they do to the Hebrew or the Egyptian ones -- the H 
>>and E ones look only a bit more similar than they do to the IE ones.

>ok, lets compare a couple

>>>The Numbers in Greek   The Numbers in Hebrew           Egyptian
>>>               with    Masculine with  Feminine  with        with
>>>1 Ena          e a     echad     e  a  achat           wa     a
>The English follows the track from Egyptian through Greek and Latin
>likewise the Russian
>> Greek 	Latin,		 Sanskrit,	Russian		Old English
>>1 heis/hen-     unus            eka             odin            a:n
>
>en[a]		un[uh(s)]        ea               on             an

	Indo-Europeanists find 3 roots that gave rise to words for "one": 
*oinos (Germanic, Latin, Slavic), *oikos (Indo-Iranian), and *sem- (Greek)

Hebrew has echod, Arabic has wahid (or ahad), and Egyptian had wa -- none 
of these look very much like the Indo-European forms.

>The Sanskrit follows the track from Egyptian through Hebrew
>>>The Numbers in Greek   The Numbers in Hebrew           Egyptian
>>>2 dhIo         dhi     shanyim  h  yi  shtayim h  yi   snw

>The track from Egyptian (snw-shanyim) to Hebrew 
>loses the w or ou sound
>Hebrew,(dhi - h yi)to Greek;Greek;(dhi-duo) to Latin 
>gets the ou back in the form of uo

	So your criterion is a vowel match with *some* of the IE languages. 
Mr. Whittet, a serious linguist would laugh at you, because it ignores 
mismatches with other IE langs.

>The Egyptian root may also lead to the word "new"(snw)
>in the sense of first there is one and now there is another (anew)
>a "new" or second instance.

	That ignores coequal pairs, like eyes, which we do NOT think of 
as an eye with an extra eye.

>> Greek 	Latin,		 Sanskrit,	Russian		Old English
>>2 duo           duo             dva:            dva             twa:

>The Russian, Sanskrit and Old English are off on another tack
>The Sanskrit follows the track from Egyptian through Hebrew
>Egyptian (snw-shanyim) to Hebrew transforming(snw-s  n ) 
>Hebrew(shanyim-dva)to Sanskrit transforming( ha yi -dva)

	Mr. Whittet, the resemblance of the IE ones to each other stands
out like a sore thumb. The initial consonant is almost an exact match, 
and even the vowels are not to far off. But they do NOT resemble Hebrew 
"shnayim" one bit.

>>>The Numbers in Greek   The Numbers in Hebrew           Egyptian
>>>4 tEsera       era     arba'a  ar a'a  arba    a ra    fdw  
>It is clear the Greek and Hebrew are close (era-arba'a)
>and Hebrew and Sanskrit are close (arba'a-catvaras)(ar a'a- a  aras)

	ONLY by amputating much of the word. That's NOT how to do 
comparative linguistics.

>> Greek 	Latin,		 Sanskrit,	Russian		Old English
>>4 tessares (*)  quattuor        catvaras        chetyre         fe:ower
>Latin, and Russian are on the same page but not with English 
>Where is the similarity between the Greek and Latin and English?
>tessares - quattuor - fe:ower ???

	These similarities are all the result of some nontrivial sound 
correspondences and some analogical deformation (Latin and Germanic have 
their words for "four" remodeled after their words for "five"). The 
original is reconstructed as *kwetwores, and although the initial 
consonant does get rather mangled, the one after it does show up rather well.

>>>The Numbers in Greek   The Numbers in Hebrew           Egyptian
>>>6 Eksi         ksi     shisha  hisha   shesh   hesh    srew or sisw
>> Greek 	Latin,		 Sanskrit,	Russian		Old English
>>6 hex           sex             sas             shest'          si:ex
>all of these are close

>>>The Numbers in Greek   The Numbers in Hebrew           Egyptian
>>>7 eptA [s]epta         shiv'a  shiv'a  sheva   sheva   sfh  s h
>> Greek 	Latin,		 Sanskrit,	Russian		Old English
>>7 hepta         septem          sapta           sem'            seofon
>and these are close also

	I will concede that about 6 and 7.

>>>The Numbers in Greek   The Numbers in Hebrew           Egyptian
>>>8 oktO         o to    shmona  mona    shmone  mone    hmn  hmn
>> Greek 	Latin,		 Sanskrit,	Russian		Old English
>>8 okto:         octo:           as'ta:          vosem'          eahta

>Here Egyptian and Hebrew are close, Russian seems to come from 
>that direction... Sanskrit and English are close, 
>Greek and Latin are close but all three groups are also different
>from one another... 

	The Russian one was deformed by analogy with the word for 7.

	The IE ones do show a good resemblance, though the consonant in 
the middle does tend to get shifted. But they do NOT look like the Hebrew 
or Egyptian forms.

>unless you allow Egyptian (hmn-shmona) to Hebrew
>(hmn- hm n ), Hebrew (shmona-okto) to Greek (   ona-o to)
>Greek (Okto-octo) to Latin (o to - o to)
>Hebrew (   ona-a  ta)to Sanskrit
>Hebrew (shmona-vosem) to Russian
>Sanskrit (as'ta-eahta) to English

	Again, you throw out much of the distinctive part of the word -- 
the consonants.

>which makes for some strange bedfellows....
>>>The Numbers in Greek   The Numbers in Hebrew           Egyptian
>>>9 enEa         e ea    tish'a, ish'a   tesha   esha    psd  s
>> Greek 	Latin,		 Sanskrit,	Russian		Old English
>>9 ennea         novem           nava            devyat'         nigon

>Greek, Hebrew, Sanskrit and Russian might make the cut.
>e ea, ish'a, esha, ava, evya 

	Again, throwing out the consonants.

>>And notice how, in the IE langs., the consonants seem better 
>>preserved than the vowels.

>Notice how similar n, nvm, nv, dvt, ngn are 
>in the above example. The problem here is that while 
>the written language would preserve the consonants, 
>the spoken language preserves the vowels....

>e ea, ish'a, esha, ava, evya 

	E'kwosko:r. Why not study Latin-Romance some time? You'll see 
that consonants are usually preserved very well. And I invoke that 
example, because the intermediates between Latin and the Romance 
languages had no written form, and were transmitted orally before their 
speakers decided to do a lot of writing in them, as opposed to "proper" 
Latin.

	And the intermediates between the historical IE languages and the 
ancestral IE language were NOT written down, which makes the whole 
argument a big load of taurosko:r.

>I really doubt that our ancestors at the time the first
>homo sapiens emerged had language. It seems to have
>been something which emerged within the last 100,000 
>years as our jaws and tounges and lips and laryanx
>evolved to make a wider range of sounds. 

	And what would have stimulated that evolution in the first 
place??? I'm sure that some of the ancestors of our species had simpler 
language capabilities than ours.

>>But the details of that language may never be known for sure, and 
>>many mainstream linguists would argue that those details are unknowable 
>>due to linguistic change.
>My point exactly

	But that does NOT mean that the Indo-European languages are ALL 
derived from Phoenician or Egyptian.

>hmmm, judging from the above comparisons, 
>the words from 2 to 5 may have had different
>origins than the word 1 and the numbers 6 to 10...

	When one compares other words, and finds appropriate sound
correspondences, one finds that one can derive those from 2 to 10 from one
root each; however, 1 comes from 3 different roots, suggesting some 
replacements on the way. ("single" > "one", let's say).

>I think the problem may be the analysis of consonants on
>which you seem to have focused. This ignores the role that vowels
>play in spoken languages where consonants may be subject to change. 
>Pepsi - Bebsi for example

	"b" sounds an awful lot like "p", don't you think? And let's not
forget that vowels *also* change. Consider how English speakers tend to
pronounce German u" and o" / French u and eu. 
-- 
Loren Petrich				Happiness is a fast Macintosh
petrich@netcom.com			And a fast train
My home page: http://www.webcom.com/petrich/home.html
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