Re: [tied] a request

From: Piotr Gasiorowski
Message: 24956
Date: 2003-08-04

04-08-03 14:53, carys morgan wrote:

> I have just joined your group. This message was posted on another site.
> I'm sure this is not wholly correct.

Well, it comes pretty close to being wholly _in_correct.

> Gaels and Welsh Celts formed the Aryan race.

There's no such thing as an "Aryan race", pace Nazi scholarship.

> In this coming together,
> many languages mixed to be known as Indo-European.

Quite the opposite: there was a _dispersal_ of languages (now known as
IE) deriving from a common ancestor that we call Proto-IE.

> This primeval speech
> evolved from the original inhabitants of Hyperborea, a kingdom that
> sank, like Atlantis, thousands of years ago.

Neither Atlantis (a lost continent or big island such as described by
Plato) nor Hyperborea has ever existed. Palaeogeography is now a
sufficiently mature discipline to disprove such nonsense. Scholars still
differ as to the location of the IE homeland, some preferring the
steppes north of the Black Sea, others the Danube basin, stikll others
Anatolia, but no sane person locates it on a submerged continent.

> They spoke a language
> similar to High Elvish.

Do you seriously believe in elves? The willing suspension of disbelief
while reading Tolkien is one thing, but reality is another. This list is
about reality, whether directly knowable or reconstructible, not about
fantasy. PIE was not something special but an ordinary human language,
one out of a great many spoken at the time.

> With time, this language spread to Europe and
> Asia. Latin, Greek, Slavic, Teutonic and Celtic languages are Aryan,

No. They're _Indo-European_. To the extent that the term "Aryan" is
meaningful in modern linguistics, it's a synonym of "Indo-Iranian" (=
Indic + Iranian + Nuristani). BTW, in modern usage "Germanic" is
preferable to "Teutonic".

> as
> well as Persian and other Asiatic dialects, derived from the ancient
> "Zend" and Indian languages, originating in Sanskrit.

While not entirely incorrect, this is far from precise. Persian (Old,
Middle or Modern) does not derive from "Zend" (Avestan); they are
Iranian languages independently derived from Proto-Iranian (an
undocumented reconstructed language). The Indic (or "Indo-Aryan")
languages do not derive directly from Sanskrit (which was an
artificially codified literary language) but from Old Indic dialects
that also formed the basis of Sanskrit.

> for further information concerning our group contact
> tylwythteg23@... <mailto:tylwythteg23@... >

Piotr