Re: The OIT state of the art

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Arnaud Fournet" <fournet.arnaud@...>
wrote:

>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "tgpedersen" <tgpedersen@...>
> To: <cybalist@yahoogroups.com>
>
> >> =========
> >> Answer :
> >> The concept of Indo-European proto-language is a modernized
> >> version of the Japhetic and Scythic hypotheses that go back to
> >> the XVI and XVII century.
> >> The racialization of this linguistic concept was done by the
> >> Germans in the second half of the XIX century.
> >
> > Gobineau was German? Live and learn.
> >
> ============
> As far as I know,

You don't know far enough, I'm afraid.

> French people have not invented the 1000ige Reich.
> and all subsequent ideas about Aryans.

Not subsequent. Here's your chance to know further.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_de_Gobineau
But this is getting OT.

> As a matter of fact, PIE is rather a confidential item in the
> French cultural landscape.
> There is no equivalent of Bartleby IE roots of English.

Countries consisting of regions of diverse ethnic and national origins
like France, Sweden and Belgium have no interest in waking sleeping
dogs by encouraging rummaging in the past.

> ============
>
> >
> >> The statement that the British invented PIE as a by-product of
> >> colonialism is just absurd.
> >
> > The real reason can be found in
> > http://lib.ru/DPEOPLE/PARKINSON/parkinson.txt_Ascii.txt
> > C. Northcote Parkinson:
> >
> > It is obvious and clear that those of the candidates who were
> > sent out to rule India without any talent beyond that of writing
> > Greek and Latin verse, plenty of time on their hands and no
> > entertainment other than afternoon tea would go all gaga when
> > confronted with a language so similar to those otherwise useless
> > ones they had mastered at great investment in time and patience,
> > cf. the famous words of Sir William Jones in Calcutta.
> >

> ===========
>
> The scythic / japhetic idea is as old as the XVIth century
> and Bopp studied four years in Paris before publishing his famous
> work.

What's Bopp got to do with anything? In the Anglophonic hagiography of
historical linguistics William Jones started it. In the German and
Danish ones it's a contest between Rasmus Rask and the brothers Grimm.

> The role of the British is the development of IE comparatism is
> rather small.
> Apart from making Indian data more easily available.

Britain is historically composite too. Celtic revival ultimately cost
them Ireland.


Torsten