Re: [pieml] Labiovelars versus Palatals + Labiovelar Approximant

From: tgpedersen
Message: 61208
Date: 2008-11-02

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "steve" <congotron@...> wrote:
>
> --- In
> cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "tgpedersen" <tgpedersen@>
> wrote:
> >
> > --- In
> cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "congotre o" <congotron@> wrote:
> > >
> > >
> > > It was interesting to see these arguments.
> > > I am a novice to many of these details, but I want advice on
> > > something rudimentary.
> > > I met a guy from Kurgan, Russia where some say this whole
> > > language family 'originated.'
> > >
> > > I started trying to explain this whole idea of a common
> > > ancestral language, and started off with the word he used
> > >'sto', Russian for 100, and I explained to a group (of math
> > > students) its roots and relation to 'hund' of hundred,
> > > following that centum/satem argument from introductions to
> > > etymology. I explained the detail, but it wasn't impressive,
> > > because it wasn't obvious to others that these relationships
> > > were not accidental. On the other hand, if you use common words
> > > like 'mother', some assume that similar words in faraway places
> > > are an accident, or a more recently globalized word.
> > >
> > > What kind of examples will bring the average person uninformed
> > > of p-IE ancestry to give it any attention, since common words
> > > like 'dog' and 'perro', as you said here, are from
> > > sidestreams?
> > >
> > > I know this jumps the whole conversation backwards, but for me,
> > > in the real world, it's hard to strike up a conversation where
> > > I can make the argument about common ancestry believable at all.
> >
> >
> > Like everything else, there should be some tangible benefit at
> > the end of the road, before you choose to take it. To Rasmus
> > Rask, there was the everyday puzzle of why two such similar
> > languages as Danish and Swedish should exist, without one being
> > more 'right' than the other. To the Grimm brothers, the puzzle
> > was why Low German which was so similar to Dutch should be
> > a German dialect while Dutch wasn't (why is it not part of
> > Germany?). To William Jones, the striking similarity between
> > Sanskrit, Greek and Latin offered an opportunity to see the
> > English as distant cousins of the Indian upper class, with just as
> > much claim as that to interfere in Indian matters.
> > In contrast, the average American is not interested in
> > demonstrating any relationship with his own language and any one
> > language of the old world, which he sees as passé and irrelevant.
> > Inasmuch as he is able to see that there actually might be a
> > relationship, he will get annoyed rather than enthusiastic, since
> > it threatens to drag the status of his country down from being
> > the country to end all nations and nationalism to being
> > just another one of them.
>
> I don't know how you knew I was American. In this particular case,
> I am the American who has the interest, and the group I'm speaking
> of are mostly immigrants. I am not disagreeing with you, and I
> share your enthusiasm about the explorers, early and
> contemporaneous, in the field. My chief comment was not that others
> weren't interested, I meant that it is hard to choose the right
> evidence to convince people who never heard of evolution of
> language. Referring them to the final brackets of etymology in a
> Webster's dictionary does just annoy many people.
>
> The lack of passion for purely intellectual pursuit is probably
> not improving at all under the current business ethic.
>
> However, this ethic is now under existential scutiny even here in
> the US. I admire those who have worked hard for their intellectual
> passions, which is demonstrated continually on this site.
>

I remember as a kid at the age where everything has to be correct and
everything else is intensely embarrassing I went to Sweden with my
parents, and people talked to and I read signs in shops and I could
barely understand some of it; I remember the conflict I had between
the impulse to set people right as I would have done remorselessly
with someone who spoke a ridiculous dialect of Danish, and my more
adult restraint that these were people over whom I had no say to
correct them. The idea that other people's related speech is in some
fashion just as good as your own is something that is forced upon you
if you are a speaker of a small language, one's immediate reaction is
to deny it and continue the shibboleth behavior which comes natural to
you. Speakers of languages with many speakers can afford that, also
the general tendency today to despise restraint as a sign of weakness
reinforces that behavior.


Torsten