Re: [tied] Pronunciation of "r"

Thank you Glen. I did not mean to imply that the Biblical stories, and in particular the Tower of Babel legend, should now be regarded as genuine authorities on the origin of all language. I actually should have emphasized that the Biblical stories of Shem and Japheth and Ham, especially if taken metaphorically as descriptions of groups of languages, may have a kernel of truth (apart from these names actually being used formerly to name three language families), since Nostratic theory says that Indo-European and Semitic are ultimately related. I assume here that the earlier use of "Semitic", "Japhetic", and "Hamitic" was adopted before it was proved, or at least empirically suggested (only recently, was it not?), that these language families are actually related ("Japhetic" being of course Indo-European). It seems that Nostratic theory offers some validation of the idea of these three language families having a common origin. And then by extension perhaps there is some small degree of truth about the idea of Babel, at least for the languages that originated in central Eurasia.

Andrew Jarrette

Patrick Ryan <proto-language@...> wrote:

----- Original Message ----- From: "glen gordon" <glengordon01@...> To: <cybalist@yahoogroups.com> Sent: Friday, October 07, 2005 2:59 PM Subject: Re: [tied] Pronunciation of "r" - again? > Andrew Jarrette: > > Sounds like the legend of the Tower of Babel and > > the other Biblical ideas about the origins of > > language might not be all that far off from the > > truth, at least metaphorically. > > Again, I think this is offtopic for this forum. *** Patrick: I am hoping most list-members will know the difference between a harmless remark and an attempt to introduce a new topic. *** > There is a Nostratic forum for this topic that you > may wish to join, although I sadly no longer feel > that I can recommend it to anyone since the debates > have become plagued with nonsensical pseudoscience > as seems to be too often the case with Nostratic. > > Actually, Nostratic is *not* meant to be the ancestor > of all language groups around the world. Only a very > tiny subset of them. Chinese, for example, is spoken > by millions of people but it is not considered to > be Nostratic. Neither are Swahili and related Bantu > languages. Linking Nostratic to the Tower of Babel > legend is way off the mark. > > As Patrick has said, Allan Bomhard is one of the > foremost authors in the Nostratic field so far, > however I think he is also the most sensible so far > because he undoes some of the flaws inherent in > the earlier works by Illich-Svitych and others. > > Being one who grew up in a religious household with > man antiquated ideas about language origins, I urge > people to be cautious about assuming direct links > because it has been a source of confusion in the past. > > In my opinion, the origin of communication goes back > to the Big Bang, 12 billion years ago :) The origin > of gestural communication goes back millions of > years. The origin of _vocal_ communication complete > with a standardized grammatical system goes back > about hundreds of thousands of years. The origin > of the common language (aka "Proto-World") that begat > all known modern languages probably occured only > circa 80,000 BCE. Nostratic is merely dated to 15,000 > BCE and IE is only 4000 BCE. That's the timescale > that I understand. > > > > = gLeN > > > > > __________________________________ > Yahoo! Mail - PC Magazine Editors' Choice 2005 > http://mail.yahoo.com > > > > > Yahoo! Groups Links > > > > > > > >