From: tgpedersen
Message: 61208
Date: 2008-11-02
>I remember as a kid at the age where everything has to be correct and
> --- 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.
>