--- Alexander Genaud <alexgenaud@...> wrote:

> I think it is tempting to assume that a sacred
> language
> (particularly the language of your own faith) is the
> root
> language. Certainly, I had believed that Aramaic was
> the common
> ancestor of all Indo-European languages, until I
> became
> skeptical after learning that it was the language
> most likely
> spoken by Jesus.

And perhaps after learning that Aramaic is a Semitic
language, not an Indo-European one...

Gunnar

There is a vibrant community

> discussing Edenic
> (none other than the language spoken in the Garden
> of Eden, from
> which Hebrew derives). Many would have us believe
> that Sanskrit,
> Arabic, or even English is the single language from
> which all
> modern day languages derive.
>
> However, perhaps the point you are making (or at
> least allowing
> to be implied) is that there is an intrinsic meaning
> in basic
> sounds (onomatopoeia) regardless of your mother
> tongue, even if
> you were fortunate enough to be raised by wolves.
>
> Onomatopoeia: word that imitates the sound it
> represents.
> Examples: splash, buzz, hiss, wow, gush, kerplunk,
> click, pop,
> katydid
>
> I am not familiar with a single language in which
> 'mother' is
> not some very obvious derivative of 'MA' and where
> 'father' is
> not similar to 'DA', 'BA' or 'PA'. In fact, 'water',
> is often
> something like 'WA' or 'VA'. It seems to me that one
> could find
> commonalities between most/all languages, in fact, I
> believe
> that families and groups are defined more or less on
> the basis
> of these similarities. Certainly, no language is an
> unconditioned phenomena.
>
>
> If one assumes that:
> (1) there is some primal language P
> (2) that all languages derive and diverge from P
> then
> (3) For all languages, A, B
> (4) there should (on average) be more commonality
> between A-P
> and B-P than between A-B.
>
> For example, suppose we took English, Chinese, and
> Pali. I
> believe that we could safely say that there is more
> commonality
> between English and Pali than between English and
> Chinese. But
> can we say that there is a similar commonality
> between Pali and
> Chinese?
>
> I'd like to think so, but then again, I do have my
> bias.
>
> Cheers,
> Alex
>
>
> ---// Michael Olds said: //---
>
> Briefly I hold that of the words
> available to him at the time Gotama
> chose those words whose roots went
> back to the origins of language.
> He did this because of the nature
> of those early words as being built
> on onomatopoea, animal sounds and
> primitive situations and activities
> (sex, eating, bodily functions,
> hunting, farming). These words were
> chosen because they have greater
> universality and timelessness than
> the other later words available at
> the time.
>
> ---// :was said by Michael Olds //---
>
>
>
>
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