--- In qalam@yahoogroups.com, Marco
Cimarosti <marco.cimarosti@...>
wrote:
> Etaonsh wrote:
> > I found your post on Gaulish and
> > Lepontic runes [...]
>
> Gauls and Leponti had nothing to
do with runes.
>
That seems a rather peevish point
particularly unfair on Celts, who
have no Celtic word I know of to
describe letters found on stones. I
could have said 'glyphs' but that
would be Greek.
>
> The Celtic inscription of Northern
Italy and Switzerland are in a form
of
> the Etruscan alphabet, which is
nearly Latin inscription.
>
> > felt that the 'troll' matter
needed
> > sorting out first. [...]
>
> (Notice that John Cowan did not
call *you* a troll, but talked about
your
> "trolls", which means
"provocations". Although I can agree
that "trolls" or
> "provocations" aren't the nicest
term to call other people's
opinions, that
> didn't look like an ad personam
attack on you.)
>
'Troll' is unquestionably a word
calculated to demean, which has no
place in serious, intelligent
discussion.
>
> > [...] What interested
> > me particularly about the
Gaulish
> > runes I looked at was the
similarity
> > between the Celtic cross symbol
> > Marco brought up, and the
Gaulish
> > 'theta.'
>
> And if you put the two symbols
side by side, they bear a striking
similarity
> with the wheels of my bicycle.
>
But bicycles didn't come till much
later.
>
C'mon, Etaonsh, this is not
Atlantis!
>
Right. So don't keep sacrificing
prisoners.
>
> That letter, as all the other
letters in the Greek/Etruscan/Italic
> alphabet(s), derive(s) from the
same North Semitic alphabet that is
the
> origin of all the alphabets used
in Europe and Near East.
>
> > In alphabetic terms, the
> > Celtic cross can be seen as
> > representing the superiority of
> > pre-Roman Imperial, at least in
the
> > representation of 'th' by one
letter
> > - thus the fact that Roman
> > 'civilisation' was not entirely
a
> > progressive experience.
>
> I guess that it is just a
coincidence that Latin had no /th/
or /รพ/ phoneme
> to use that letter for, right?
>
No, the point is that the Roman
influence repeatedly imposed 'th' on
cultures who had a single letter for
it. Furthermore it could be argued
pyscholinguistically that the
absence of fricatives like 'th' in
Roman expresses their psyche and
values: a mellifluous but
restrictive, pointless and
ultimately inefficient purity.