Re: OT: Historical Linguistics Question

On Fri, 16 September 2005, 18:32 CEST, Jörg Rhiemeier wrote:

 > Hallo!

Sei gegrüßt!

 > Some maverick creationists one occasionally meets on the
 > Web still maintain that position.  But this guy apparently
 > believes not that Greek is descended from Hebrew, but the
 > other way round. And then he adduces the similarity of the
 > alphabets.  Yes, the *alphabets* ARE related to each other
 > - but it is not that Hebrew letters descend from Greek
 > letters: they have a common ancestor (Phoenician) that is
 > distinct from both.  And after all, alphabets aren't
 > languages, and there are many examples of unrelated
 > languages written in related scripts.

<rant>

A bit offtopic, but FWIW: When I doodle using Cyrillic or
Greek letters or Tengwar ones, people often ask things like
"Cool, you can speak Russian [Greek, Elvish]?" Pah. I have a
hard time then to explain that being able to *read/write* an
alphabet does not automatically mean you can *speak* "the
language" attached to it. People seem to think that there's
a language -> unique writing system relation. I mean,
as if I could understand, say, Vietnamese only because it's
*one* of the *many* languages written in the Latin alphabet
(although it's an Asian lang?! Is that due to the French?).

</rant>

Carsten

--
"Miranayam cepauarà naranoaris."
(Calvin nay Hobbes)

Current projects:
www.beckerscarsten.de/?conlang=ayeri <#>
www.beckerscarsten.de/?conlang=tarsyanian

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