Re: OT: babel and english

Samuel Rivier wrote:

> Someone said let's not speak English 'cause it sucks.
> Speak only in conlangs and turn it into a REAL Babel.
I interpreted this figuratively.

> Umm yeah but in Babel they all spoke the SAME
> language, and I doubt anyone would agree on an auxlang
> for conlang
Don't you mean:  "a conlang for an auxlang"?

> I'd be all for French but my grasp of the language is
> limited,
What language do you speak natively? (Just curious)

> It would be cool if we could have a very very very
> easy auxlang here- it would attract a very diverse
> crowd
Ah, but that's the problem! At the risk of starting another
flame, no universally accepted metric exists to provide the
kind of attractiveness that you're describing.  That's why,
of course, a whole list was spun off from this one, precisely
because people never seemed to be able to agree on the
most important criteria.

> The interesting thing about Babel is that it might be
> true. The previous chapter talks of the sons of the
> sons of the sons of Noah, people with names like Assyr
> and Mede and Akkad and Caanan and Cush. Obviously this
> is a historical documentation of the tribes of the
> middle East.
Right -- they're eponymous, like Romulus was for Rome.
(I wonder if Athena was eponymous for Athens;  it's hard to tell.
She was the patron deity of the city, and was worshipped even
in Minoan times.  If the experience of urbanization of extremely
ancient Mesopotamia is any indicator (ca. 3500 BC), where
cities developed out of prior religious centers, the deity might
well predate the city.)

> So perhaps there was a time when all
> tribes were in harmony, and maybe even spoke the same
> language, and then split and were wrenched into war.
The usual secular humanist's explanation of the Babel story is that
at one period early in the history of Mesopotamia, the economy
of the citystates had developed to such an extent that it was spurring
the growth of international trading networks, leading as far away as
Elam and even the Indus Valley.  Thus, for the natives, it might seem
that within one generation, without realizing it, they were becoming
more cosmopolitan, or rather, were inventing cosmopolitanism, and with
that, more multicultural and multilingual.  Since we know from archaeological
finds that these trading networks were a reality, it is not an unreasonable
historical scenario.

> It would be interested if we could find out if there
> was really an IAL in the MIddle East and what it was
Oh, there are and have been plenty.  Even today, knowledge of
Arabic and English will get you very far, along with French in
some regions (Syria and parts of North Africa).  Before that,
during Ottoman rule, Turkish was common, and before that
Greek and Aramaic.  Before that, Akkadian and Sumerian.
(It is said that one of the religious rites of the Babylonians involved
speaking prayers to a bull with Akkadian in one ear, and Sumerian
in the other, even though the latter had already become obsolescent
in every-day use.)

===================================
Thomas Wier | AIM: trwier

"Aspidi men Saiôn tis agalletai, hên para thamnôi
  entos amômêton kallipon ouk ethelôn;
autos d' exephugon thanatou telos: aspis ekeinê
  erretô; exautês ktêsomai ou kakiô" - Arkhilokhos

Reply