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Re: Fakelangs

From:Joe <joe@...>
Date:Thursday, June 24, 2004, 16:36
Adam Walker wrote:

>--- Christian Thalmann <cinga@...> wrote: > > >>(Feel free to coin a better word for "fakelangs"...) >> >> >> > I've decided that /gwi:n/ > > >>should mean >>"cattle" and that /'hajro/ is either the name of a >>Goddess or >>the language itself. >> >> >> > >Which, of course, proves beyond shadow of doubt that >this language is a blending of Latin and Greek >elements with the expected semantic drift. Gwin, >meaning cattle, is clearly a corruption og the Latin >equine, meaning horse, and proves that, at the point >in time when the word was learnt that the practice of >eating horseflesh was still common among the Hairo. > >
Oh dear, oh dear, the pseudo-linguistic nonsense. While it is evidently Indo-European (from the root *g_wou), it is not Latin or Greek. This is surely obvious by the fact that it did not go through the g_w>b shift, as Latin and Greek did. Compare, for instance, Latin 'bos' with English 'cow'. I suggest that it is most closely related to the Indic languages. Compare with Sanskrit 'gauh/'(???), or the Balto-Slavic languages (Latvian 'govs'). However, it obviously borrowed(or diverged from the line) at a phase before the labialisation was lost. I suspect the following- *u>*y>*i. *o>*@(another sign of its relation to the Indic languages). *@i>*i. Evidently, the accusative case was borrowed (hence the nasal ending), probably as cows are rarely referred to in the nominative. It shows that the Hairo have been well travelled.
>The name Hairo may be applied either to the people >themselves and thus their language or to their chief >goddess. This name is clearly taken from the Greek >hieros, meaning sacred, a word which should be quite >familiar to the audience from the common usage in >hieroglyph, sacred writing. > >Now, some have argued that, due to the antiquity of >Hairo inscriptions compared to extant inscriptions in >either Greek or Latin, that the borrowing must have >gone the other direction. This is clearly not >possible. One may easily find examples of mixed and >barbarous tongues today among the savage tribe of >Indie and the isles of the Pacific as well as the Gold >Coast and other areas of Africa. One, however, does >not find examples of barbarous folk teaching civilised >to distill their own strange tongues into two or more >languages of refinement and beauty. The logic of >those who sponsor such views is to be seriously >questioned. > >. . . excerpted from the Oxford lectures of Prof. E. >G. Head > > >
Personally, I'm shocked that such an esteemed scholar as Professor Head could come up with such Nonsense.

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Emily Zilch <emily0@...>Fakelangs: Tlön