Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2017 March 30

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March 30

Tower of Babel

Can the story of Babel, or at least some of it, be completely dismissed as non-factual and entirely mythical? One must admit (if one is a Nostratic enthusiast), that it does seem to explain the phenomena one would encounter while subjecting proto-languages to mass comparisons. I have pondered over this awhile and come up with a very good way to interpret Enmerkar and the Lord of Aratta, which I think would be much closer to the truth than the Torah. This Sumerian tale states that the lands of Uri-ki (Akkad), Hamazi, Martu, and Shubur, and Sumer had their linguistic unity shattered. Taking the geographical area into consideration, one could say that according to this fable, Summerian, Hurrian, and Elamite were all the result of this Uruk catastrophe. Perhaps some Caucasian languages could be thrown into that rather crude estimate.

The English text of the Torah implies that the whole earth spoke one language, but cant the word אֶרֶץ mean country, territory, and land?

As for the actual splitting up of the original language, which, in this mode of thought, would've been confined solely to eastern Mesopotamia, this cannot adequately be explained. I dont know if that would necessarily present a problem or not.

Now I will let you know that I dont agree at all with the views Answers in Genesis holds on this matter, or any other matter really. They wrongly assume some type of bottleneck explosion out of Mesopotamia in the most absurd fashion. Idielive (talk) 02:52, 30 March 2017 (UTC)

Wikipedia has an article called Tower of Babel which provides some historical context for the story, as well as possible antecedants for the story and analogues in other traditions. Etemenanki, a ziggurat in Babylon, is one possible inspiration. There is no scholarly article that indicates the story represents a precocious understanding of the science of Historical linguistics, except in broadly coincidental terms. --Jayron32 23:49, 29 March 2017 (UTC)

Is there any mention anywhere in the Bible, of lands beyond the Middle East and the Mediterranean? Also, aside from the story about people suddenly talking in different languages, isn't the main point of the story about failing to be humble before God? (A recurring theme throughout the Bible.) ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 00:29, 30 March 2017 (UTC)

Tarshish is probably quite distant from the Holy Land (Spain, perhaps), and the Book of Esther quite possibly mentions India, when discussing the limits of the realm of Ahasuerus, as well as Ophir, which may have been in India as well, or possibly Southern Africa. 1 Maccabees (a book considered biblical scripture by some) also mentions domesticated Elephants from India:[1]. --Jayron32 01:24, 30 March 2017 (UTC)

Tarshish, with its gold and rabbits, is most likely Tartessus of Southern Spain. μηδείς (talk) 01:47, 30 March 2017 (UTC)

References

• The tower of Babel is a just-so story. Total mythology. God doesn't come down and make language families any more than he made the Romance languages out of Vulgar Latin. Nostratic is a poorly defined hodgepodge that takes what might be primitive features to show that certain language families are related. It's construction is based on resemblances to Indo-European, not shared common innovations. See cladism. This is like assuming that the presence of vertebral tails in fish, lizards and rats makes them a family which excludes frogs, birds and humans.

As for "spelling", this is just total confusion. Do you mean actual writing? Nostratic would have to be dated to before 12,000 BC. If you mean phonology, good luck.

You'd do much better to look at Fortescue's Language Relations Across the Bering Strait, which outlines his Uralo-Siberian. I think the truth lies somewhere between that (to narrow) and Greeenberg's Eurasiatic languages (too broad). But neither has anything to do with an obvious myth or ziggurats. μηδείς (talk) 01:45, 30 March 2017 (UTC)

÷

Who said anything about spelling??? By the way, even if it is a just so story, most of the stories in the Torah are memories of the bronze age, or even copper age. The flood myth for example, was clearly no global flood, but recollections of a local flood. Over time of course, these stories would begin to be constantly reinterpreted, depending on who was charged with passing the story down and what personal beliefs he held.

The fact that Nostratic is a hodgepodge, is not relevant here, since I was saying that this Babel myth could simply explain encountered phenomena. Bad explanation as it is, its still an explanation. That whole languages change so much over time that they become unrecognizable is an excuse for well trained linguists to quit their day job and focus on other matters. There is only so much change that can happen, since its not like the word foot is ever going to morph into q'aʘex. Not in a hundred thousand years. Idielive (talk) 02:52, 30 March 2017 (UTC)

Why not, given a sequence of regular sound changes? Take Hindi and English. English six and Hindi छह chhah are real cognates, as are English flea and Hindi पिस्सू pissoo. Both are Indo-European languages and there is a regular consonant correspondence, but surely these words have become unrecognisably distinct. Your languages seem to have diverged less in ten thousand years than Hindi and English have diverged in six thousand, and in a hundred thousand years even things looking as unlikely as your suggestion may well happen! Double sharp (talk) 03:15, 31 March 2017 (UTC)

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A view of the world as seen by the Israelites is preserved in the "tabula gentium" of Genesis 10 which precedes the tower of Babel account. AnonMoos (talk) 02:18, 30 March 2017 (UTC)

Here is a mass comparison which excludes all proto languages that I categorize as originating from some natural phenomena. The numbers two, three, and four are compared across some proto languages. Notice how in every one of them, number two always contains sounds like s, d, ts, or an affricate, whether initially or not. In Classical Japanese the -t is not initial, and in Etruscan there is a z, which might've originated from an earlier -ts. Proto Afro Asiatic tsir corresponds to Etruscan zal, Korean tul, and Indo-Pacific/Fore tarawe, with a r/l differentiation. Though this doesn't prove that these languages are all related, it is certainly a small step towards a much bigger, sophisticated approach. Proto-Austronesian dewsa and PIE dwóh are excellent examples. The Japanese initial -pu can be regarded as a primitive prefix added to the root. Proto-Uto-Aztecan woha is missing the initial consonant, but bears a striking resemvlance to the woh in PIE dwóh.

Proto-Indo-European	dwóh	treyes	kʷetwóres
Proto Afro Asiatic	tsan/can/tsir/cir	xaymz	fazw
Korean	tul	set	net
Classical Japanese	puta	mi	yö
Ainu	tu	re	ine
Etruscan	zal	ci	huth
Tai	song3	sa:m3	si:2
Proto-Austronesian	dewsa	telu	xepate
Proto-Algonquian	ni:shwi	ne?thwi	nye:wi
Siouan Dakota	nonpa	yamni	topa
Iroquoian/ Laurentian	tigneny	asche	hannacon
Proto-Uto-Aztecan	woha	pahay	na-wo
Oto-Manguean/ Zapotec	chope	shone	tap
Penutian/ Proto-Miwok	oti	tel(.)o-	?oj.is-.a-
Proto-Mayan+	ka?-	?o:sh-	ka:ng-
Chibcha	botsa	mica	muyca
Paezan/Chimú+	aput	sopät	nopät
Andean/Proto-Quechua	ishkay	kimsa	çusku, tawa
Equatorial/Old Tupi	mokõí	mosapyr	irundyk
Ge-Pano-Carib/Carib	o:ko	o:ruwa	o:kopaime
Indo-Pacific/Fore	tarawe	kakágawé	taraye' taraye kíriné
Pama-Nyungan/Gamilaraay	bulaar	gulibaa
Early PIE	dweh	treyes	kʷetu

Idielive (talk) 02:52, 30 March 2017 (UTC)

• "The fact that Nostratic is a hodgepodge, is not relevant here, since I was saying that this Babel myth could simply explain encountered phenomena" Well 'simply explaining encountered phenomena' is exactly the definition of a "just so story". I have been studying deep linguistic relationships over four decades.

Much of what you have posted is dubious or uncertain. Whether huth means 4 or 6 in Etruscan is undecided. Much of the rest amounts to cherry picking, or unproven relationships. You have no proto-Amerind here. Basically you are beyond the fringe, while my own opinions are considered on the fringe.

If you really take this seriously, pick smaller groupings like the Austric languages, Amerind languages or Eurasiatic languages, Or read Roy Andrew Miller and Nicholas Poppe re the Altaic languages (you'll need German) and test those. There's no way you are going to compare Korean and Trans-New Guinean.

And where's the Nilo-Saharan or Niger-Congo? Can you read isiZulu? When you bring in the Tower of Babel you label yourself as a crank. μηδείς (talk) 03:29, 30 March 2017 (UTC)

The only part that sounds believable is that there was actually such a tower. In fact, I'm sure there were many such towers in that part of the world. Here's one: Etemenanki. The myth comes in when we argue that it had something to do with everyone speaking different languages. We know enough about how languages split to know that divine intervention isn't required, just isolation and time. StuRat (talk) 04:27, 30 March 2017 (UTC)

I took the liberty of formatting your list for compactness and enhanced legibility. Did you take it from zompist.com? Almean is fictional. —Tamfang (talk) 00:42, 2 April 2017 (UTC)

Language is a result of natural phenomena, and its just a matter of deciding whether all languages are the result of the same spark that hit humans two hundred thousand years ago. And no I wont bring in Nilo Saharan, why should I. I was including what I deemed necessary to include in the first place. Your right, there is no divine intervention required to explain the diversity of language (though the Babel story could still have some truth to it), and I dont care at all whether the meaning of huth is undecided. And its not called cherry picking, its called a small scale testing of linguistic relationships. Idielive (talk) 8:38, 30 March 2017 (UTC)

Also Zulu one to four is kubili, kutathu, and kune, which shows a sort of symmetry. In Proto Bantu however, which if far older than Zulu, two to four is bàdé, tátò and nà. bàdé has a final -d, proving my point exactly. kubili has a final -l instead, which is expected, no different from Vedic retroflex l being rendered as a d. kutathu and tátò contains a reduplicated t plus vowel. So yes I can read Zulu. I've found exactly what I expected to find. Also, whats with Etemenanki? Why dont you mention the various older towers? The one thing I've noticed in most discussions about the Tower of Babel, whether on Wikipedia or not, is that Etemenanki is mentioned over all other towers. Please explain.

While you do that, I will elaborate on what you said about me not being able to compare Korean and Trans New Guinea. Nonsense! The cardinal numbers two to four in Sawila are yaku, tuo, and araasiku. The ordinal version of this is wii-yaku, wii-tua, and wii-araasiiku. Compare tua, which means three, with Korean tul, which means two. If I didn't know any better it looks to me like number values switched places at same point in prehistory. Korean set and net is symmetry, thus it could be said that Korean preserves a once initial -ts in the form of s, or that -se comes from an ancient prefix. The Proto Trans New Guinea word for one was something like tal, or tat. Compare with Korean tul. Idielive (talk) 16:00, 30 March 2017 (UTC)

As I have said, I have studied deep relationships for years, I won't refer to my research here. But I have never never come acrost a case where the word for two becomes the word for three. How is not caring whether huth actually means 4 or 6 a badge of honor? I believe in monogenesis, but throwing spaghetti against the wall is not the way to do actual historical linguistics.

Like I have said, start with reasonable questions, like the validity of Uralo-Siberian or the suggestion that Niger-Congo is a branch of Nilo-Saharan. No layman is going to demonstrate anything otherwise. One ends up with such nonsense as the Hungarian-Sumerian hypothesis or the sun language pseudoscience. I'll refrain from commenting on this nonsense further. μηδείς (talk) 20:37, 30 March 2017 (UTC)

@Idielive:, when you say that Zulu kubili, kutathu, and kune show a sort of symmetry, I don't understand what you mean. Are you referring to the initial ku-? Zulu, like all Bantu languages, has noun classes, which are marked by prefixes. The prefix ku- indicates noun class 15 (commonly use as an infinitive marker), and it is merely a citation form. In practice, you rarely would use the ku- prefix. You have to choose the prefix that concords with the noun in question. For example, with the noun that means "people", you use prefix No. 2, aba-: abantu. All of the adjectives and numbers that modify abantu must agree with its noun class: Abantu abahle ababili labo bawile (those two good people have fallen). So the Zulu numbers take many different forms, depending on the noun they modify, and the prefix is separate from the number itself. The bare numbers are -bili, -tathu, and -ne. —Stephen (talk) 07:37, 1 April 2017 (UTC)

References

Yes, I was in fact referring to the initial ku. Just a side question though, would you say that Proto Human language theory is implausible, and that some developed from a completely different source, like Idioglossia. Idielive (talk) 17:15, 1 April 2017 (UTC)

It is highly plausible that the present-day languages have a common origin.But we are a long way from making sensible hypotheses about what the proto-language would have been like. If we had a decent database of all the current languages and reconstructions we could see whether there are patterns of similarity between language families. But even when we find similarities they can often be explained by borrowing, by sound symbolism, or by chance. Itsmejudith (talk) 21:32, 1 April 2017 (UTC)

I always took the Babel story to be a flip-flop of what really happened. That is, that while linguists believe that people spread out and the language became localized, the Babel story is the opposite: That the languages became partitioned, and the people went their separate ways. But that notion does raise the question: How did the French-speakers, for example, know to move to France? :) ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 22:29, 1 April 2017 (UTC)

Baseball Bugs you are mistaken. The Tower of Babel story does not imply that there were French people that moved to France. That's absurd. The French people did not exist when the Babel story was written down, neither did the French language even exist. We are taking about a story written 2700 years ago, or 700 BCE. Idielive (talk) 03:28, 2 April 2017 (UTC)

Do tell. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 04:20, 2 April 2017 (UTC)

Simply finding similar words in distant languages is neither useful nor meaningful. We would use reconstructed forms in the earliest protolanguage of a family and apply what is known or believed about sound changes (such as f -> h and f -> v) to the forms to produce an earlier hypothetical form (belonging to an earlier protolanguage). If we had complete databases for all the protolanguages and used this method to predict earlier forms, then we would try to find matches in predicted earlier forms among all of the families. If we could find a significant number of matches (i.e., predicted forms) among various families, that would indicate some kind of relationship. But, since we are starting with reconstructed forms, and since all of the hypothesized protolanguages are not contemporaneous (the difference in time periods for protolanguages can vary by at least 10,000 years), and taking into consideration the migrations, borrowings, and so on, it is inconceivable that we could ever look far enough back in time. If I recall correctly, the earliest protolanguages that we are now attempting to reconstruct are from 10,000–12,000 years ago. We would need to go back at least 40,000 years to find a major protolanguage for most of Europe and Asia, and probably to 1.8 million years ago to find the very beginning of language. In my opinion, it is not possible. We will never reach back 40,000 years, much less 1.8 million. —Stephen (talk) 09:01, 2 April 2017 (UTC)

This is basic linguistics. When people migrate they take their language with them. They interact with the people already there and the language may change as a result. The French people were in Gaul all the time. Over centuries their language changed from Latin to modern French. 149.254.56.172 (talk) 10:37, 2 April 2017 (UTC)

Some of the French people were in Gaul. Large numbers of them were in Franconia however and migrated to Gaul during the Migration Period of the 5th-8th centuries. Certainly, the French people of today are, genetically speaking, some admixture of old Franks along with the native inhabitants of Roman Gaul. --Jayron32 01:46, 3 April 2017 (UTC)

French did not exist, and as for the French people, their ancestors would have been living in Neolithic Europe at the time the ziggurats were built. The language that these people spoke would defiantly not be Proto Indo European, but something like Basque. Since the modern Basque language is spoken in France and Spain, it is unlikely to have originated from an earlier language in Mesopotamia. Now if Basque is related to the Caucasian languages, this might actually make sense. Idielive (talk) 17:32, 2 April 2017 (UTC)

Use of "portmanteau" for Japanese concatenated words

While reading through this page, I read here above:

The Danganronpa article says "The series' name is a portmanteau of dangan (弾丸?, bullet) and ronpa (論破?, refute)"

This struck me as odd. I then looked up the definition of portmanteau:

a word blending the sounds and combining the meanings of two others, for example motel (from ‘motor’ and ‘hotel’) or brunch (from ‘breakfast’ and ‘lunch’).

In this case there is no sound blending, just stringing the words together, so are you, English native speakers, happy with this usage of the English concept of portmanteau words? --Lgriot (talk) 12:55, 30 March 2017 (UTC)

I share your misgivings. Going solely by the alphabetic spelling Danganronpa, it seems to me to be a compound rather than a blend. jnestorius^(talk) 13:25, 30 March 2017 (UTC)

Thanks. I went bold and changed the Danganronpa article to use compound. --Lgriot (talk)

Portmanteau is a term that is commonly used for many Japanese words. It has a slightly different meaning when used for Japanese. For example, wikt:ゼンタイ (zentai) is considered a portmanteau of 全身タイツ (zenshin taitsu). The Japanese term for this is wikt:混成語 (portmanteau, mixed word, blend, hybrid). —Stephen (talk) 08:30, 1 April 2017 (UTC)

Hmmm, then it would need an extra definition, starting with "When discussing Japanese, used for ..." --Lgriot (talk) 13:09, 3 April 2017 (UTC)

capitalization of plc

The acronym for public limited company is given "plc" in a legal context, and so appears on formal documents this way and tends to be used with the official name, e.g..: "Widgets plc". Is it also valid to write it as, say, "Widgets Plc"? Or is this a case of the writer being used to "Ltd."? It looks very odd to me, to capitalize only the first letter of an acronym. It looks doubly weird with an (unpronounceable) all-consonant acronym/initialism. – Reidgreg (talk) 17:18, 30 March 2017 (UTC)

The Guardian's style guide here says all lower case, never capitalized. I can't find much other guidance. --Jayron32 18:00, 30 March 2017 (UTC)

Relevant is American and British English spelling differences#Acronyms and abbreviations. The same Guardian style guide under abbreviations and acronyms says initialisms ALLCAPS, acronyms Titlecase except lowercase if "it can be considered to have entered the language as an everyday word". It then says "Note that pdf and plc are lowercase." So The Guardian does what Reidgreg finds weird but not doubly-weird. jnestorius^(talk) 11:03, 31 March 2017 (UTC)

I don't believe any other talk page beats the LRD for wit. It's brilliant to not only get good advice but a laugh as well. I shall have to check the mathematics desk to accurately quantify the degree of weirdness. Cheers! – Reidgreg (talk) 13:04, 31 March 2017 (UTC)

Huh?? --76.71.6.254 (talk) 23:02, 31 March 2017 (UTC)