English and Dravidian
May 15, 2013 4:55 PM   Subscribe

Many languages have "high" and "low" layers of vocabulary. But in most other languages, the two sets are drawn from the same source. By contrast, contact between Old English and French, Dravidian languages and Sanskrit, Japanese and Chinese, Persian and Arabic, and other pairings around the world have created fascinatingly hybrid languages. These mixed lexicons are, for linguistic and social historians, akin to the layers of fossils that teach paleontologists and archaeologists so much about eras gone by. Some people even think English is descended from Latin, or Kannada from Sanskrit. That’s frustrating not only because it’s wrong, but also because the reality is far more interesting. - The Economist, Unlikely parallels (via)
posted by beisny (31 comments total) 25 users marked this as a favorite
 
Cool article. I worked with enough Tamils to have the Dravidian/Indic distinction driven home to me but I didn't know about the hybridization of languages.

The writer also missed my favorite example of the register difference in English for Germanic vs. Latinate: farm animals. The Germanic word is for when they are raised, the Latinate word is for when they are eaten at the table, like cow vs. beef or sheep vs. mutton.
posted by benito.strauss at 5:10 PM on May 15, 2013 [5 favorites]


I was all prepared to grind my teeth until I saw this was from The Economist's "Johnson" blog, one of the few mass-media venues to discuss language intelligently and for the most part accurately. Nice piece! (Another example of the phenomenon: Ottoman Turkish, which was so full of Arabic and Persian loanwords it was unintelligible to the average Turkish speaker.) This, however, did make me grind my teeth:

A relatively recent movement among Tamil-speakers aimed to expunge the Sanskrit borrowings.

What is it with people? Nationalism is stupid to begin with, but when you start treating borrowed words as though they're going to steal your job... I just don't get it. The more borrowed words you have, the more expressive possibilities; Yiddish has three different words for 'spring' (the season), one each from Hebrew, German, and Slavic, and they each have different connotations. Celebrate diversity, don't purge it!
posted by languagehat at 5:20 PM on May 15, 2013 [5 favorites]


Johnson posted a follow-up to respond to some comments. It's equally fascinating. Here's an excerpt:
The central focus of language studies in India is, of course, Sanskrit. As a liturgical language of Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism, Sanskrit has played an outsized role in India’s linguistic development. Over its lifetime, Sanskrit traveled as far as Indonesia, Japan and Afghanistan on the backs of Hindu and Buddhist religious emissaries. The language’s name for itself, saṃskṛta vāk, means “perfected speech”—and its users genuinely believed that Sanskrit was indeed perfect. Sanskrit grammarians and authors looked down on commoners’ prākṛta, “natural”, languages as seriously deficient compared to Sanskrit. Rulers and other elites felt the same way. (These prākṛta languages, descendants of Sanskrit, eventually became most of the languages spoken in northern India, Sri Lanka, Pakistan and Bangladesh, including Hindi, Urdu, Bengali, Punjabi, Sinhalese and Marathi.) Because the native religious traditions of India highly value the precise oral recitation of scriptures, the liturgical language itself holds sacred importance. For thousands of years, Sanskrit persisted as a language of religion and elite education even as local vernaculars increasingly diverged from it. This relationship parallels the continued formal use of Latin in continental Europe through the Middle Ages despite the Romance languages developing apart from it, or the freezing of written and formal Arabic in its Koranic form as the spoken dialects became, in effect, new languages over the past 14 centuries.
posted by Kattullus at 5:25 PM on May 15, 2013


Many of the comments are Very Bad, but Johnson is Very Good at responding to them.
posted by Sticherbeast at 5:28 PM on May 15, 2013 [1 favorite]


But my favourite must be the Norman invasion of 1066. When the Normans, who spoke a dialect of Old French, ruled over England, they changed the face of English. Over the ensuing two centuries, thousands of Old French words entered English.
This isn't actually how it happened. The vast majority of French words were borrowed from the mid 1200s onward. English up to the early 1200s shows relatively few borrowings. Had the French occupation of England ended in 1200 we would have sparse evidence of it in our speech.
Because the ruling class spoke Old French, that set of vocabulary became synonymous with the elite. Everyone else used Old English. During this period, England's society was diglossic: one community, two language sets with distinct social spheres.
While this is true, it was not the existence of diglossia which caused borrowing but rather its collapse. When the elite could no longer reasonably speak French they went on to recreate the earlier language split by shaping their dialect of English to be less like spoken English. The borrowing of French words was an attempt to show that they were still part of the same social and cultural world as before and highlight that difference between them and English speakers outside of elite culture.
What is it with people? Nationalism is stupid to begin with, but when you start treating borrowed words as though they're going to steal your job... I just don't get it.
It isn't a form of nationalism but rather anti-elitism. Removing vocabulary associated with the elite or ruling class is a very understandable way of removing their power. Many linguistic minorities are harmed by cultural imperialism and take pretty rational steps to stop that harm. This is doubly so when those languages were used as a weapon against the weak, with ideological assertion that they were better than common speech. Indeed, even lower socio-economic groups can be harmed by the use of language. A poor person who rejects Latin or Greek vocabulary is rejecting a part of elite identity in the West.

To be able to name things on your own terms is very affirming for those who have been formerly dispossessed. It cuts little ice to prate about "expressive possibilities": the elite have historically had no interest in dialect or colloquial language and its expressive possibilities, but rather have done what they can to destroy it in the name of so-called progress. Now that it is their language being destroyed they suddenly become fans of diversity, tolerance, and "expressive probabilities". They used language to divide and exclude, yet know they find their language excluded. Seems like a fair outcome to me.
posted by Jehan at 5:46 PM on May 15, 2013 [7 favorites]


The writer also missed my favorite example of the register difference in English for Germanic vs. Latinate: farm animals. The Germanic word is for when they are raised, the Latinate word is for when they are eaten at the table, like cow vs. beef or sheep vs. mutton.
This was made up by Walter Scott in Ivanhoe. It's not actually a proper reflection of the history of the English language. The anecdote really needs to die.
posted by Jehan at 5:51 PM on May 15, 2013 [1 favorite]


I have traveled in Northern Europe and lived in Germany for six years of my life, I speak German. In Scandanavia I hear traces of German, and Scottish Accent as well. I know Old English and Old German were the same language not that long ago. The poetry of Longfellow and Goethe were co-translated with great accuracy and ring/kling by the Poets.

Currently I live in the middle of the Navajo Nation in Southern Utah. Navajo has words from several Asiatic languages. Tso means "fat" I think that is tso in Chinese as well. A guide I know well says that a couple of location references such as go right over here, or go left here in Navajo, are phrases Japanese tourists know, because the phrases are the same in their language. I have been listening to the Navajo, and looking at their customs, and their traditional clothing. I see a lot of different Asiatic cultures in the traditions of the Navajo.

I put on some traditional Tibetan music in my art class today, the high school students asked for me to continue playing it. This was Soinam Wangmo singing highly staged anthems. Yet the costuming, and performance and the overall sound of the music was gripping for my students.

I can't wait to bust out the Tuvan throat singing tomorrow. I also wonder if there are some shared words or phrases in Hungarian or Finnish? The Navajo have taken their elders visiting to both Siberia and Mongolia where the elders of both societies can converse in the Athabascan language.

As long as I am over my head and rattling on, then some brilliant soul please tell me why there is a war on the infinitive case in academic writing. Is it a war on the Germanic languages or a war on non-linear lines of thought?
posted by Oyéah at 6:05 PM on May 15, 2013 [1 favorite]


It's not actually a proper reflection of the history of the English language. The anecdote really needs to die.

The best way to kill it is to give a historically proper explanation that explains what many have noticed after learning the words "Kuh" and "boeuf". I'd like to hear it.
posted by benito.strauss at 6:11 PM on May 15, 2013


You know, I'm gonna go with this thing, anymore. At restaurants I will start ordering the cow, "hey, ya have any sheep? I am hungry enough to eat a whole flock."
posted by Oyéah at 6:19 PM on May 15, 2013


The best way to kill it is to give a historically proper explanation that explains what many have noticed after learning the words "Kuh" and "boeuf". I'd like to hear it.
There isn't an explanation. The pattern isn't real but rather in the minds of those who see it. Lots of words were borrowed from French into English. That there should be three non-borrowed words for the animals and three borrowed words for their meats is just a coincidence. It is easy to name many many animals where the name of the meat is not borrowed.

Besides, what you you mean by "Kuh" and "boeuf"?
posted by Jehan at 6:27 PM on May 15, 2013 [1 favorite]


All the references I could find in a cursory search on the cow/beef question describe the usual story as "unproven" or "disputed" at worst, but nothing on the order of "made up" or "needs to die".
The Normans were Scandinavians who spoke a Germanic language which morphed into Norman French as they conquered French-speakers in what is now France. The Norman conquest brought another language to the British Isles. The Norman invasion is the reason we have pairs of words for living versus cooked animals -- the commoners who raised animals spoke English, and the nobles who ate meat spoke Norman French. Thus we have cow/beef, calf/veal, sheep/mutton, swine/pork, deer/venison. (Wamba, the jester in Sir Walter Scott's Ivanhoe, catalogues these pairs.)
This differentiation goes back to the Norman Conquest of England. The names of the domestic animals are all of Anglo-Saxon origin, while the names of the meats derived from them come from Norman French and ultimately Latin. The common explanation for this is that after the conquest, Anglo-Saxons were often restricted to menial roles such as cowherd, swineherd, etc. Their Norman masters were the ones who actually got to eat the viands (Middle French viande). This is a plausible argument. But proven? No. ... Some think the servant talk/gentry talk argument is a little too pat. In The Mother Tongue: English & How It Got That Way, Bill Bryson gives the explanation above but in a footnote says:
It should be noted that [Robert] Burchfield, in The English Language, calls this distinction between field names and food names "an enduring myth" on the grounds that the French terms were using for living animals as well (he cites Samuel Johnson referring to a cow as "a beef"), but even so I think the statement above is a reasonable generalization.
I believe Sir Walter Scott referenced this story in Ivanhoe, so it has been around since at least the early 19th century; but given Ivanhoe's overall level of historical accuracy, I wouldn't put much stock in it as a source. ... the edible words clearly do derive from French, and the live ones from ('old') English. I don't think there can be any doubt about that. What is in doubt is the posh/vulgar myth, which is disputed
[The Normal conquest] led to many paired words of French and English origin. For example, beef is related, through borrowing, to modern French bœuf, veal to veau, pork to porc, and poultry to poulet. All these words, French and English, refer to the meat rather than to the animal. Words that refer to farm animals, on the other hand, tend to be cognates of words in other Germanic languages. For example swine/Schwein, cow/Kuh, calf/Kalb, and sheep/Schaf. The variant usage has been explained by the proposition that it was the Norman rulers who mostly ate meat (an expensive commodity) and the Anglo-Saxons who farmed the animals. This explanation has passed into common folklore but has been disputed.
So, yeah, what benito.strauss said. Please tell me more, I would love to learn.

On preview: I guess there isn't any more you have to tell. Oh well. In the absence of contrary evidence, I'm going to continue to believe the story, if you don't mind.
posted by narain at 6:29 PM on May 15, 2013 [1 favorite]


Okay, here's some contrary evidence: peasants ate pig, lots of it. Indeed, they really liked eating pig in all its forms. They didn't raise pigs just to see them go off to the lord's table: they ate those juicy swine themselves. The distinction between the word pig and pork has nothing to do with who raised the animal and who ate it, else the word pork would never have got a look in.

Also, the deer/venison split is utter nonsense because neither of these two words had the unambiguous meanings they have today til after the time in question.
posted by Jehan at 6:39 PM on May 15, 2013


Oyéah: "The Navajo have taken their elders visiting to both Siberia and Mongolia where the elders of both societies can converse in the Athabascan language. "

This is highly unlikely, given that the genetic relationship between these language families is quite remote, and was only discovered in 2008. The Siberian branch of the family does not (and has not, at least in the past 300+ years) extend into Mongolia, and is presently spoken by only ~200 speakers. The cultural heritage underlying these language groups is rich and in need of protection but ascribing them mystical powers to transcend time and space, undoing millennia of language change, doesn't help.
posted by dendrochronologizer at 7:59 PM on May 15, 2013 [4 favorites]


Oh well. In the absence of contrary evidence, I'm going to continue to believe the story, if you don't mind.

Well, in fairness to Jehan, saying you're going to believe something unless it's disproved doesn't quite meet the standards of science, and proving a negative is pretty damn hard outside of math. Plus, from previous comments I've seen here, he (she?) knows a shit-ton more about English history than I do, across many centuries.

I think there's just something about linguists getting all snippy ("needs to die") that puts people's backs up. Maybe because we're all experts in using at least one language, we think we can also do history and analysis of language too.
posted by benito.strauss at 9:02 PM on May 15, 2013


Thanks for the interesting article.

One of my favourite chapters from The Anglo Guide to Survival in Quebec - an all around funny book for a very niche audience - was the "lesson in how to speak French". Basically you take a simple english word (walk, ), make it sound fancy (march) and add "-er" (marcher!). I never really thought about it again until this article.

Of course it's not that simple, but it had just enough truth to make me laugh.
posted by sauril at 9:12 PM on May 15, 2013


From the article:
Today, that diglossia is gone, but Sanskrit-derived vocabulary still forms an upper crust, mostly pulled out for formal speech or writing.
The author gets the history slightly misleading (ie, not necessarily disagreeing, but being a bit more nuanced). The reason you have so many Sanskrit-ized words for 'sarkari' (official) parlance in Indian languages is the drive in the 50's to re-translate official English expressions into Hindi initially, and later in a fit of supra-national feeling, into the vernacular languages. The translators observed how Greek and Latin roots worked in English, and attempted to replicate that equation with Sanskrit and Hindi. As you'd expect, sterile translations such as led to disastrous results; you end up with such incomprehensible lines as “Tankan aivam ashulipi pariksha ke pariksharthi swagat-patal par panjikaran karayenge" (from the article) to instruct typing and shorthand exam applicants to register at reception.

Clearly, a lot of attention was given to translating words, but not enough to convey (anu)bhaava.

Then there's also the effect of partition on language. Quite a fair bit of this drive for Sanskrit-ization was also a reaction to Urdu; not just in Hindi, but a lot of words for official business in Deccani languages such as Telugu, Marathi and (presumably) Kannada are derived from Indo-Persian; so, in the example above, for instance, a more popular term for the word 'application' could be 'darkhast' (and its derivatives in the respective languages), a word presumably more approachable for, say, a stereotyped illiterate farmer applying for any welfare from the government.

Likewise, consider the name for India's state-run television, Doordarshan, it is a cold, unemotional, literal translation of the word 'television'. This is in remarkable contrast to how the Sri Lankans interpreted the word in equally Sanskrit-isque, but in more philosophical terms as "Roopa vahini" ("the medium of form"), quite evocative of the Buddhist inquiry on the interplay between form and emptiness (the Prajna Paramita Hridaya Sutra) Again, as I said, one conveys the meaning, an ability to see something remotely, while the other conveys the anubhaava there in, of experiencing form (video) relayed over by a nebulous medium.

Essentially, the relationship between Sanskrit and contemporary languages is quite different; a lot of words are derived from Sanskrit words, sure, but more as complete words, or with expanded meanings (so the Sanskrit 'pipilika', meaning 'ant', becomes 'pipilikaadulu' meaning 'insects' in Telugu), not necessarily as roots. Also, the bigger inspiration from Sanskrit in the South is grammar; despite having clearly distinct origins and word-stems, all the south Indian languages as they are spoken currently have grammars based on Panini and Pathanjali's works, essentially grammar structures such as sentences with the form of "subject object verb", and postpositions, but others as well.
posted by the cydonian at 9:14 PM on May 15, 2013 [9 favorites]


Tso means "fat" I think that is tso in Chinese as well.

Sorry, but this isn't true. Chinese words for "fat" include 脂肪 (zhīfáng), 肥 (féi), and 胖 (pàng), but not "tso."
posted by bradf at 10:13 PM on May 15, 2013 [1 favorite]


Okay, here's some contrary evidence: peasants ate pig, lots of it. Indeed, they really liked eating pig in all its forms. They didn't raise pigs just to see them go off to the lord's table: they ate those juicy swine themselves. The distinction between the word pig and pork has nothing to do with who raised the animal and who ate it, else the word pork would never have got a look in.
Not really got a strong position on the veracity or otherwise of the anecdote, but don't think this objection of yours works -peasants eating their pigs slowly over the year in the form of bacon (though not sure if that is Germanic or Latinate word) and other preserved products rather than as fresh-slaughtered pork, which would be more a manor house feast dish.
posted by Abiezer at 10:53 PM on May 15, 2013 [1 favorite]


[...] the Latinate/Germanic divide in English. In English, word choice is often used to judge someone's class or education.

I get a little itchy at the implication, in a lot of pop language writing, that prestige in English is basically just a mathematical function of how many Germanic words you can swap out for their Latinate brethren. (Honestly, sometimes these claims are stated so boldly you'd start to get the idea that the poorest English speakers are still running around writing with Æ and Þ.) A more accurate revision of this received wisdom would be "people use language in complex ways; also, they're pretty freaking clever, inventive, and sensitive; also, connotation is a thing, and true synonymy, whatever that might even mean, approaches nonexistence; also, context context context" but that doesn't make as pithy a Piece of Common Knowledge, I guess.
posted by threeants at 11:07 PM on May 15, 2013 [1 favorite]


in the form of bacon (though not sure if that is Germanic or Latinate word)

Interesting distinction in this case!
bacon (n.)
early 14c., "meat from the back and sides of a pig" (originally either fresh or cured, but especially cured), from Old French bacon, from Proto-Germanic bakkon "back meat" (cf. Old High German bahho, Old Dutch baken "bacon"). Slang phrase bring home the bacon first recorded 1908; bacon formerly being the staple meat of the working class.
posted by Wolof at 1:43 AM on May 16, 2013


Johnson: Because the ruling class spoke Old French, that set of vocabulary became synonymous with the elite. Everyone else used Old English. During this period, England's society was diglossic: one community, two language sets with distinct social spheres.
Jehan: While this is true, it was not the existence of diglossia which caused borrowing but rather its collapse. When the elite could no longer reasonably speak French they went on to recreate the earlier language split by shaping their dialect of English to be less like spoken English. The borrowing of French words was an attempt to show that they were still part of the same social and cultural world as before and highlight that difference between them and English speakers outside of elite culture.
To add to this with some wider complicating social context...
The elite could no longer reasonably speak French and shifted linguistically as Jehan describes because of a series of social/political/economic events resulted in their waning social prestige and increasing needs, reliance and communication with the English masses. The most notable of these being the outcomes of the bubonic plague* and the Hundred Years' War**, but earlier things had huge impact as well — pilgrimages to Holy lands, e.g., Beckett's assassination prompted trips to Canterbury where people came in language contact with each other; King John losing all of Normandy which meant that people lost interest in France and the prestige of French waned; children of the elite learning English as a native language instead of French anymore, etc. All of this led to a very tricky linguistic line to walk, for French and English alike. Borrowings are traces of that, from what's borrowed when and how and in what ways. Given the changes in Old French, Old English and their modern counterparts today, you can get an idea of the timeline of things (for example, words like chateau and chevron vs. chattle and chess, with their different initial consonant sounds are indicative of separate entry points into the English language – reflective of tʃ/ʃ changes in the French phonology system and English adaptations of those sounds).

Also want to clarify that the linguistic situation at the time was triglossic, not diglossic. French was the language of the elite, which were the minority at the time but they controlled everything. They did not speak English and didn't care to. Latin was the the language of the church/clergy and educational spheres and it was taught in French. The language of the masses was English. It had no prestige, but the majority spoke it. And the English didn't have access to upward mobility through French really. Then events.

*The plague in the mid-14thC in England resulted in labor shortages and rural people came to the cities, demanded wages and negotiated working relationships with the ruling class (French). The farmers and non-elite didn't speak French but the French needed them (the cities were massively wiped out by the plague). Massive language contact there and the result is that the French learned English and French lost its prestige. This massive language contact meant a lot of borrowing (sounds, words, structures) at that time. Also, English was losing its inflectional system in a major way, making it more amenable to borrowing lexical items in general. That said, a lot of the earlier (Old English) vocab was lost too, much of which were earlier-borrowed French and Norse loan words.

**Along similar timeline as the plague, England's successes at home and loss of French possession resulted in lack of interest in French. English made its comeback again, with markers of ruling class (legal proceedings, instruction) being solely in English.

posted by iamkimiam at 2:16 AM on May 16, 2013 [7 favorites]


As you can probably tell, I took a look at my old 'n dusty History of English notes...sorry if my comment was a bit of a hot didactic mess.
posted by iamkimiam at 2:19 AM on May 16, 2013 [2 favorites]


King John losing all of Normandy which meant that people lost interest in France and the prestige of French waned;
The prestige of French and French culture outlived the loss of Normandy by many years. Indeed, the prestige of speaking French outlived the ability of many elites to speak it.
posted by Jehan at 6:32 AM on May 16, 2013


You know, I'm gonna go with this thing, anymore. At restaurants I will start ordering the cow, "hey, ya have any sheep? I am hungry enough to eat a whole flock."

Usage question: I've finally gotten used to the fact that some people use "anymore" where I would say "nowadays," but I can't even parse this use. Is this supposed to be "anyway" or do I need to learn a new thing now?

posted by psoas at 7:46 AM on May 16, 2013


> It cuts little ice to prate about "expressive possibilities"

Oh yeah? Well, it cuts equally little ice to prate about "anti-elitism." Your simplistic Fanon-style rant about colonialism has nothing to do with actual linguistic facts.

> A poor person who rejects Latin or Greek vocabulary is rejecting a part of elite identity in the West.

No, a poor person who rejects Latin or Greek vocabulary is cutting off their nose to spite their face. And what, they're going to talk about "farsee" rather than television, or "lungism" rather than pneumonia?

> the elite have historically had no interest in dialect or colloquial language and its expressive possibilities

Bullshit: it's historically been the elite who have begun the study of dialect and colloquial language and preserved it when it was dying out. But by all means cling to your story; mankind needs stories. It's just too bad when they serve the cause of ignorance and artificial divisions.
posted by languagehat at 7:49 AM on May 16, 2013 [1 favorite]


psoas, I think you're referring to positive anymore, and yeah, it's a thing. :)
posted by iamkimiam at 8:07 AM on May 16, 2013 [1 favorite]




Bullshit: it's historically been the elite who have begun the study of dialect and colloquial language and preserved it when it was dying out. But by all means cling to your story; mankind needs stories. It's just too bad when they serve the cause of ignorance and artificial divisions.
Oh please. Language elites have tried to destroy numerous minority languages, namely every native American language, every native Australian language, all Celtic languages at one time or another, and on and on and on. In some cases children were sent to boarding schools to take them out of their home language, taught exclusively in English, and beaten if they spoke their native language. The word "linguicide" wasn't coined on speculation, but because language elites so often killed other languages. This was and is a very real thing, and it helps nobody to be an apologist for it.

Besides, the portion of the elite who study dialect and colloquial language is tiny and wholly unrepresentative of the group as a whole. How many members of the elite are praising the "expressive possibilities" of AAVE? How many of them casually drop Gullah vocabulary into their writing? How much academic terminology comes from dialect words? It's wonderful for you to assert how interested elites are in dialect and colloquial language, but it's utterly false and misleading. They have sought to purge diversity rather than celebrate it. They have sown terrible ignorance and artificial division about every language they've touched, labelling them "slang", "cant", "degenerate", and so on. All the while praising the "expressive possibilities" of their own pet "classical" languages.

Indeed, in some cases it isn't even true that elites led the academic study of dialect. One of the lead academics in the study of English dialect was Joseph Wright, the son of a factory worker. Likewise in Norway, Ivar Aasen was the son of a peasant. There are likely more.
No, a poor person who rejects Latin or Greek vocabulary is cutting off their nose to spite their face. And what, they're going to talk about "farsee" rather than television, or "lungism" rather than pneumonia?
Forgive me for pointing this out to you, but you wrote your comment on a keyboard, clicked to post with a mouse, had the text uploaded to the net, and is now saved somewhere on a harddrive, for others to read in this thread. It would seem that Latin and Greek vocabulary has little but tradition to recommend it, as a whole swathe of newly-invented words ignore it altogether. How many people, even university students, know Greek and Latin now? Maybe it will limp on as a setlist of word roots scientists can glom together to make new words, but in truth it's dead, dead, dead. We may keep the fossils of that past for a good long while, but it will never again be what it was.
posted by Jehan at 9:26 AM on May 16, 2013


Besides, the portion of the elite who study dialect and colloquial language is tiny and wholly unrepresentative of the group as a whole. How many members of the elite are praising the "expressive possibilities" of AAVE?

As you said, probably using a computer to write on a site on the internet. People may not know Greek and Latin, but it's not as if they know Old English either.
posted by ersatz at 11:46 AM on May 16, 2013 [1 favorite]


> This was and is a very real thing, and it helps nobody to be an apologist for it.

You know, I had a whole reasonable argument lined up, but now that you're calling me an apologist for repression, I think I'll just back away slowly and let you stew in your own rancid ideological juices.
posted by languagehat at 11:00 AM on May 17, 2013


"This is highly unlikely, given that the genetic relationship between these language families is quite remote, and was only discovered in 2008. The Siberian branch of the family does not (and has not, at least in the past 300+ years) extend into Mongolia, and is presently spoken by only ~200 speakers. The cultural heritage underlying these language groups is rich and in need of protection but ascribing them mystical powers to transcend time and space, undoing millennia of language change, doesn't help."

"I work with people who went on both trips." The elders of one really isolated Siberian group and the Navajo elders were able to communicate. The more recent trip was to Mongolia, and that was chronicled in the Salt Lake Tribune at the time.
posted by Oyéah at 7:02 PM on May 18, 2013


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