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13-11-2005, 22:33 | #121 |
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I totally agree with freddie on that point. We are talking of very ancient times here, the metal ages, the period between prehistory and history, at the time Europe was one big forest, the whole Pre-European population was in thousands, a typical settlement had 50 to 100 people, people communicated with their close neighbors but that was it, there was no reason for Pre-Europeans to abandon their previous languages to adopt new languages spoken thousands of kms away near the Black Sea.
Why would a Pre-Gaulish tribe adopt a Celtic language originally spoken on the other side of the continent? And we can ask the same question for India, why would the non-Indo-European people who were living in the Indus valley and had a flourishing civilization not only adopt an Indo-European language but go as far as to rename their land 'Aryana' from the name of the original speakers of Proto-Indo-European without a single actual Aryan tribe settling in the Indus valley? It's much more likely that Indo-European tribes actually settled there, bringing their language with them and imposing it on the indigenous population (and not just the language, but also their religion and social structure). Also, there is another indicator, the ancient Indo-European languages spoken outside the original Indo-European homeland, like Celtic in Gaul, Italic in Italy, Greek in Greece, Sanskrit in Northern India… those languages were still very close to Proto-Indo-European, they still had a very complex system of cases with many declensions and difficult conjugations. Now, we have many examples, even in recent history, of people learning a foreign language by contact, that gives a creole, a very simplified version of the original language, declensions and conjugations don't make it into a creole because it's too complex to learn just by contact. That's what would have happened if Pre-Europeans had learned (for whatever reason) the Proto-Indo-European language by contact, most of the complexity of the language would have been lost (there was no 'schools of Indo-European' where indigenous people could learn the proper noun declensions or verb conjugations of the Proto-Indo-European language). This shows that people who brought Indo-European languages in Europe were native speakers. And like i said in another post, Indo-Europeans had domesticated the horse and knew how to ride it. [Pre-Europeans did not, the horse was domesticated in the vast plains of Eastern Europe and Central Asia, the horse had disappeared in Europe thousands of years before, when the continent got covered by forests after the end of the last ice age. The horse came back in Europe precisely with Indo-European tribes who were riding them.] They also had chariots, so traveling far and fast was not a problem for Indo-European tribes, they also had better weaponry (metal work was more advanced in the East) and a warrior caste who knew how to use them. So it was not difficult for an Indo-European tribe riding horses and using advanced metal weapons to take over a Pre-European settlement of simple farmers. [side note: Pre-Europeans had never seen horses before Indo-Europeans arrived and of course never seen people riding horses, which must have impressed them a great deal, many mythologists believe that this is the origin of the centaur myth, the first Pre-Europeans to see Indo-European warriors on horses (probably from a distance if they survived to tell what they saw) may have thought it was fantastic creatures and reported it to their villages, giving birth to the legend.] People interested in Indo-European languages can check this web site, it has lots of information on all of them. Wikipedia also has an interesting page with a list of many Proto-Indo-European roots, anyone who speaks a modern Indo-European language will recognize many roots still present in their own language. The personal pronouns are especially remarkable, they have barely changed in 5,000 years. |
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Patrick | TatySite.net t.E.A.m. [ shortdickman@free.fr ] |
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13-11-2005, 23:11 | #122 |
blah
Join Date: Dec 2002
Location: Bucharest, Romania
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*multiple mental orgasm*
thank you, Amber, for yet another enticing read & history lesson *claps frantically* and judging by the way this thread has evolved, you all killed hitler *standing ovation* |
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14-11-2005, 16:58 | #123 |
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So that’s how it was !
In a deep luscious forest my young Pre-European mother was picking up sweet red berries for breakfast ….She was tall and slim, long legged , with very pale white skin , her hair was red gold and her eyes-- dark green as forest itself ...Druidess! And suddenly strong, large, handsome man, with dark hair and big brown eyes, who looked so powerful on his horse and with all his metal thingamajigs , came riding up to her… Hello ! -- said my Proto-Indo-European father Kurgudu Nuoli ? -- she said. |
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14-11-2005, 17:37 | #124 | |
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14-11-2005, 21:24 | #125 |
Sad Little Monkey
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Good point, Amber. Pre-european tribes would never have been able to learn Indo-european languages in all it's complexity were it by indirect contact. It's the same as asking a bunch of simple villagers from a random Euro country today (lets say non-romanic speaking village, at least), to learn scholar latin in it's entirety with all it's exceptions and specialities.
Speaking of myths: there's an anechdote that Ancient Greeks started giving the name "barbarians" to all non-Greeks because they didn't speak Greek and all that was audiable to a native Greek was stuff like: "..barbarbarbar..." Gibberish, basically. |
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freddie | TatySite.net t.E.A.m. [ multyman@hotmail.com ] Religion is an insult to human dignity. With or without it you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion. |
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