Language Mysteries

For the purpose of using ATS as a learning tool...

For me the subject of Languages ties in with many mysteries that are unresolved. Linguistics and science are still full of contradictions and uncertainty on the topic. I dont have the time to deal with all the issues by myself so I call on ATS-members to help bring some light to it.

1. Unknown Origins of Languages. Scientists still have some languages they cannot trace back to an origin. One of these is the finno-hungarian language over which there is still a lot of controversy. Could it be that some of these languages are of extraterrestrial origin?

2. Language Mix-Up by "the Gods". What are ancient accounts referring to when they say that "the Gods" created many diverse languages and created a babylonian mix-up so that the human race could not continue their progress. Is this some kind of cosmic conspiracy to slow humans down?

3. Word similarities as evidence. Can linguistics be used to gather evidence for some mysteries? Just one example: Does the fact that the Mayan "Atlan", the Basque "Atlaintika" and the Greek "Atlas" all refer to water, sunken continent, flood, etc. point to the existence of Atlantis?
Another example: If a Japanese word has the same meaning as an ancient egyptian word that sounds the same, would this be evidence of a different history than we were taught? Or: Why is the word "Father" similar in nearly every language?

4. Language, Reality & Mind-Control: It is known that some concepts do not exist in some languages and can therefore not be experienced by people who do not have words for a certain concept. What are the many ways language distorts our perception of reality?

Well...theres a lot more to say, but these points are enough for now.

I am especially interested in people who know about word-similarities of different cultures and their relation to unsolved mysteries.

I sincerely wish there were a research field called "esoteric linguistics" or something.


[edit on 11-10-2007 by Skyfloating]

2. Language Mix-Up by "the Gods". What are ancient accounts referring to when they say that "the Gods" created many diverse languages and created a babylonian mix-up so that the human race could not continue their progress. Is this some kind of cosmic conspiracy to slow humans down?

Conspiracy? No, people just talk differently... Think on it. In just 200 years, Americans and Australians have developed VASTLY different dialects from the English (and that's ignoring local dialects in America or Australia, Southern American is all jibberish to me)... Yet its the SAME language!

Then consider in ancient times... villages and cities with little connections to the outside world. Over a 1000 years, its not strange to imagine two completely different languages evolve from the same basic language.

Regarding the "similar" words, I think if you check deep enough, you will find that so many languages are connected far in the past. Some common words remain.

But regarding the Mayan "Atlan" similarity to the Greek "Atlas"... Did Mayans write in Greek latin? No, I dont think so. We just say its similar because we use our modern letters to represent the word. And in just the same way, there are similar words that just by chance dont have anything to do with each other. Compare the Swedish word "Sur" to the English "Sure" and the French "Sur". Three words that look almost exactly the same but arent even REMOTLY similar in meaning (despite the fact the Swedish and French word is pronounced *exactly* the same compared to the very different English pronounciation).

[edit on 11-10-2007 by merka]

[edit on 11-10-2007 by merka]

Last year when I lived in Hungary, I had to take some Hungarian classes and I remember learning in there that old Hungarian script looks a lot like oriental writing. The Hungarian people (Magyars) came from the orient too. The reason, I believe, that Hungarian is such a different language in Europe is it's oriental roots coupled with the fact that the Magyars came into Europe as Roman was falling, so they never really had the language latinized. Although, eventually, the Hungarians adopted the Latin alphabet--probably out of convenience.

Tom

Back in the late 80's, there was a doctoral candidate that published a paper about language origins and the usage of words of different language meaning the same thing. He had performed a study literally around the world with dozens of languages and many different dialects for fundamental words such as water, wind, rain, etc.

The results were surprising in that there seems to be many root words very similar in sound and structure across the planet. This is the stuff I find really fascinating as it has the possibility of rewriting human history as we know it.

It seems to me that it was in in Omni or Scientific America.

I'm no linguist but the study of language origins has always been fascinating to me. The how, when, where, and why of language development is such so broad and frankly unknown that you could easily devote a career to it.

Most of the studies I've read seem to re-assert the commonly accepted theory of human origin in the Africas, and placed the development of language at around ~12,000 BC, when farming communities first started forming. But I've also read plenty of evidence that language (and civilization) could be much older

reply to post by merka


you make a good case against my point. And this is certainly true of languages within the same language family. But I doubt it is true of completely different language families.

reply to post by octotom


There is a theory that Hungarian is oriental but no conclusive evidence. Most linguists still say "origin unknown". I interpret that to mean: Origin not found on terrestrial grounds.

reply to post by hinky


Yes, it has the potential to renew history lessons. I will try to find something on this in the internet. We are a lazy bunch, arent we?

Originally posted by evanmontegarde
But I've also read plenty of evidence that language (and civilization) could be much older

Sources please?

Originally posted by Skyfloatingyou make a good case against my point. And this is certainly true of languages within the same language family. But I doubt it is true of completely different language families.

But what is "completely" different languages?

If we assume that humans had SOME basic language skills when they where hunter/gatherers and living in groups, then these will no doubt carry over. Europeans, Asians and hell even South Americans are the same people if you go really far back. I dont find it hard to believe that on some deep primal level, we have very similar behaviour, same signs/words to name things.

An interesting comparison would be with animals. They dont even have spoken language (or writing), yet they *understand* each other (well pack animals, dolphins, wolves, lions, whatever). We are the same animals, we just got bigger brains

[edit on 14-10-2007 by merka]

This is why root words were explored. You know the Eskimos have a couple hundreds words for snow, but try to find that word in the tropics.

Words have to be words that would experience the same thing, everywhere. It's harder than you think. This would be elemental words like wind, clouds, water, or subjective words like dirt, rock, or sand.

I think a guy would find some similar sounding words for these in the west coastal region of Africa, throughout the Pacific Islands, and some language families in east central Europe and extending into central Asia. I don't know what this means but I'm sure there are linguists that can explain it. I'd really like to talk to a linguist that has a major in history.

The Finnish-Ugric languages are actually Asian in fact there is some evidence they have some relation to native-American languages.

There are striking similarities between the Sami natives in Scandinavia and the Native Americans not just counting language.

Alright, ATSers do deserve some some factual meat.

The word for "father" in a few languages:

Basque aita
Ketschua taita
Turkish ata
Dakota (Sioux) atey
Nahuatl (Aztecan) tata
Seminole intati
Zuni tat'chu
Maltese tata
Tagalog tatay
Welsh tad
Romanian tata
Singhalesian thatha
Fidschi tata
Samoan tata


and so forth and so on. Evidence that history-lesson at school was less than accurate? Arent these very-distant-from-each-other places not supposed to have had contact with each other?

It could be explained by there being a central language such as that of Atlantis, from which many others were derived.

In reference to Atlantis, the plot thickens. Lets look at the words for "water" on both sides of the ocean:



Aztecan: Tlaloc (water god)
Ancient Greek: Thallasa (water)
Mayan: Thallac (not solid)
Aztecan: atl (water)
Berber-language; atl (water)

Or at words for "God" in different sides of the world:

Native American: Manitou (the great spirit)
India: Manu (the great spirit)

Aztecan: Teo (God)
Greek: Theos (God)

One more:

Ketschua: andi (high mountain)
Ancient Egypt: anti (high ridge)

We could indeed go on with these comparisons forever, but we would only find out what we already know: If you are a linguist its hard to believe the official version of history.

Originally posted by Kacen
The Finnish-Ugric languages are actually Asian in fact there is some evidence they have some relation to native-American languages.

Actually, I've see papers out of the University of New Brunswick (I think) by one Laslo Szabo (and don't depend on my spelling here...I'm reaching back a bit) that not only compare language, but also indicate a shared mythology with Algonkian speakers.

I don't recall if there was a 'glottochronology' conducted in this research, but that would indicate the point at which the two languages started to diverge from a common ancestor. Fascinating stuff!

Originally posted by Skyfloating
In reference to Atlantis, the plot thickens. Lets look at the words for "water" on both sides of the ocean:

Aztecan: Tlaloc (water god)
Ancient Greek: Thallasa (water)
Mayan: Thallac (not solid)
Aztecan: atl (water)
Berber-language; atl (water)

Yeah you've said that, but its still TRANSLATED into Roman latin. That's what you write. The question is, are the words *really* that similar in both spoken and written language of the original language.

IMO its little chance that saying "thallac" in our roman latin to a Mayan (well if you could dig some up today, lol) would mean anything to them, its just gonna be jibberish.

[edit on 18-10-2007 by merka]

Originally posted by merka
Yeah you've said that, but its still TRANSLATED into Roman latin. That's what you write. The question is, are the words *really* that similar in both spoken and written language of the original language.

IMO its little chance that saying "thallac" in our roman latin to a Mayan (well if you could dig some up today, lol) would mean anything to them, its just gonna be jibberish.

[edit on 18-10-2007 by merka]

Alright...so Id need to drag up hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of lists of vocabulary similarities between the two sides of the world and oceans, and then that would make a case? Quantity is not the problem...these are mere samples....ex-amples.

Of course only a few similarities could easily be whisked away by saying "yeah, well, they are probably not similar when not derived from latin". But what if...in addition to thousands of words...we find other, non-language connections that point to the idea that the americas were not discovered by columbus but long, long before that.

Howdy Skyfloating

I picked three words at random from one of your lists

Samoan tata

www.nzetc.org...

Tata, s. 1. the figure-head of a canoe. 2. The rubber for rubbing on the colours of a siapo.
Tata, v. to jerk off, to pluck with violence. Tata mai le taume.
Tata, s. the baler of a canoe. ‘O le tata o le va‘a.
Tata, v. 1. to bale out. 2. To be relaxed, as the bowels. 3. To speak rapidly. 4. To cover with banana leaves in order to keep dry. 5. Pl. of ta.
Tata, s. perspiration in sickness.
Tata, 1. to flap the wings. 2. To break firewood, to break up a dry tree in order to get out afato.

I don't see a Tata being a Samoan word for father

Turkish ata

Turkish
father: n. baba, papaz, peder, yaratıcı, kurucu, ata
father: v. yapmak (çocuk), yaratmak, icat etmek, babası olmak, üzerine atmak, yüklemek
www.sozluk.web.tr...

It would appear there are many words for father but you picked the one that you wanted?

Dakota (Sioux) atey

Dakota appears to be the word ate instead of Atey

So of those three I picked one is close, in Dakota, in Turkish you seemed to have cherry picked the data and in Samoan it's a miss.

Merka Mayan speakers still exist but there are numerous dialects. Your comments are very valid of course.

I'm not sure how familar you are with "comparison language study" a great deal of this was done in the 19th and early 20th century. You might want to check the work of Swadesh (Morris Swadesh )and his lists, in particular his use of Lexicostatistics and Glottochronology. His work is not considered overly important at this time.

You appear to be going for spelling similarities while in reality you want to follow is the sound:

We can see the relationship by comparing words that begin with /p/ in Greek and /f/ in English. Compare Greek /pater/ 'father' with English father, /penta/ with five , /pod/ 'foot' with foot. Linguists say that we have here a regular sound correspondence. But if we compare other words in the two languages, we will find other sound correspondences: Greek /k/ corresponds to English /h/: compare Greek /kuon/ 'dog' and /kardia/ 'heart' with English hound and heart. And there are many more such sound correspondences. We can use these both to show that two languages are related and even to reconstruct what their common ancestor must have sounded like. But all this is because of the regularity of sound change, something that all human languages share.

scholarpedia.org...



[edit on 19-10-2007 by Hanslune]

Howdy,

my laziness or time issues prohibit me to go into detail like this...thats why I opened this thread...to have the claims either confirmed or debunked. Thanks for the insight.

Well you need to remember that Turkish is a very old language. Infact turkish has a allot of old words which have been replaced with newer words taken from other languages. Afaik ata is one such word. If anything that ads more credibillity. Considering that the native americans came in NA through asia there is a reasonable chance that they share common ancestors with the Turks in the near past or even that they are a branch of turkish people. I also would like to note that turkish has many links with different languages. For example finnish and hungarian are quite similair to turkish. Etruscan possibly was aswell, japanese is another possibillity and i even heared sumerian shared allot of similiarities with Turkish.

Anyway the fact is. We dont know allot about allot of languages in the east. We know quite a bit about the recent post roman european languages but when we look at turkish there is still allot to be discovered.