7 ms·

Traces of Old Egyptian in Eurasian languages?

55 points by singularity2001 9y ago

yorwba 9y ago
The etymology for most of those "cognates" seems quite strained when you consider that even reconstructions of Proto-Germanic roots can be controversial. Especially when you only have a single sound to match, it is very easy to come up with bullshit "correspondences" that are mere coincidence.
temp 9y ago
This is so bad that I don't even know where to begin. It's incoherent, completely ignores any accepted method of linguistic analysis, makes absolutely no explanation as to how conclusions are being made and it doesn't even attempt to support them in an way. It's literally just gibberish.
softwaredoug 9y ago
Most languages have common utterances for mother/father and other family members. This is because these are easy, early sounds a baby can make. Some variation of da, ma, pa, na occurs fairly universally. There’s a pretty good episode of Lexicon Valley on this topic (see cavebabies say ‘mama’) http://www.slate.com/articles/podcasts/lexicon_valley.html http://www.slate.com/articles/podcasts/lexicon_valley.html
- posterboy 9y ago
  > This is because these are easy, early sounds a baby can make Indeed, but while plosives are impossible in the uterus, humming is possible ("hummmmmmmm...") though it's likely not audible, it might resonate at deeper frequencies. After all they cry right when they come out and must have trained well for such vigorous performance. Otherwise, hums are surely linked to pleasant and primitive, familiar emotions. A simple ADSR envelope around a hum gives quite a lot of expressiveness, too ("ha?" "aha!" "haha" "ahhh" "a ha ha" only with m, i.e. "hm?"). Also the ma syllable is linked to the sound of suckling (hence breasts is mama in Latin). Also, we say mother-tongue probably for a reason: Mothers are much more involved in early child rising and hence in teaching language. I guess that is evident in bilingual families if not taken special care of?
freshyill 9y ago
This started off interesting and very smoothly transitioned to being fully incoherent to me. Do the random italics and French-style quotes mean something that I just don’t understand, or was the whole thing actually just kind of insane.
peter303 9y ago
Columbia pop-linguist McWhorter suggests strong verbs in Germanic languages may have been a Semitic influence.
- jdmichal 9y ago
  That seems quite a stretch, when proto-Indo-European ablaut explains the exact same phenomenon. Also, Germanic strong verbs tend to be relatively primitive vocabulary -- go, sleep, drink, sing... So it's also explainable that these forms could develop prior to more standardized forms. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germanic_strong_verb#Origin_and_development https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germanic_strong_verb#Origin_an...
- posterboy 9y ago
  I'm haven't read this or anything like that yet, but I'm sure the claim is only partial, not absolute, in which case, why not? Jewish diaspora is old.
titanix2 9y ago
I agree with every comments posted so far (not convincing examples, incoherent writing, lack indications about the languages used, lack of formal method) but the worst offender is probably the lack of references. Even if the post is bad in itself it could leads to interesting papers and authors but it didn’t. Only one authors is referenced in the text. This is not enough.
jdmichal 9y ago
Some of this is mistaking just how much we know of Egyptian phonology, which is actually very little. For some proper names, we have more context into how they may have actually sounded based on transscriptions into Greek and Latin. But for every other word, we flat out have no idea on vowel sounds, because they were not written. Because of this, a couple sounds known as semivowels are sometimes transcribed as if they were vowels. For instance, in mother, the second glyph of a chick (𓅱) is marked as a U, but would be more appropriately be W. Same with the reeds (𓇋), which are sometimes marked as I but are rather Y. (And, in this article, apparently also FE...) I think it's also interesting that they are using mother and father, considering that those words have commonalities in sound across large swathes of human language. Unless the author is also ready to argue Egyptian influence on Chinese, evidence should extend to other words. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mama_and_papa https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mama_and_papa EDIT: Every dictionary I can find lists father as it, which alone would need explanation for how the article arrives at feathav using the same signs. I'll just link the most comprehensive one: https://www.scribd.com/doc/10929802/Dictionary-of-Middle-Egyptian https://www.scribd.com/doc/10929802/Dictionary-of-Middle-Egy... When you search, the relevant entry is the "plants 12" result.
- dogma1138 9y ago
  Specifically old Egyptian. Demotic and Coptic Egyptian is much better understood with the latter being still in use today. What most people think of Egypt is actually fairly recent history people tend to refer to events which usually happened during or around the Ptolemaic Kingdom period, by that time the Egyptians have already lost the ability to read or speak the language of the old kingdom and today we are closer to Cleopatra than Cleopatra was to the pyramids as far as time goes. Heck even if we take the biblical exodus story as a historic event then the pyramids were already ancient by the time Moses was stuttering let my peeps go. As for the article I don’t exactly understand it’s premise they open with Sanskrit and Persian having shared history with European languages but as both are indo-European languages why is this surprising? AFIAK this was known and acccoeted even in the 19th century.
  - posterboy 9y ago
gumby 9y ago
The information density of that map is pretty amazing
raoulduke 9y ago
I don't understand what this article is. There appears to be no cogent hypothesis or evidence. In the end it seems to be suggesting not (any) linguistic influence on Eurasian languages but rather aesthetic influence of hieroglyphs. That's well established given that the alphabet evolved from a single source and that it's well-established that that source was at least partly* influenced by hieroglyphs; and the earliest evidence for it is at Serabit el-Khadem in Sinai interspersed with hieroglyphic inscriptions (including a bilingual inscription on a sphinx [Sinai 345]). As I look back I do see a like half-paragraph ridiculous suggestion of apparently genetic connection between Egyptian and European. Before it was commonly known that Egyptian is an Afroasiatic language, there were attempts (usually with racial undertones) attempting to link the glorious and regal Egyptian with Eurasian languages. It's a worthless hypothesis. It also looks like people may have been looking for and having trouble finding solid Egyptian lexicons: aaew.bbaw.de/tla/ (The one that really bothered me was the (obviously incoherent) "Hathor = hut+hor Hüter of Herds"... Hathor means "House/Estate/Temple of Horus"). The whole thing is just ridiculous.) *There's at least secondary cuneiform influence by Wadi el-Hol (which I think was more likely 15th or 14th century).
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- posterboy 9y ago
  > rather aesthetic influence of hieroglyphs rather, the hieroglyphic influence on the aesthetics of the (written) language.
  - raoulduke 9y ago
    I don't understand (?).
    - posterboy 9y ago
      There is no difference, really. I just tried to point out that aesthetics can have a influence on language, because you were basically saying the writing system wasn't linguistic, which is really painful to read.
Koshkin 9y ago
See also https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16129463 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16129463
posterboy 9y ago
I can't see most of the glyphs neither on debian nor on android 6.

The etymology for most of those "cognates" seems quite strained when you consider that even reconstructions of Proto-Germanic roots can be controversial. Especially when you only have a single sound to match, it is very easy to come up with bullshit "correspondences" that are mere coincidence.

temp 9y ago

This is so bad that I don't even know where to begin. It's incoherent, completely ignores any accepted method of linguistic analysis, makes absolutely no explanation as to how conclusions are being made and it doesn't even attempt to support them in an way. It's literally just gibberish.

softwaredoug 9y ago

Most languages have common utterances for mother/father and other family members. This is because these are easy, early sounds a baby can make. Some variation of da, ma, pa, na occurs fairly universally. There’s a pretty good episode of Lexicon Valley on this topic (see cavebabies say ‘mama’) http://www.slate.com/articles/podcasts/lexicon_valley.html http://www.slate.com/articles/podcasts/lexicon_valley.html

posterboy 9y ago
> This is because these are easy, early sounds a baby can make Indeed, but while plosives are impossible in the uterus, humming is possible ("hummmmmmmm...") though it's likely not audible, it might resonate at deeper frequencies. After all they cry right when they come out and must have trained well for such vigorous performance. Otherwise, hums are surely linked to pleasant and primitive, familiar emotions. A simple ADSR envelope around a hum gives quite a lot of expressiveness, too ("ha?" "aha!" "haha" "ahhh" "a ha ha" only with m, i.e. "hm?"). Also the ma syllable is linked to the sound of suckling (hence breasts is mama in Latin). Also, we say mother-tongue probably for a reason: Mothers are much more involved in early child rising and hence in teaching language. I guess that is evident in bilingual families if not taken special care of?

freshyill 9y ago

This started off interesting and very smoothly transitioned to being fully incoherent to me. Do the random italics and French-style quotes mean something that I just don’t understand, or was the whole thing actually just kind of insane.

peter303 9y ago

Columbia pop-linguist McWhorter suggests strong verbs in Germanic languages may have been a Semitic influence.

jdmichal 9y ago
That seems quite a stretch, when proto-Indo-European ablaut explains the exact same phenomenon. Also, Germanic strong verbs tend to be relatively primitive vocabulary -- go, sleep, drink, sing... So it's also explainable that these forms could develop prior to more standardized forms. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germanic_strong_verb#Origin_and_development https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germanic_strong_verb#Origin_an...
posterboy 9y ago
I'm haven't read this or anything like that yet, but I'm sure the claim is only partial, not absolute, in which case, why not? Jewish diaspora is old.

titanix2 9y ago

I agree with every comments posted so far (not convincing examples, incoherent writing, lack indications about the languages used, lack of formal method) but the worst offender is probably the lack of references. Even if the post is bad in itself it could leads to interesting papers and authors but it didn’t. Only one authors is referenced in the text. This is not enough.

jdmichal 9y ago

Some of this is mistaking just how much we know of Egyptian phonology, which is actually very little. For some proper names, we have more context into how they may have actually sounded based on transscriptions into Greek and Latin. But for every other word, we flat out have no idea on vowel sounds, because they were not written. Because of this, a couple sounds known as semivowels are sometimes transcribed as if they were vowels. For instance, in mother, the second glyph of a chick (𓅱) is marked as a U, but would be more appropriately be W. Same with the reeds (𓇋), which are sometimes marked as I but are rather Y. (And, in this article, apparently also FE...) I think it's also interesting that they are using mother and father, considering that those words have commonalities in sound across large swathes of human language. Unless the author is also ready to argue Egyptian influence on Chinese, evidence should extend to other words. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mama_and_papa https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mama_and_papa EDIT: Every dictionary I can find lists father as it, which alone would need explanation for how the article arrives at feathav using the same signs. I'll just link the most comprehensive one: https://www.scribd.com/doc/10929802/Dictionary-of-Middle-Egyptian https://www.scribd.com/doc/10929802/Dictionary-of-Middle-Egy... When you search, the relevant entry is the "plants 12" result.

dogma1138 9y ago
Specifically old Egyptian. Demotic and Coptic Egyptian is much better understood with the latter being still in use today. What most people think of Egypt is actually fairly recent history people tend to refer to events which usually happened during or around the Ptolemaic Kingdom period, by that time the Egyptians have already lost the ability to read or speak the language of the old kingdom and today we are closer to Cleopatra than Cleopatra was to the pyramids as far as time goes. Heck even if we take the biblical exodus story as a historic event then the pyramids were already ancient by the time Moses was stuttering let my peeps go. As for the article I don’t exactly understand it’s premise they open with Sanskrit and Persian having shared history with European languages but as both are indo-European languages why is this surprising? AFIAK this was known and acccoeted even in the 19th century.
- posterboy 9y ago

gumby 9y ago

The information density of that map is pretty amazing

raoulduke 9y ago

I don't understand what this article is. There appears to be no cogent hypothesis or evidence. In the end it seems to be suggesting not (any) linguistic influence on Eurasian languages but rather aesthetic influence of hieroglyphs. That's well established given that the alphabet evolved from a single source and that it's well-established that that source was at least partly* influenced by hieroglyphs; and the earliest evidence for it is at Serabit el-Khadem in Sinai interspersed with hieroglyphic inscriptions (including a bilingual inscription on a sphinx [Sinai 345]). As I look back I do see a like half-paragraph ridiculous suggestion of apparently genetic connection between Egyptian and European. Before it was commonly known that Egyptian is an Afroasiatic language, there were attempts (usually with racial undertones) attempting to link the glorious and regal Egyptian with Eurasian languages. It's a worthless hypothesis. It also looks like people may have been looking for and having trouble finding solid Egyptian lexicons: aaew.bbaw.de/tla/ (The one that really bothered me was the (obviously incoherent) "Hathor = hut+hor Hüter of Herds"... Hathor means "House/Estate/Temple of Horus"). The whole thing is just ridiculous.) *There's at least secondary cuneiform influence by Wadi el-Hol (which I think was more likely 15th or 14th century).

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
posterboy 9y ago
> rather aesthetic influence of hieroglyphs rather, the hieroglyphic influence on the aesthetics of the (written) language.
- raoulduke 9y ago
  I don't understand (?).
  - posterboy 9y ago
    There is no difference, really. I just tried to point out that aesthetics can have a influence on language, because you were basically saying the writing system wasn't linguistic, which is really painful to read.

Koshkin 9y ago

See also https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16129463 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16129463

posterboy 9y ago

I can't see most of the glyphs neither on debian nor on android 6.