Posted on 06/13/2008 8:38:13 PM PDT by SunkenCiv
If you believe Mr. Edward Said and his numerous supporters, Sir William Jones was actually a racist pig who invented comparative linguistics in order to establish his dominance over "the Other." It's strange that Muslims didn't think of this when they ruled other peoples for centuries. After all, Persian, which they knew, is an Indo-European language, as is Sanskrit, as well as Greek, Armenian and the tongues of many of their subjects. Muslim scholars had access to a number of Semitic languages, from Arabic and Hebrew to Aramaic, in addition to languages of other Afro-Asiatic branches in North and East Africa. They were thus in a position to discover this linguistic tree, but they didn't. Did they simply lack curiosity?
Why was European civilization the only civilization on earth to invent comparative linguistics? It is interesting to ponder why nobody had made this connection before. The Indians hadn't done so, neither had the Persians, despite their cultural sophistication. Muslims were generally uninterested in other cultures for reasons of religious bigotry and cultural supremacism, and rarely bothered to learn non-Muslim languages. The few translations that were made from non-Muslim cultures, for instance works of the ancient Greeks in the early stages of Islamic rule, were mainly concerned with scientific matters, not with historical events or cultural ideas, and the translations were often made by non-Muslims.
(Excerpt) Read more at brusselsjournal.com ...
Hungarian is not a traceable language.
Is this correct?
Hungarian and Finnish are distantly related, or at least that’s what used to be said — the Finno-Ugric family or somethin’. The national foundation myth for Hungary involves Attila and the Huns. Okay, rather than twist in the wind, I did a quick search, and found the wiki-wacky page sez it is Finno-Ugric and “typologically
between inflected and agglutinative languages”, which suggests an Asian origin (because a great many Asian languages are agglutinative). Another such page sez “Finnish, Estonian, Hungarian” are in that family.
/bingo
Thanks for the information.
This may also be of interest:
Native Sweden
Archaeology Magazine | July/August 2008 | Zach Zorich
Posted on 06/15/2008 8:34:34 AM PDT by blam
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2031432/posts
Yes, that is quite interesting.
We are in the early stages of planning a trip to Hungary, Austria and Germany next year.
I have been doing a bit of research on Hungarian history, culture, etc. The language seems to be very difficult to learn according to some sources I have seen.
Anyway, thanks for the information again.
Regards,
AR
I’ve never been there, but you may wish to visit Salzburg, Austria, which grew rich on the salt trade, and while we’re on the topic:
The Man in Salt, Salzwelten, Hallstatt, Austria
Salinen Austria AG | by 2005 | staff
Posted on 09/08/2005 10:10:50 PM PDT by SunkenCiv
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/1480756/posts
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http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1684748/posts?page=9#9
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1684748/posts?page=35#35
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