Posted on 09/27/2005 11:09:48 AM PDT by blam
Yeah...and not only is English an amalgam...but it's got lots of different languages in it too! :)
It is almost a full-time avocation to keep up w/this list!!
You guys could offer Internet courses, IMO. I certainly am learning a lot w/o having to read ALL the source references.
Many thanx!
Probably best not to ping the list. The GGG guys would prefer if we kept the crevo discussion away from the GGG list, and I think that's a reasonable request. Yeah, it's relevant, but mention the E word, and you know what'll happen.
I appreciate that.
It's wrong to never split an infinitive.
These so-called scientists are using the unproven theory that languages evolve. The languages are actually due to Intelligent Design, as described in Genesis:
The Tower of Babel
1 And the whole earth was of one language, and of one speech.
2 And it came to pass, as they journeyed from the east, that they found a plain in the land of Shinar; and they dwelt there.
3 And they said one to another, Go to, let us make brick, and burn them thoroughly. And they had brick for stone, and slime had they for mortar.
4 And they said, Go to, let us build us a city, and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven; and let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth.
5 And the LORD came down to see the city and the tower, which the children of men builded.
6 And the LORD said, Behold, the people is one, and they have all one language; and this they begin to do: and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do.
7 Go to, let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another's speech.
8 So the LORD scattered them abroad from thence upon the face of all the earth: and they left off to build the city.
9 Therefore is the name of it called Babel; because the LORD did there confound the language of all the earth: and from thence did the LORD scatter them abroad upon the face of all the earth.
Actually, more of a "creole." Pidgen is a first-generation compromise trade/slave language. The children of pidgen speakers sythesize the grammar and speak a creole. The word "pidgen" comes from the English word "business" as modified for/by Chinese speakers doing business in the 19th century capitulations. The same time and place gave us the word "mandarin," derived from the Portugeuse verb mandero -- I command.
According to an old English professor, about 20% of our current vocabulary traces back to Anglo Saxon -- but those are the structural/skeletal words we use 80% of the time. English poetry is the most beautiful in the world, Dr. Stanley Ward explained, since our language is a shotgun wedding of conflicting traditions. Poets can draw from several different containers to find the most apt word. In common parlance, the only time a French equivalent is more common than the Anglo Saxon word is enemy/foe.
Kemal Atatürk, father of modern Turkish, ruthlessly purged his language of non-native words. The "Osmanli" he spoke got about 80% of its vocabulary from Arabic, Persian, and French. Today, that number is around 20% -- so Turkish kids can no longer read the "Nutuk," Atatürk's six day speech, in the language he used.
It can be argued that "language reform" is a revolutionary activity, designed to cut a people off from their roots, their traditions. Other examples of this process include "simplified Mao script," and the displacing of the King James Bible as the core of literate English.
And then there's Catalan, which has spawned a whole industry of people who sit around trying to think up replacements for Spanish (castellano) words that have been in use in Northern Spain for centuries and were probably even invented there. But once nationalism gets in, rationality goes out.
read later
Well, now we can add the evolution of languages to the long list of things that Answers In Genesis either doesn't understand, or is willing to distort in order to attack biology.
Yeah, languages are "nothing like" biological evolution, once you ignore the most important factors like common descent, acquired characteristics, adaptation, intermixing, random drift, divergence of isolated subpopulations, and all the other most significant things that they have in common.
But then since AiG consistently misunderstands/misrepresents evolutionary biology, it's hardly any surprise that they wouldn't spot the obvious features in common between biological evolution and linguistic evolution (and/or attempt to deny the obvious).
(Warning! Frevolutionists! Do not click! Semi-technical!)
Thanks for the warning -- you're right, we "Frevolutionists" prefer things that are *actually* technical, instead of merely "semi" technical (which in this case would have been better described as "half-***ed").
Thanks!
Yes. That is quite conservative for San Francisco.
I second the "Many Thanx!" sentiment.
You're most welcome.
To: Right Wing Professor; PatrickHenry
"The GGG guys would prefer if we kept the crevo discussion away from the GGG list, and I think that's a reasonable request. Yeah, it's relevant, but mention the E word, and you know what'll happen."
I appreciate that.
27 posted on 09/27/2005 2:14:03 PM PDT by blam
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