Freethought & Rationalism Archive

Peter Fletcher · 08-17-2004, 01:19 PM

The following statement setting out similarities between Babylonia and Finland appears in The Encyclopedia Britannica

"The country was divided into two halves, the Sumir (Sungir or Shinar) in the north west and the Accad in the south east, corresponding most remarkably to the Suomi and Akkara-k into which the Finnish race believed itself to have been separated in its first mountain home. Like Suomi, Sumir signified "The People of the Rivers" and, just as Finnic tradition makes Kemi a district of the Suomi, so Came was another name of the Babylonian Sumir. The Accadai or Accad were the "Highlanders", who had descended from the mountainous region of Elam and it was to them that the Assyrians ascribed the origin of Chaldean civilization."

How could this be?

anthrosciguy · 08-17-2004, 01:53 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Peter Fletcher

How could this be?

Over active imagination.

Ovazor · 08-17-2004, 02:25 PM

Babylonians too, eh? Well, there are already crackpots like here who claim that Troy was near Turku and Ulusses wandered around Baltic:

Quote:

In this area, west of Helsinki, we find lots of name-places which astonishingly resemble those mentioned in the Iliad and, in particular, those given to the allies of the Trojans: Askainen (Ascanius), Reso (Rhesus), Karjaa (Caria), Nästi (Nastes, the chief of the Carians), Lyökki (Lycia), Tenala (Tenedos), Kiila (Cilla), Kiikoinen (Ciconians) etc. There is also a Padva, which reminds us of Italian Padua, which was founded, according to tradition, by the Trojan Antenor and lies in the region of Veneto (the "Eneti" or "Veneti" were allies of the Trojans). What is more, the place-names Tanttala and Sipilä (the mythical King Tantalus, famous for his torment, was buried on Mount Sipylus) indicate that this matter is not only limited to Homeric geography, but seems to extend to the whole world of Greek mythology.

and here somebody claims that ancient egyptians spoke, in fact, Finnish:

Quote:

The author of this book, at he time of the discovery of the Tutankhamen tomb, inquired into the Egyptian Hieroglyphs and to a great surprise found several hundred derivations and words of the same root as the respective words used today in the Finnish language.

All this idiocy comes from searching words or place names which sound similar. If this claim ened in Britannica, it must be an old edition.

Shameless Hussy · 08-17-2004, 07:48 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Peter Fletcher

The following statement setting out similarities between Babylonia and Finland appears in The Encyclopedia Britannica

Perhaps I'm very simple (a distinct possibility!), but when I read that entry I SIMPLY assumed that the people who came over the Urals to Finland retained some of the oral narratives and/or origin legends of the Indo-European cradle from whence they came. What's so "different" about that?

Of course, I could be totally off-base about the Finns' heritage....

Toto · 08-18-2004, 12:08 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Shameless Hussy

Perhaps I'm very simple (a distinct possibility!), but when I read that entry I SIMPLY assumed that the people who came over the Urals to Finland retained some of the oral narratives and/or origin legends of the Indo-European cradle from whence they came. What's so "different" about that?

Of course, I could be totally off-base about the Finns' heritage....

All I know is that Finnish is not an Indo-European language. It is Uralic, related to Hungarian, Estonian, and more distantly, Mongolian.

But there may be something to the theory. I don't know enough about the Finns to tell.

Chris Weimer · 08-18-2004, 02:22 AM

Phonology disagrees. We have to attribute "Grimm's laws" whenever we look at sound names. hound = canis = kuon: In germanic languages, the k's became h's in a lot of words, also cavus and hole. If a thousand years can do that to German/Latin, think about how the languages must change over three thousand years. I've been studying ancient languages and the only real connection between IndoEuropean and Semitic languages is through Aramaic and the Thraco-Illyrian family. And even that is debatable.

Magdlyn · 08-18-2004, 07:18 AM

corn and horn.

Interesting article on the influence of Hebrew on other languages and cultures. cweb and Toto, wonder what you think of it?:

http://www.fa-kuan.muc.de/HEBREW.RXML

Peter Fletcher · 08-18-2004, 07:55 AM

For Magdlyn, cweb and Toto

Further to Magdlyn's link above (http://www.fa-kuan.muc.de/HEBREW.RXML) which I note, among other things, references connections between Hebrew and archaic Greek (Semitic and Indo-European tounges repectively!) I understand that some, difficult to explain away, relationships also occur between these two languages and Lithuanian which is a further Indo-European language, possibly evolved from the lost tounge of the Bolts.

Magdlyn, cweb and Toto, would you also like to comment on this?

Chris Weimer · 08-18-2004, 11:33 AM

The paper had some major problems. The first and foremost problem was the ignorance of the origin of Hebrew, a Semitic language. We know that Hebrew gathers many words from Assyrian, or Akkadian Assyrian, since the Jews left Meopotamia for the Levant. A thousand years with the Canannites gave it distinct semantic and linguistical flavour.

Quote:

It is no wonder that the Romans, who willingly acknowledged their cultural debt to Greece, were loath to grant any credit to the vanquished Jews, Phoenicians and Carthaginians.

Cathiginians were Phoenicians. Catharge was a Phoenician port.

Quote:

Hebrew words from the Bible could not always be translated but were simply "adopted" with only a minor alteration in pronunciation - alphabet, sabbath, amen, abbot, messiah, hallelujah, hosanna, manna, cherubim, seraphim, satan, shibboleth, leviathan, mammon, horn, camel, jubilee (from the 50th year Yovel celebration when all slaves were to be set free), scallions (after Ashkelon), gauze (after Gaza), and sodomy (after Sdom), Armageddon (from Megiddo), behemoth (the term for wild animals which was probably the source of the name Bahama islands) and most surprising of all - probably Europe itself - after the Hebrew erev - setting sun, or evening. Europe was the land of the setting sun for the ancient Hebrews and Phoenicians.

All might I add being religious in nature. It is obvious that a Christian would adopt words from the parent religion. As for alphabet and Europe, alphabet was distinctly Phoenician, and the names of the letters actually originated there. Europe has a clear origin, as do all words in ope (myoptic, hyperopia, cyclops) comes from the Greek word ops "eye". The first word is Eurys "flat, broad, long". "Erev" doesn't really hold up well since the setting sun for Israel would have been the Mediterranian, and then North Africa.

Quote:

The influence of the Hebrew language, however, extends far beyond the field of linguistics and religion. Its contribution is much more profound than the borrowing of individual words and concepts. Hebrew mental patterns have been so long encased in English words and phrases that we scarcely give a thought to their origins. Classics of English literature - both prose and poetry, political oratory, the popular stage, song and screen, and inscriptions on historical monuments, are strewn with titles lifted directly from the pages of the Old Testament where they appeared for the first time in Hebrew. Their ability to serve as allegories, proverbs and parables for modern situations and events that recall the Bible has been a hallmark of great literature, debate and oratory. Just a few examples will suffice: the writing on the wall (Daniel, 5:25), the mark of Cain (Genesis, 4:15), scapegoat (Leviticus, 16:26), the meek shall inherit the earth (Psalms 37:11), the grapes of wrath (Deuteronomy, 32:32), out of the mouths of babes and sucklings (Psalms 8:3), the good earth (Deuteronomy, 6:18), the way of all flesh (Genesis, 6:12), dust to dust (Genesis, 3:19), feet of clay (Daniel, 2:34), East of Eden (Genesis, 4:16), how are the mighty fallen (2 Samuel 1:19), man shall not live by bread alone (Deuteronomy, 8:3). These expressions and hundreds more have become so ingrained in the English language and so frequently used that we scarcely give a thought to their Hebrew origin. To imagine the English language without them is as unthinkable as to imagine English without the influence of Shakespeare.

Instead of Hebrew giving the origin of these phrases, the reason we adopted them was because of the literary aspect of the Old Testament. It was read daily and so it is very imaginable that we would adopt several phrases from the holiest book of many people speaking the language. It's like Nirvana, we don't recognize Sanskrit was the author, instead Hinduism. If it were not for Hinduism, or Judaism, these phrases would probably have not been used.

Quote:

At the same time, a number of curious mistranslations have entered English-speaking lore. The most famous is that of keren ("ray," "beam," or "horn"). As a result of the translation into Latin as "horn," generations of artists misrepresented Moses the great lawgiver as possessing horns, while his face should have been depicted as radiating rays of light!

There is considerable evidence that the Semitic languages adopted keren from IndoEuropean, since the Latin and English, not related, both have native IndoEuropean constructions, i.e. the -u at the end of the word. (OE hornu).

Quote:

In the construction of Esperanto, Zamenhof used a logical economy of root consonants such as is found in Hebrew. In Hebrew, for example, the root SFR is used for sefer ("book"), sifriah ("library"), sifrut ("literature"), and sipur (in Hebrew the letter peh ("p") is sometimes pronounced feh ["f"] for euphonic reasons). To take an example from Esperanto, the word sano ("health") is related to the words sana ("healthy"), sanulo ("a healthy person"), sanilo ("a cure," "medicine"), sane ("healthily"), malsano ("illness"), sanigi ("to cure") and malsanulejo ("hospital"). There are other structural similarites, such as the addition to the root of prefixes which transform the verb from the simple active into a causitive or passive form.

This is not a pure Semitic construction, since Ancients did the same thing. The Latin word for health is "sanus", to be healthy "salveo", healthy "sanilis", healthiness "sanitas". Hebrew didn't affect this at all.

lpetrich · 08-18-2004, 11:42 AM

Thanx to Mark Rosenfelder's list of 1-to-10 words in Over 4500 languages and my Amateur Comparative Linguistics thread, I have a list of eight highly-conserved words. One can easily recognize Indo-European and Semitic with them, and with more difficulty, Uralic. A distant IE-Uralic relationship looks possible, but neither is recognizably related to Semitic.

By contrast, the arguments in http://www.fa-kuan.muc.de/HEBREW.RXML are pure hand-waving, without anything systematic. As to the argument from borrowed words, phrases, literary motifs, and the like, the same can be said of the ancient Greco-Roman world -- in fact, English has many more Latin and Greek borrowings in it than Hebrew ones. So shall we convert to Hellenic/Roman paganism on account of that?

Indo-European:
Germanic:
English: me, one, two, three, ten, name, sun, star
Old English: me-, an, twa, thri, tien, nama, sunne, steorra
German: mi-, eins, zwei, drei, zehn, Name, Sonne, Stern
Swedish: mi-, en, tva, tre, tio, namn, sol, stjarna
Gothic: mi-, ains, twai, threis, taihun, namo, sunna, stairno
Slavic:
Russian: me-, odin, dva, tri, desyat', imya, solntse, zvezda
Serbo-Croatian: mi, jedan, dva, tri, deset, ime, sunce, svjezda
Bulgarian: me-, edin, dva, tri, deset, ime, sluntse, trugvam
Celtic:
Irish Gaelic: me-, aon, do, tri, deich, ainm, grian, ralta
Breton: me, unan, daou, tri, dek, anv, heol, sterenn
Latin-Romance:
Latin: me-, unus, duo, tres, decem, nomen, sol, stella
Italian: me, uno, due, tre, dieci, nome, sole, stella
Spanish: me, uno, dos, tres, diez, nombre, sol, estrella
French: me, un, deux, trois, dix, nom, soleil, etoile
Hellenic:
Classical Greek: eme, heis, duo, treis, deka, onoma, helios, aster
Indic:
Sanskrit: ma-, eka, dvaa, trayas, dasha, naama, surya, taara
Hindi: mai, ek, do, tin, das, nam, surya, tara
Bengali: ami, aek, dui, tin, dash, nam, surya, tara
Sinhalese: ma-, eka, deka, tuna, dahaya, nama, ira, tharuwa

Ancestral IE: *me-, *oinos, *dwo, *treyes, *dekm, *nomn, *sawel, *ster
(reconstructed)

Uralic:
Finnish: mi-, yksi, kaksi, kolme, kymmenen, nimi, aurinko, tähti
Hungarian: ?, egy, kettö, három, tiz, név, nap, csillag

Semitic:
Hebrew: -i, ahat, shtayim, shalosh, eser, shem, shemesh, kokhab
Arabic: -i, waahid, ithnaan, thalaatha, `ashara, ism, shams, kaukab

Sumerian: ?, desh, min, pesh, hu, mu, utu, kilib

Basque: ?, bat, bi, hiru, hamar, ?, ?, ?

08-17-2004, 01:19 PM	#1
Peter Fletcher Junior Member Join Date: Jul 2004 Location: Surrey, England Posts: 9	Babylonia was originally in Finland? - How could this be? The following statement setting out similarities between Babylonia and Finland appears in The Encyclopedia Britannica "The country was divided into two halves, the Sumir (Sungir or Shinar) in the north west and the Accad in the south east, corresponding most remarkably to the Suomi and Akkara-k into which the Finnish race believed itself to have been separated in its first mountain home. Like Suomi, Sumir signified "The People of the Rivers" and, just as Finnic tradition makes Kemi a district of the Suomi, so Came was another name of the Babylonian Sumir. The Accadai or Accad were the "Highlanders", who had descended from the mountainous region of Elam and it was to them that the Assyrians ascribed the origin of Chaldean civilization." How could this be?

08-18-2004, 07:55 AM	#8
Peter Fletcher Junior Member Join Date: Jul 2004 Location: Surrey, England Posts: 9	Hebrew, Archaic Greek and Lithuanian For Magdlyn, cweb and Toto Further to Magdlyn's link above (http://www.fa-kuan.muc.de/HEBREW.RXML) which I note, among other things, references connections between Hebrew and archaic Greek (Semitic and Indo-European tounges repectively!) I understand that some, difficult to explain away, relationships also occur between these two languages and Lithuanian which is a further Indo-European language, possibly evolved from the lost tounge of the Bolts. Magdlyn, cweb and Toto, would you also like to comment on this?

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08-18-2004, 02:22 AM	#6
Chris Weimer Veteran Member Join Date: Jun 2004 Location: none Posts: 9,879	Phonology disagrees. We have to attribute "Grimm's laws" whenever we look at sound names. hound = canis = kuon: In germanic languages, the k's became h's in a lot of words, also cavus and hole. If a thousand years can do that to German/Latin, think about how the languages must change over three thousand years. I've been studying ancient languages and the only real connection between IndoEuropean and Semitic languages is through Aramaic and the Thraco-Illyrian family. And even that is debatable.

08-18-2004, 07:18 AM	#7
Magdlyn Veteran Member Join Date: Mar 2004 Location: Massachusetts Posts: 2,230	corn and horn. Interesting article on the influence of Hebrew on other languages and cultures. cweb and Toto, wonder what you think of it?: http://www.fa-kuan.muc.de/HEBREW.RXML

08-18-2004, 11:42 AM	#10
lpetrich Contributor Join Date: Jul 2000 Location: Lebanon, OR, USA Posts: 16,829	Thanx to Mark Rosenfelder's list of 1-to-10 words in Over 4500 languages and my Amateur Comparative Linguistics thread, I have a list of eight highly-conserved words. One can easily recognize Indo-European and Semitic with them, and with more difficulty, Uralic. A distant IE-Uralic relationship looks possible, but neither is recognizably related to Semitic. By contrast, the arguments in http://www.fa-kuan.muc.de/HEBREW.RXML are pure hand-waving, without anything systematic. As to the argument from borrowed words, phrases, literary motifs, and the like, the same can be said of the ancient Greco-Roman world -- in fact, English has many more Latin and Greek borrowings in it than Hebrew ones. So shall we convert to Hellenic/Roman paganism on account of that? Indo-European: Germanic: English: me, one, two, three, ten, name, sun, star Old English: me-, an, twa, thri, tien, nama, sunne, steorra German: mi-, eins, zwei, drei, zehn, Name, Sonne, Stern Swedish: mi-, en, tva, tre, tio, namn, sol, stjarna Gothic: mi-, ains, twai, threis, taihun, namo, sunna, stairno Slavic: Russian: me-, odin, dva, tri, desyat', imya, solntse, zvezda Serbo-Croatian: mi, jedan, dva, tri, deset, ime, sunce, svjezda Bulgarian: me-, edin, dva, tri, deset, ime, sluntse, trugvam Celtic: Irish Gaelic: me-, aon, do, tri, deich, ainm, grian, ralta Breton: me, unan, daou, tri, dek, anv, heol, sterenn Latin-Romance: Latin: me-, unus, duo, tres, decem, nomen, sol, stella Italian: me, uno, due, tre, dieci, nome, sole, stella Spanish: me, uno, dos, tres, diez, nombre, sol, estrella French: me, un, deux, trois, dix, nom, soleil, etoile Hellenic: Classical Greek: eme, heis, duo, treis, deka, onoma, helios, aster Indic: Sanskrit: ma-, eka, dvaa, trayas, dasha, naama, surya, taara Hindi: mai, ek, do, tin, das, nam, surya, tara Bengali: ami, aek, dui, tin, dash, nam, surya, tara Sinhalese: ma-, eka, deka, tuna, dahaya, nama, ira, tharuwa Ancestral IE: me-, oinos, dwo, treyes, dekm, nomn, sawel, ster (reconstructed) Uralic: Finnish: mi-, yksi, kaksi, kolme, kymmenen, nimi, aurinko, tähti Hungarian: ?, egy, kettö, három, tiz, név, nap, csillag Semitic: Hebrew: -i, ahat, shtayim, shalosh, eser, shem, shemesh, kokhab Arabic: -i, waahid, ithnaan, thalaatha, `ashara, ism, shams, kaukab Sumerian: ?, desh, min, pesh, hu, mu, utu, kilib Basque: ?, bat, bi, hiru, hamar, ?, ?, ?

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